• One Way I’ve Thought (& Gone) Wrong & A Book Recommendation

    “The things that we are doing every day when we are being productive—answering emails, going to meetings, making supper for the family—are not just things we are doing. They are good works…The activities of our everyday lives are not separate from the good works that God has called us to. They are themselves part of the good works that God created us for in Christ. And, therefore, they have great meaning.” – Matt Perman, What’s Best Next

    As I wrote about in my last entry, I am passionate about right thinking about God and the Scripture because of the way that translates into worship and life. One way in which I have seen wrong/incomplete thinking and teaching play out in my life has been concerning the sacred-secular divide which is addressed in the doctrine of  vocation (calling). This is the theology of how the things we’re called to do in our various stations in life (e.g. as a child, student, mom, worker, etc.) are done to the glory of God. I’ve posted about this in bits and pieces in a few posts on motherhood, but I thought it may be helpful to show how the lack of a Biblical understanding of what the “secular” aspects of life had to do with living for God manifested itself, and point anyone interested in reading more to an excellent resource.

    Here are the ways that my lack of understanding regarding the doctrine of vocation showed up in various stages in my life:

    Half-hearted work: When God wakened my heart to the gospel in college and gave me a deep desire to live for his glory, I started pitting  “spiritual” activities  over and above the “non-spiritual” activities almost immediately. I was a student at the time as a biology major and my motivation for studying ceased once I didn’t want to go into the medical field anymore but wanted to go into ministry. I immersed myself in prayer meetings, Christian campus events, time alone by myself in prayer and reading Scripture, and talking about God but neglected my studies. God was really doing something new in me and I do believe that the desire to change my plotted life course was from God (changing majors and career goals), but my response in the way I treated school was not. But without seeing clearly what God had to do with my work as a student, it was really hard to be motivated because at the heart of it (though I may not have articulated it this way) I didn’t believe God thought it was important or that it had lasting spiritual significance.

    A feeling of emptiness in doing ministry: A gospel presentation I heard when I was younger encouraged children to evangelize after they accepted Jesus by asking, “Do you know why God doesn’t just zap you up to heaven after you become a Christian?”  The given answer was “So that you can tell other people about Jesus!” Although as a Christian, I knew and was taught that the ultimate goal in life is to bring glory to God, the “you’re only still on earth to bring about conversions” thinking was reinforced in my life through different ministries and speakers that I have heard. Bringing about conversions were often put as the central means of bringing glory to God  because of the rationale that souls are eternal whereas other things are not. At one point when I was in ministry, I remember asking someone if they thought it was true that this was the only reason we were still on earth (to bring people to Jesus through evangelizing) and when they said yes, I just felt a sense of emptiness.  I believe I felt that way because as people, we were made for more. Yet at the time, I couldn’t refute the seemingly Biblical logic in the argument.

    Guilt: As long as I was in ministry, I could feel fulfilled and guilt-free since my “work” was almost completely in the realm of things which I could see were meaningful spiritually. As a student in graduate school, I could also justify my studies in the potential good it would do in helping me have a platform for evangelism in the future. But when I became a stay-at-home mom stationed not in a foreign country for missions, but in Staten Island, the guilt came as did the questions of whether what I did mattered and why.

    Confusion: Ultimately I realized there was a huge disconnect between my understanding of “living for the glory of God” and my everyday life as well as the everyday lives of most people I know. Just being told to “do everything for God’s glory” wasn’t helpful in that I did not understand 1. why everything could be done to God’s glory 2. what doing everything to God’s glory  practically looks like. Did it just mean being prayerful and having the right attitude when we did something? Did it mean it would have to be part of a chain of events that led to conversions of others (like, cook an egg so that you can have energy so that you can go to work to make money to give to a missionary)?

    If you know me, you know that I get really excited about getting solid resources out to others. It is an extension of my passion about right theology that translates into giving away books I own (something I picked up from my mom),  sharing  online articles, referring people to different sermon series, and tweeting deals from wtsbooks.com. Because I know a lot of people who love Jesus and yet have struggled with the same issue of trying to think Biblically about God and work (whether outside the home or at school or at home), I want to recommend a resource to you!

    When I was wrestling a lot with issues of vocation and the theology of the everyday, I stumbled (providentially) upon Matt Perman’s blog was helped a lot by his theologically solid and practical writing. At one point I sent him a question I still had and his answer clarified things for me (will post this later!) So, when he invited readers of his blog to be part of the launch team of his new book (helping promote the book and receiving an advanced e-copy of it), I quickly called my sister and had her do it and then promptly requested to be part of it too. 

    I’m still reading through the book, but already can think of many people it would benefit from it given our past conversations on work, ministry, and the Christian life. I recommend it to anyone feeling a disconnect between the daily tasks that they do in life as a mom/student/worker/etc. and living radically to God’s glory. There is solid Biblical theology of work and vocation throughout and it is centered on the gospel while not being disconnected from the practical.

    Here’s a good description of the book from within the book itself:

    Numerous Christian books give an excellent call to living radical lives devoted to the glory of God and the good of others, but they typically don’t go into much detail regarding how to weave this into the fabric of your life. This leaves us at a loss for how to apply these things consistently.

    Many secular books on productivity, on the other hand, have a great framework for capturing your overall priorities in life and making them happen, but they don’t call you to set the right priorities based on what God says rather than on what you say.

    We are going to solve that problem by showing how to find the God- centered, Christ-exalting passion of your life..then showing how to keep this at the center of your life and weave it into everything you do.

    And here are some quotes that have been helped me thus far:

    • “Each of us is an individual, with unique talents and gifts. Productivity is not about trying to do good according to another person’s style, or with gifts we don’t have. As the parable of the talents shows, productivity is about taking the gifts and resources God has given each of us individually and making those talents useful for the good of others.”
    • “…We need to be creative because God is not simply a God of utility but also is a God of beauty. Putting thought into how we can serve people with creativity is simply an implication of the command to ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
    • “Just as we do good works from justification rather than for justification, we are also to do good works from peace rather than for peace.”

