Lessons Learned

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Too Much Stuff

“We’d like to move to a smaller house, but what would I do with all my things?”

I looked around the once-lovely home we were visiting, and saw shelves filled with books, photographs, collections of figurines, teapots, and sea shells. End tables were decorated with candles, bowls, and more figurines, to the point where there was no place to set my mug of tea. The coffee table had a glass top, with even more “collectibles” displayed inside. At one end of the room, a set of glass-fronted display cabinets held several dozen plates, an assortment of cut glassware, and even more figurines.

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No Excuses

If you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you, that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it. —William Law.

Profound statement—one which I must admit is true.

Often times I fool myself into thinking that perhaps it was easier for the early Christians to follow Christ so obediently (despite even their problems), and that as times have changed, it has made it much more difficult for those of now days to do the same. And yet, every time I’ve relied on such an excuse, I’ve always known it to be an outright lie.

Our challenges today may be different than those of the early Christians, but we most certainly cannot say that they are more difficult, or so much more difficult, that we can begin to excuse inferior behavior. If we (myself being no exception) insist on being inadequate followers of Christ, let us not blame our current social/political/environmental/economic conditions, but own up to the fact that our lack of obedience is nothing more than flat-out rebellion against God. Blame, unfortunately, is an easy thing to relocate to where it will do no good whatsoever.

—Jeremy Gosse

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What Does God Care About That?

Does God care what color shirt I wear? I hear that question often. Usually it’s rhetorical… the person asking assumes that God could care less about what color shirt they’re wearing. God has more important things to do… run the universe for example, than worry about what color clothes I pick out.

And I suppose that, for the most part, they’re right. Not that God is “too busy” to care about the details of our lives, but that He really doesn’t care too much which color shirt we pick that morning. Usually.

But what if He did care? Would we notice?

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Where Is Our Focus?

Western Bluebird @home 2008jun03 LAH 015rThere is a Western Bluebird throwing himself against the screened window in our dining room. Actually, he’s been here for over a week, from dawn to dusk. While I’ve never heard of bluebirds doing this, they are members of the Thrush family, as are American Robins. Robins are notorious for attacking their reflections in window in a futile attempt to drive off the “intruder” in their territory. I can only assume that this bluebird is doing likewise, and vigorously attacking his own reflection.

It seems like such a waste of time. Shouldn’t he be courting a mate, building a nest, raising a family? Summer is short, and for a bluebird, there is only one item on the agenda. Yet he spends his days at our window, fighting… nothing. A mirage. A figment of his imagination. How sad.

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Lessons Learned

[5th and last in a series about God’s provision]

By far, the best part of this whole experience is not how God provided for our every need—and even some wants. Yes, that was amazing. I am thankful, grateful. But that was just the physical outworking of an inner transformation.

Some of what we’ve learned was relatively straightforward. Material possessions do not create happiness. New stuff isn’t necessary. In fact, God put me on a “stuff diet.” Not only did we avoid shopping, we cleaned out closets. For several years, we took joy each day in finding three things we owned and giving them away. The surprise? It was easy. We recommend this as a wonderful way to count your blessings while blessing others.

On the other hand, we learned that receiving is hard. As our friends and family blessed us, we had to learn humility to be good receivers.

My biggest lesson, however, was much harder to grasp.

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God is Faithful

[4th in a series about God’s provision]

Our income stopped.

Suddenly, with little warning, all funding sources