    I look forward to sharing from what I read (whether in person or more on this blog) and am praying that this book will get into the hands of anyone who would find it helpful for them in living their lives unto God with much joy.

    Here is the link to the book on Amazon: What’s Best Next

    And here is a great WTS bookstore deal if you want to read a physical copy! What’s Best Next- WTSbooks

  • Social Media Hiatus & New Blog!

    It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything to post online, but here I am again with a new blog and ready to start writing again! There are some posts that have been swimming around in my head, but before sitting down and getting those onto paper (screen?), I thought I’d share a bit about why I took a quasi-break from social media and why I decided to blog again. I don’t imagine that I have to explain myself so much because people have been wondering about my internet whereabouts as much as because I think it may be helpful for those who are thinking about the role of social media in their lives and because it’ll help me to have written down why I want to start blogging again.

    My break from social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blogging) started out involuntarily and, I believe, by the mercy of God. I was on vacation in the middle of the ocean and without internet for a few weeks! Here is what I realized during my time there and in the months that have followed as I’ve been mostly away  social media. I don’t want to say social media made me do these things, so I’ll start off each by saying my use of social media…

    • …Broke up my time and attention in unhelpful ways. It’s not as if I was sitting down for hours or even 30 minutes at a time at the computer. But having the option in the palm of my hand to fill up a minute or two here and there by scrolling through tweets and status updates filled my mind with mostly unhelpful information when I could have been thinking about something else, reading a few pages of a book, enjoying my daughter with undivided attention, or even just being silent. For me then, it was (and is) not so much a matter of whether or not I was doing something wrong with my time, but whether or not there was something better that I could be up to. 
    • …Was out of proportion considering the things and tasks that are important to me (i.e. my priorities). Although in the past I’ve contemplated completely cutting myself off from any kind of social media for the sake of not wasting time, I never did because I really believed that it could be a tool to bless others. Why? Because I’ve been helped by articles and blogs I’ve read online and I love being able to help others have access to good resources. I figured that hey, if people are already spending their time on Twitter, Facebook, etc. and reading all this stuff, why not get something in there that really  matters? It also is a way to keep in touch with people that I don’t see every day or may be far away. These uses were mostly about potential ways and people I could serve or connect with. But for me right now at this stage of life my priorities are toward 1. God 2.  my husband 3. my children 4. my family 5. my church &  close friends, and some place after that those I could  hypothetically/potentially serve through social media. Not that the people listed above couldn’t be blessed through my social media use, but that’s not one of the main ways I could be serving them. Therefore, given the position that social media connections was, or rather, how it wasn’t on my priority list, my time and attention weren’t being properly used.
    • …Gave me a false sense of connectedness and community that replaced my desire to actively seek out someone to talk to. One reason I stay on Facebook is because it can be useful to connect to (real life) friends or reconnect with people that I really do have a relationship with. But I feel like the option of having  my thoughts broadcasted out there any time  gave me a sense of being connected to a listener that was in reality not there or at least unknown to myself. As people, we all have a desire to communicate and share our lives with others, from important lessons learned to little joys in life. (Think about the seemingly unimportant status updates that people often complain about others posting). When God teaches me something new, I want to share it. When my daughter does something super cute, I want to tell someone too! Something kind of scary that I noticed after I stopped going on social media was how often  potential tweets and blogs passed through my mind when things like these happened.  Even having the option of sharing things through social media acted in a way to satiate that desire to share with another what was going on in my mind. I found that after I disconnected, I took more time to direct these thoughts upward in prayers of thanks for what I was experiencing and outward to others (texting a friend, telling my family members, etc.)  
    • …Showed that instead of being a tool to be used, social media mastered me. I  could give all these  helpful uses of social media that I really think are legitimate, but honestly, I think that social media had a hold on me that I could not really see. Yes, I could stay off of it for a few days and I had at times set up specific time limits for my own use of Facebook, but why was there such an impulse to go on it right away when those limits were up? I’m not even sure what the appeal was, but I think it had become such a habit  even though often I was scrolling and looking through things I cared little about.
    • …Made it easy to produce (post) or pass on (“like”/”retweet”) rather than to first live it out. It is so easy to read something good or potentially impacting and instead of thinking first about how I can be changed or have my life put in accordance to God’s truth, to retweet or share it and leave it there. Or for me to be at the starting point of learning something new from God and the Scriptures and then right away think about how I can blog about it instead of first letting it sink in and change me first. I don’t think social media makes people fake and I don’t think I have to be all there before sharing honestly, but I think the ease and quickness with which I can put out something publicly makes it  dangerous for me since I already have little time in my own life set aside for serious contemplation, prayer, and meditation. I want truths to sink deep and to have things I share come out from within me, not merely passed on and giving others the impression of having made a difference in my life.

    So, with all that I’ve written above, why am I blogging again?

    1. Because I have been helped by things I’ve read and I hope to bless others in the same way.  There are blogs that I follow because of the way they encourage me point me towards the truth of God and I hope to edify others in the same way. I am thankful to have been approached by different people here and there saying they were helped by things that I have written . As I have been thinking about whether or not to blog again, my husband encouraged me to focus my thoughts on serving and not to not write because of fear.  Also, I’m thankful that many (most) of you reading this are people that I love and know, and though it’s hard to update you all individually about how God is working in my life, I can write it and have you all read it at once! 

    2. Because I am passionate about right theology in the everyday and in all of life. God has wired my mind and heart to be passionate about helping others see the impact of Biblical truths in real life. I get fired up about right theology because I have seen (and see) in my own life the impact of wrong teaching and wrong thoughts about God, his word, and how he has designed life to be. Because of this, I love being able to share others about how God is renewing my mind and teaching me his truth, and in this way, changing my life and my worship. I hope to write more about this specifically another time, but for now I will say that my second reason for blogging is because I enjoy it!

    So, hello again internet reader and friends! And I pray that God will use this blog in whatever way he chooses for your edification and for his glory.

  • Truths that have helped in my fight against anxiety

    I have written before about my ongoing struggle with anxiety that I have had ever since I was young. Anxiety and worry manifest themselves in my life often in physical symptoms (stomachaches as a child, knots in my stomach, breaking out in itchy hives, pressure on my chest etc.) and are emotionally and mentally taxing. Ultimately though, they are usually rooted in what is going on in my heart on a spiritual and theological level. Anxiety does much not only to reveal my fears, but what I believe about myself, life and God.

    Jeff has prayed often for me since before we were married for my anxiety- for the stomachaches, patterns of thought that jump to worst-case scenarios, and inexplicably violent nightmares. And I believe God is answering his prayers and prayers of friends who have come alongside of me and fought for me before the throne of grace. It is a constant battle, but how far I have come is a testimony of the goodness of God.

    There have been some truths that have been on the forefront of my mind these last few months that have been helpful in fighting anxiety. Hopefully, they will be a God-graced reminder and help for others like me. Here they are:

    1. Most importantly, the argument from the greater to the lesser.

    He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32 ESV)

    Much of my anxiety stems from the fact that, like C.S. Lewis wrote, “We’re not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.” I wrote about the life-changing truth regarding that fear which God brought home to me two years ago here: The Sign of Jonah.The deep understanding of the love of God demonstrated at the cross for the sake of my redemption at great cost to himself grounds my trust that he will be good to me (even if I don’t feel like it is good) in all the smaller things that make up the rest of my life. This is what I wrote in April of 2011:

    During the message, when exhorted to look to the cross, I remembered afresh the Father’s love for me in giving up his Son and Jesus’ love for me in coming to walk this earth, not holding onto his glory but becoming a servant to suffer and die for me. He did all this while I wanted nothing to do with him. He loves me, and I know it not just because the Bible says “God loves you” but because He demonstrated it. The love that he showed, stirs up trust in my heart- I know, like know, through the cross that his affection, intentions, and will toward me are good and loving. He is not just working towards his glory and Christlikeness in my own life, but the way he brings that about is also good and loving because that is who he is. I cannot look to the cross, and then think about God as some cold, distant being who plans my life in a mechanical and “well, it’ll end up good in the end!” way. He loves me at all times, thus I trust that the ends that he plans are not just “good” in some abstract sense, but even the means ordained by him flow out of his eternal, unchanging, everlasting love. That’s why I’m not afraid even though an easy life is not promised to me. That’s why I will trust him even though I know there will be times things don’t make sense in my eyes.

    A related illustration that has stuck with me since I heard it a few months ago is one by John Piper that if someone gets you a million dollar present, he is not going to be standing at Walmart trying to decide between $3 and $4 wrapping paper. Christ is ours! Life eternal is ours through the precious blood of Christ! We do not need to think he will be uncaring, unthinking, and harsh about the details of our lives.

    2. The argument from the lesser to the greater: Consider the ravens and the lilies!

    24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!…27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! (Luke 12, ESV)

    A few weeks ago, I was struggling with feeling like the promises of God in Scripture and his help for those in need seemed distant. My life is made up of such small things and the things I am anxious about, though big in my perspective, seem so small compared to the greater suffering, trials, and problems in the world. The promises held out in Scripture felt too huge for me- held out for those in persecution or in grave need because of their great love for God. And so I prayed, and God answered with Luke 12.

    There are many truths in this passage that help in fighting anxiety (e.g. 8 reasons here). But the one that the Holy Spirit brought home was this: My life is small, short and fading- God seems in some ways “too big” for the details of my life. But God in his infinite wisdom and love has chosen to clothe flowers and feed sparrows. That means before the beginning of time, he has willed and purposed for each individual blade of grass on my lawn to grow and a means for each bird outside to eat. God is so big, so incomprehensibly powerful, that there is no small thing that escapes his sight and power. And if God has chosen to care for flowers and birds, and he says that I am more important than they, then he will care for me, his child.

    3.  Not “what will happen to me”, but “what am I to do right now?”

    My mind, if not brought under the rule of God, is constantly creating projections of the future which are almost always comprised of my worst fears. I have the uncanny ability to make a mental jump between Jeff being a bit late coming home and not picking up his cell phone to how I’m going to make a living as a widow. Looking back, these kinds of thought have passed through my head every day for as long as I can tell starting from when I was young being afraid every time my parents were out.  I have lately been asking God to help me rein in my thoughts and the most helpful thing for me has been to change the question that I am asking myself whenever I am anxious.

    In Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes about a (ficional) demon writing to another newbie demon about how to deal with their “patient” (a person) against the “Enemy” (God). About anxiety, he writes (italics mine):

    He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.
    Your patient will, of course, have picked up the notion that he must submit with patience to the Enemy’s will. What the Enemy means by this is primarily that he should accept with patience the tribulation which has actually been dealt out to him-the present anxiety and suspense. It is about this that he is to say “Thy will be done”, and for the daily task of bearing this that the daily bread will be provided. It is your business to see that the patient never thinks of the present fear as his appointed cross but only of the things he is afraid of.

    Nervousness or fear is the body’s response to a situation that demands some kind of response, for example “fight or flight?” It is not necessarily a bad thing and at times, fear brings about a necessary action- like rushing to the sofa because my daughter is about to flip over the edge. In the same way, when we think about things that are potentially worrisome,  God doesn’t call us to just think happy thoughts but respond to them. Sometimes the response will mean taking tangible action, always we are to respond in prayer and thanksgiving (Phil. 4:6-7). But anxiety takes a situation, analyzes it as bad, and just keeps thinking “what will happen to me?” instead of “how am I called to respond right now?” Now, when I start feeling the familiar sense of worry coming on, I try to ask this question so that the alertness and nervousness at the situation are used in the ways that they were ordained to work in bringing me to deeper dependence on God and being an active agent in doing the will of God.

    4. I will probably be an “anxious person” my whole life, but this struggle is God’s ordained means to grow my trust in him and be a witness to his grace.

    Having my daughter has convinced me of the creativity of God in creating each person uniquely. I see her and I see other children and it’s amazing to see how even now you can see their personalities coming through. Even from when she was a few months old as we got to know her more, we started praying about things she will probably struggle with given her particular make up. My temperament has a lot to do with the particular struggles I have. This is not to be fatalistic, but it gives me comfort to know that, though I pray I will grow in fighting it, I will be prone to anxiety until I see Jesus and that God brings about each struggle for my good and his glory.

    I have learned not to see knots in my stomach as a failure on my part, but opportunities to turn to trust in God. When my daughter was a newborn and when I was nursing, the hormones involved caused waves of dread to pass over me unrelated to things I was thinking about or doing. It helped to see each occurrence of this biologically caused dread as a chance to say to God, “I don’t know why this is happening and I don’t like it, but I trust you.” I am coming to see God’s sufficient grace in all this and my being prone to fear and worry as a potential tool in the hands of God as he teaches me to turn to him and trust in his loving kindness and steadfast faithfulness.

    God is ever so patient as I fail to trust again and again. He has been faithful to give grace and teach me. And to those who have continually prayed with me through my anxieties, thank you. All I have written here and am still learning is an answer to your prayers.

  • Why does my work matter?

    After my daughter was born, one of my recurring prayer requests was that I would learn what it meant to worship God in the season of new-mommyhood. Up until then, it was pretty straightforward for me to answer questions of why I did what I did- I had seen my education as a given prep stage in life and then afterwards, being in campus ministry it was easy in my mind to explain why the things I did were of value to God and his Kingdom. I only found out what I was lacking in my understanding of God and what he desires of us in life when I could no longer measure what it meant to “glorify God” in the same ways that I had before.
    Here’s a bit of what I typed up in a journal entry that became the first in a file I ended up naming “Vocation” (you’ll see why later):

    The problem: I know to reject the non-Christian worldview on what the reason is for doing what we do in work. We don’t work for the sake of our own personal glory and fame or for the sake of pursuing wealth as our security and comfort.But it seems as if the Christian alternative given is that well, we can’t all be working vocationally in ministries, so we will use our jobs as ways to allow us to 1. do the types of things that would be done in ministry (Bible study groups at work, evangelizing to network of people you meet)  or 2. support the work of ministry (money, invite people to church, influence culture for sake of evangelism). The support for this understanding is often as follows:  The world is passing away and what’s more important and eternal? People’s souls or fill-in-the-blank? Shouldn’t we pursue heavenly, eternal  vs. earthly, temporary things?[…] There are different reasons why I know this perspective of the Christian life isn’t complete. One reason is that it’s not comprehensive to explain, for example, someone with a child with a severe cognitive disability or someone who is doing a job that doesn’t allow them to have influence or even much interaction with others. Another is that it ignores that we could be eating and drinking “for the glory of God” […]

    Main Questions:

    What does it mean to “give glory to God” in the earth-bound tasks we do?
    What does it mean to do mundane things in faith?

    I felt like I needed a course on the Theology of Motherhood! And it turns out I was looking for was actually best summed up by what has been known since the Reformation as the Doctrine of Vocation. That, along with my growing understanding of the doctrine of Providence since my ways at WTS have been monumental in shaping my understanding of my own calling as a mom. Here are some of the things that have helped and snippets of that “Vocation” file: 

    • The primary calling that I have in life and the way that I am to glorify and worship God here on earth is found in the Greatest Commandment.  These days, I often wake up and remind myself that my goal of the day is to love and fear God and to love my neighbor. Luther wrote about the Biblical Doctrine of Vocation during the Reformation when there was a huge gap between what was seen as spiritual (priestly) vs. non-spiritual work. He wrote about vocation (from “calling” in Latin) and how God has placed each believer in different stations of life (in my case, as a wife, mother, church member, etc.) with the purpose of loving people through the work we do. This means that when I get up and make breakfast, clean the house, play with my daughter, I can know that 1. I am called my God to do so and 2. It is meaningful and pleasing to God if I am doing it out of love for my daughter.
    • Love (as defined Biblically) is the ultimate goal. What that looks like will differ given different needs, different gifts, and changing seasons of life. One of the toughest things for me has been trying to find one way of living that glorifies God by looking at people around me or other seasons of life. God has been showing me that he is glorifying himself in different ways through different people. Why? 1. Scripture gives so many different ways that we are called to love depending on what the needs are- we are called to preach the Gospel, to speak truth in love, to care for widows and orphans, to clothe the naked, to visit the imprisoned, etc. As tempting as it is to put these in order of priority, Scripture doesn’t do that (e.g. say that it is more important to preach than to care for widows). But love will see all these things as important- caring for the body and caring for the soul and how I  love my neighbor will depend on who is placed in my life and what their needs are. Right now, my husband and daughter are my most immediate neighbors and my daughter’s needs are taking up a certain amount of time and energy that will not always remain the same. 2. I have been entrusted with different gifts than people around me and am called to exercise them for the good of the church. (I’ve posted some helpful resources regarding this before.) 3. As a wife and mom, the shape of my days and time changes with different seasons.  The way it looks for me to worship and obey God today is not going to look exactly the same as what it meant for me to do so as a student or ministry staff worker. Therefore the orienting question (and my answer to why I stay at home) is “What does it mean for me right now to love my neighbor?”
    • The Biblical understanding of what is worldly vs. spiritual  is not mostly a matter of what is physical vs. what is immaterial but an issue of the heart. When the Bible talks about flesh or wordliness, it is not talking about physical need for sleep or making money- it is talking about the sinful ways that we pursue things other than God and the part of us that rebels against him. There are ways that I can do “spiritual” things in a way that is worldly- doing work in ministry in order to justify myself or for success. There are ways that I can do mundane, earth-bound tasks in a way that is spiritual- exhibiting the fruit of the spirit (helpful blog here about it), doing it out of love for others, etc. Therefore, as a mom, it is not as if the only spiritual things I do are when I am able to explicitly mention God or things that I do which eventually lead up to an opportunity to evangelize/disciple, I can do things that are earth-bound (diaper changing, feeding my baby) in ways that are spiritual when done out of and in love. How John Piper put it in Don’t Waste Your Life is “It is not a matter so much of what you do, but how and why.”
    • God has chosen to work in the world through human actions.  The Biblical understanding of Providence- that God is actively and sovereignly controlling and governing all things that happen in the world- has done massive damage on the sacred-secular divide that I had in my mind. If God is actively involved in all aspects of what happens in the world (providence) and working through people (doctrine of vocation), then he is working through me both when I evangelize and when I tend to my daughter’s physical needs. Luther has been quoted as saying that God milks the cows through the hands of the milkmaids. Similarly, what I do is important because God is working through me to answer my prayers for my daughter’s growth and protection in my day-to-day actions!
    • The work I do as a mom matters because God regards it as valuable. I emailed a question to Matt Perman of What’s Best Next  and this was really helpful from his answer: “What God requires of us most of all is not evangelism, but love…Evangelism and work are to both come from this motive. This makes our work eternal and enduring, as well as (successful, so to speak) evangelism….It is God’s regard of something that makes it valuable. That needs to be our criteria.” Growing up with a misunderstanding of what was spiritual vs. not spiritual and working in ministry, it was easy for me feel that work (non “spiritual”)  is not as important or secondary to the type of work done in church ministry or missions (Bible study, etc.) and that work was only important so much as it led to these activities. This was perpetuated by things I learned in church (e.g. being a spiritual doctor is more important than being a doctor that only saves people who will one day die anyways.) This is not Biblical though because as written above, it is God’s regard of something that makes it valuable. I realized that I had a wrong standard for measuring whether or not the work is important. God commands us to preach the Gospel. He also calls us to cultivate the earth and to work (Genesis 1-3). Love is the goal of both, and both are valued by God. As a mom who stays at home and is limited by my daughter’s developmental stage and my time in terms of how much explicit Gospel-instruction I can give, I can know that the work I do cleaning, caring, etc. matters because it is valuable  to God.
    An important note that I have is that I am not trying to say that preaching the Gospel, the work of ministry, discipleship and world missions are not important. I love my daughter and so I desire for her to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, pray for her, and teach her to obey  me so that she can learn to obey God. I believe this pleases God. The main struggle for me though is to know that I can be pleasing and glorifying God also in the mundane and everyday work that I do- not only as a means toward discipleship and missions, but in and of themselves- when I work in faith and out of love. I pray and trust that God will give us all grace and instruction as we love him and our neighbors in the way he is calling us to today!
    Here are some of the resources that have been tremendously helpful to me and I recommend to anyone wanting to know more about God’s calling in our lives in our work:

  • My daughter is precious to God

    And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.
    Mark 10:13-16 (ESV)
    My junior year of college, I took a course on community psychology and outreach where we learned about social needs and dynamics of communities. One lecture, we finished the material early so the professor decided to close the books and ask “Why do we even care? Why should we care about poverty and violence in these neighborhoods?”  People answered along the lines of “There is a great need and social programs can make a difference in society” and “The welfare of these neighborhoods end up effecting other neighborhoods.” The professor kept pushing, “But why should we do anything?” and no one could answer him adequately. I sat there getting increasingly frustrated at these answers until I couldn’t take it anymore and the burning in my heart overcame the fear of speaking up in this huge lecture hall. I raised my hand and was passed the mic, and probably shaking because of  how strongly I felt about this, I said (something like) “The reason why these answers are all missing the point is that there is no deeper foundation behind what people are claiming. I’m a Christian and I believe that the reason why these issues matter is because individuals are valuable to God- they are people who were made in the image of God and loved by God enough to die for.” The professor in turn, smiled and said that was the kind of answer he was pushing for. He then went on to misrepresent what I said, saying he disagreed that it was because of some kind of religious imperative or command, but that when we help others we better ourselves. Then I think he dismissed the class, and just so you don’t think I’m super brave, I chickened out and ended up avoiding eye contact with most people on the way out.

    In the same way that my professor was pushing the “why” question onto the class, over the last year, I have been seeking to sift through different reasons people give as to why motherhood and taking care of children matters. There is no shortage of people that are willing to take a firm stance on the value of staying at home with children. I have read many answers- from Christians and non-Christians alike. I have found many that are based on the assumed value of secondary things like the money that stay-at-home moms save at being all things at once – you’re a chauffeur, chef, baby-sitter, teacher, maid, and more! I have also read citations of amazing stories about how one mom’s prayers and efforts (like Mrs. Wesley or St. Augustine’s mom) were used by God to raise children who had enormous impact on large numbers of people. I read about women who open their families and homes to others and thus lead many people to Christ. But while it is encouraging for me to know that I am not making a financially ruinous decision by staying at home and that God can still answer my desires to disciple other women or reach unreached people groups as a mom, these reasons are not vast or deep enough for my heart.

    Justifying staying at home as a mom by only answering potential good and even godly things that can come out of it (children who love God, discipleship of others, etc.) is not enough to help me  understand the value of the day-to-day grind of diaper changing, clingy-to-mommy days where I can’t get any housework done, days past of feeling like a functional “milk machine” (someone else said that, not me!), and sleepless sick nights. In some ways, it also functionally reduces my daughter to what she potentially could be and ascribes value to her today because of what she might or might not become in the future (e.g. “You are raising a world changer!”) This isn’t to say that people who have strong convictions of these things don’t value their children (no way!) just that answers alone about the benefits of staying-at-home and raising children aren’t, in my assessment, the kind of ultimate and fundamental “why” that my professor was pushing for and I needed. I had been struggling because in my case, I could have free childcare (nearby grandparents!) and wasn’t necessarily saving money by being at home and because my daughter’s not talking yet it’s not like I’m directly instructing her heart, right? So is the chunk of my time that is important the time I spend discipling other people while she is napping or just the prayers I pray for her and not the time I spend playing with her that she won’t even remember?

    The passage of Jesus welcoming children to him has been important to me recently. I was convicted a few weeks ago of not valuing my daughter in the way that God does. (It was actually through reading this article about ministry to women.) I had been trying to find worth in what I did because of the potential impact it would have in measurable, seen ways. And because of this, in many ways I was frantically trying to get other things done while making sure she didn’t hurt herself and wasn’t dirty or hungry like caring for her was a side job. I realized that feeling like I would feel more justified to stay at home if I had more children was reflecting a heart that didn’t value her as one individual- why would having more children make it more important for me to stay at home? I repented of this perspective and God opened up my eyes to let me see that she is loved by God and valuable to him  today and that my calling is just to love her in the same way. It actually made me a bit sad that I haven’t had this perspective earlier and all that I had missed out on already because of it.

    The heart change God is working out in me changes the way I wake up with purpose to a needy toddler. It changes the way that I respond to my daughter when she, for whatever reason, is super clingy for a day and I don’t get the things done that I had hoped to around the house. My call is to love her- all 2 feet 7 inches of her made in the image of God. I engage with her when we play because I love her and want to show it. I am getting to know her- her tendencies, her heart, her temperament- and how God has made her uniquely for himself. I pray that our home would be welcoming to others and she would get to see people transformed by God because I love her. I don’t feed her so she’ll get big and will one day make a difference in the world. I feed her, change her, bathe her because I love her. And I pray that her life will glorify God and make a difference in the world in whatever way he chooses- not because that will somehow justify the work I am doing, but because I love her and she is precious to me and I know she was made to glorify him.

    To be clear, I have seen that in little ways, the things that I do are affecting my daughter’s heart and behavior- and these affirm to me that the work that I do at home is not only seen by God above, but also in the mystery of God’s way, is actually being used to shape her. She gets clingy when she knows I’ve been sitting at the computer for a while and even at around 9 months, she would get upset at me when I was at the desk and wanted me to sit with her so she could play around me. She imitates me in surprising ways and searches my face for how I respond to her when she does things she knows she shouldn’t do. Because we sing to her, she recognizes the tune of “10,000 Reasons” and the chorus of “All I Have Is Christ”! God in his wisdom has made mothering a hugely important and impactful calling. Still, these are things that I praise God for because I love my daughter and even if I could not see the fruit and impact of my work today- as I couldn’t when she was just one month old and barely opening her eyes- what I do to serve her is because I love her and she is inherently valuable to God and to me. God has called me to love her and I believe that when I do, it brings him pleasure and glory.

    The longer I have been a Christian, the more convinced I have been that the Scriptures are the only source that provides a working framework large enough for all of life- in general sweeping ways and in its all its particularities. It is big enough to answer questions about the purpose of not just my life but the whole universe and I believe it’s also extensive enough to give me perspective on the everyday things that make up the majority of my life. I know that my daughter is made in the image of God and God in his grace loves her. She is precious to me because in my heart I know and see this value, and I learn from Scripture what it is to love her well. Thus the work I do today as a stay-at-home mom matters because my daughter matters to God today and I have the privilege of welcoming her into my arms just as Jesus would have and still does.

    Pray for me as I learn to be a mommy and that I would see her as God does.

  • Heart Struggles of a Newbie Stay-At-Home Mom

    It has been 16.5 months since I started as a stay-at-home mom and it has been a grace-filled blur. Sometimes I look at my daughter and I can’t believe she’s mine and that I’m her mom!  There are so many lessons I have learned since she was born and God has used my time at home to bring heart issues and big life questions to light.

    I love what I get to do, partially because growing up I always admired moms. I loved watching them juggle ten things at once so adeptly and naturally and I think I watched moms changing diapers, in the kitchen or at the supermarket similarly to how some people admire basketball players on TV.  That’s why when a friend pointed out the other day that I had opened up the fridge with my daughter in one arm, holding a cup in another, and as I turned around kicked the kitchen door closed, I was so grateful because I always thought it was so cool that moms could do that kind of stuff!

    Still, with the desire I have always had to be a mom and God-willing, to stay at home raising children, ever since a few months after baby girl was born, there has been an internal struggle . It’s not that I disliked what I get to do- I actually really enjoy it, but it felt like I was always trying to justify to myself why I was a stay-at-home mom. I wrestled thus with guilt, frustration, and anxiety. Guilt at not being able to do more or wondering if I am doing the right thing at staying home. Frustration and anxiety in frantically trying to do things that would make me feel more justified to stay at home and like I was accomplishing something.

    I started asking God and other people questions, talking to Jeff, reading on the Biblical doctrine of vocation , and praying  for clarity. I have come to see that the things I was asking myself weren’t just about being a mom or staying at home.   There was a dissonance in my heart because  though I value the work of motherhood and homemaking in my heart, something in my worldview, perspective, and thoughts on God and life was off. My time as a stay-at-home mom is just the circumstance that God used to show what I lacked in understanding and how my motives, thoughts, and attitudes still need to be realigned to God’s thoughts as revealed in Scripture.

    The things that were hard and the questions I had could, I think, be summarized in three major categories:

    • Not seeing the spiritual value to God of what I did. What does nursing and changing diapers have to do with living for the glory of God? But more generally, what do things that don’t seem outwardly spiritual (“spiritual” being things like talking to my daughter about God, discipling others, etc.) have to do with living the Christian life and living for God?
    • Not being able to measure success and productivity in the ways I have in the past. Pursuing education, there is a clear goal (a degree). And  working in campus ministry, I saw or at least had measurable ways of measuring “impact”.  Now that my list of things on my to-do list seem so mundane, what do I do with the desire to “make a difference”and bring glory to God? And is taking care of my precious baby only worthwhile because of what she accomplish in the future? That would seem to fit into the way I measured success in the past, but it doesn’t seem quite right. 
    • Looking around at other people and feeling weaksauce. I feel like I should be able to take on more than I am right now. Women in my mom’s generation and even my mom had to work and take care of babies at the same time. And of people I know around me, most also work while taking care of their baby right now. How do I justify not doing the same? What do I do with the guilt?  

    God has been so good to me in speaking to all these areas and teaching me so much. I wanted to share about it all in this post, but I think I will break it into maybe three posts in the next few weeks. I am still a newbie but I hope that in sharing what I have and am learning, that it would encourage others- whether stay-at-home moms or not- and spur you on toward God and living for him.

  • Do Not Lose Heart: My Current Go-to Playlist

    I thanked God today for creating music.

    I believe that more than I can understand, my life has been shaped by the songs I have heard, put on repeat, and sung. It is amazing and miraculous to me how God uses music to stir our emotions and how when combined with the right truth creatively expressed, our affections for God and the things of God are deepened and awakened.  It has been this way for me for as long as I can remember. (The very first time I was touched by the gospel was hearing my parents singing in choir about someone “dying in my place.” I was only around 7 years old, and I didn’t even know what or who they sang about, but to my embarrassment and surprise, I teared up wondering who and why someone would die for me.) And if you put together a massive soundtrack of all the songs that I chose to listen to throughout the years, you could track my progress in the faith. You could see what I felt and wrestled through and what God was teaching me. The progression in the kind of songs that I have enjoyed throughout the years are a reflection not only of changes in musical preferences, but how God has touched me, grown my love for him, formed my desires, and matured my understanding of what it means to live the Christian life.

    This last year or so, the songs I have listened to the most have been put into my “Do Not Lose Heart” playlist. I called it this because 2 Corinthians 1-4 has been huge for me this past year and these songs reflect major themes in what I have been struggling through, learning and enjoying of God- the future glory we have in him, the hope of what God promises the church will be, walking by faith with the community of God, not losing hope in the face of circumstances where I cannot see or understand his ways, and more. They have been on repeat in my iTunes and I thought I’d put it on Spotify to share- just in case they would encourage another as they have encouraged me. I guess you could say it’s my way of “addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Ephesians 5:19) over the internet!

    And here it is: Faith’s Do Not Lose Heart Playlist. There are 23 tracks. Enjoy and may your hearts be refreshed and encouraged today.

    —
    Edit: Here is a list of the songs and artists:

    There is a Fountain – Enfield
    Stronger – Hillsong
    Sometimes – David Crowder Band
    Christ is Risen – Matt Maher
    After All (Holy) – David Crowder Band
    Desert Song – Hillsong
    He is Exalted – Shane & Shane
    The Hymn (O What Mercy) – Tim Be Told
    I Stand Amazed – Candi Pearson Shelton (on Passion)
    Jesus Paid It All – Kristian Stanfill
    Like Incense / Sometimes By Step (Live) – Hillsong
    The Love of God – MercyMe
    Shadows – David Crowder Band
    This is Our God – Hillsong
    Worthy of Affection – Shane & Shane
    You Alone Can Rescue – Matt Redman
    Your Grace is Sufficient – Shane & Shane
    A Mighty Fortress- Christy Nockels
    Oh, Great Love of God – David Crowder Band
    10,000 Reasons – Matt Redman
    By Faith – Keith & Kristyn Getty
    All I Have Is Christ – Sovereign Grace Music (Next Gathering version)
    Never Once – Matt Redman

  • I cried reading this this morning

    I haven’t cried reading a book for a long time, but as I read this today, I did with gratitude that I, having been redeemed by Christ, am given the grace to live and act in a way that pleases my Heavenly Father. The fact that he would be moved  by my obedience- done in love and with his aid… that is so precious to me.

    We can think it’s a mark of spiritual sensitivity to consider everything we do as morally suspect. But this is not the way the Bible thinks about righteousness. More importantly, this kind of spiritual resignation does not tell the truth about God… Our God is not a capricious slave driver. He is not hyper-sensitive and prone to fits of rage on account of slight offenses. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (Ex. 34:6). “He is not hard to please,” Tozer reminds us, “though he may be hard to satisfy.”

    Why do we imagine God to be so unmoved by our heart-felt attempts at obedience? He is, after all, our Heavenly Father. What sort of father looks at his daughter’s homemade birthday card and complains that the color scheme is all wrong? What kind of mother says to her son, after he gladly cleaned the garage but put the paint cans on the wrong shelf, “This is worthless in my sight?”…There is no righteousness that makes us right with God except for the righteousness of Christ. But for those who have been made right with God by grace alone through faith alone and therefore have been adopted into God’s family, many of our righteous deeds are not only not filthy in God’s eyes, they are exceedingly sweet, precious, and pleasing to him. (p. 69-70)

    –  The Hole in our Holiness- Keven DeYoung,  (bolded mine)

  • A story for those who struggle

    The point is, there are stories in the Bible, in history, and in our own lives that do not appear to have happy endings of cheerfulness. These too are not without hope and are designed by God’s sovereign and merciful wisdom for the hope of those who fear they are utterly alone in their misery… The examples of God’s patience in history will not serve their saving and sustaining purposes if we do not tell the stories—like the story of William Cowper. (The Hidden Smile of God, John Piper p 117)


    There are times when people share their amazing stories of God’s spectacular display of power in their lives to deliver them from quickly and decisively from their difficulties and struggles- miraculous healings, prayers answered for the desire of their hearts. I hear those stories and praise God, encouraged that he is working and hears his people. But then there are the stories that leave me in tears, awestruck with no words, and wanting to worship. When I hear these I literally feel the weight of glory on my heart and am strengthened in my faith. They are stories of believers who have suffered much and say, “God was and is faithful” and they are stories of those still struggling today and in the midst of the pain desire to say the same.

    I do not enjoy seeing others suffer, and I don’t think that knowing that God uses all things in the end for our good makes the experience of suffering less painful. But in the last year or so, I found that when sisters have talked about their struggles in faith and life, some cases in the midst of great inward trials, that even in my feeling their sadness with them, praying for their circumstances to change, something about their perspective would leave me refreshed, encouraged, and worshipful. They didn’t necessarily articulate this, but in what they did say it was evident that in their very real struggles they still desired to seek God and still believed that he was good. Though they prayed for change, their hope was not in what God could do but in God himself. All this even though they didn’t understand why, even though it was hard, even though sometimes they felt like they were barely hanging on. When I heard from them I could see God so clearly at work. Only God can do that in a person. Only God can give, sustain, and refine a faith that is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7)- that continues to believe God is good when the world would say to curse him.

    I believe that the stories (testimonies) we tell and listen to as Christians shape the way we think about suffering and what we believe real faith looks like in trials. If most of the ones we hear are about sudden, miraculous deliverance from trouble and temptation in answers to prayer, that shapes our expectations and hopes a certain way along with the idea of what great faith is. If we only hear stories about how it “ended up okay in the end” but don’t see others acknowledging that it is hard to go through, that will also teach us to respond one way. Or if we only hear of those with mighty faith that never wavered, we can just automatically count ourselves out. I have seen the effects of an incomplete view of the Christian approach toward trials, temptations, and suffering on the lives of those around me shaped by such stories. There are those that walk away because they felt God didn’t pull through when they really believed that he would answer. There are some who live in shame believing that if they loved God enough and had enough faith then they wouldn’t face such great temptations, or inward trials, or have desires for things that God may not grant them. And there there are some, like me, hearing only stories of great perseverance and faith, often feel inspired but also discouraged just because my faith is not so great.
       
    That is why personally, the stories that are the most strengthening for my own faith and lead me to worship most often are those that are about don’t look on the outside like they are victorious or end in decisive successes. They are also those that show temptation and trials for as hard as they really are and even to be expected for the Christian and in this life. They show those that aren’t strong in themselves to bear the hurt and pain. They show weakness and suffering accurately and still in them, that God works in a person to keep them calling out to him. In these stories of weak people (they are the ones I can relate to), God ends up being displayed as the only sufficient sustainer of faith. And they are precious to me because I struggle so much to trust God and they remind me that in the final equation, what matters is not freedom from inward temptation and struggles in this life, but the faithfulness of my God to help my weak faith in the sure promise that he is good and that when he returns, he will make all things right.

    All this to say, if you’ve never read about the life of William Cowper, I highly recommend John Piper’s short biography of his life here: Insanity and Spiritual Songs in the Soul of a Saint or here:  The Hidden Smile of God  (book with short bio of Cowper, Bunyan, and Brainerd.) This blogpost has been in my head for a long time because of how much I wanted to recommend his bio and I wanted to articulate why it was so powerful for me to read it. William Cowper wrote one of my favorite hymns and many others- and he struggled with depression, suicidal thoughts (followed through with attempts), and despair throughout his whole life until the very end. The trials and suffering are so real and dark, but in it all there are glimpses of an even deeper hope.

  • There Really Is A Tree

    This quote from Tim Keller’s new book Every Good Endeavor sums up well why in the past year or so, the vision and promise of the church as the future perfect Bride of Christ has constantly strengthened me to not lose heart in ministry. It explains why lyrics like “Dear dying Lamb Thy precious blood shall never lose it’s power til all the ransomed church of God be saved to sin no more!” have been so moving and Scripture like “‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” and 2 Corinthians chapters 1-5 have been so precious to me. The “tree” and “leaf” that Tim Keller writes about has to do with a story he summed up earlier, but the quote should make sense nonetheless:

    Whatever your work, you need to know this:  There really is a tree. Whatever you are seeking in your work- the city of justice and peace, the world of brilliance and beauty, the story, the order, the healing- it is there. There is a God, there is a future healed world that he will bring about, and your work is showing it (in part) to others. Your work will only be partially successful, on your best days, in bringing that world about. But inevitably the whole tree that you seek- the beauty, harmony, justice, comfort, joy, and community- will come to fruition. If you know all this, you won’t be despondent because you can get only a leaf or two out of this life. You will work with satisfaction and joy. You will not be puffed up by success or devastated by setbacks. (p. 30)

    And here’s another one that has to do with what I’ve been learning as a stay-at-home mom (I have been writing a blog post on this in my mind for a while now…):

    Everyone imagines accomplishing things, and everyone finds him- or herself largely incapable of producing them. Everyone wants to be successful rather than forgotten, and everyone wants to make a difference in life. But that is beyond the control of any of us. If this life is all there is, then everything will eventually burn up in the death of the sun…Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference…Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, purposed in response to God’s calling, can matter forever. (p. 29)

    Looking forward to getting into this book more!

    P.S. If you buy Every Good Endeavor right now from wtsbooks.com (link above), you get 70% off your first copy! $8.09! Whoohoo! I’m reading my copy right now.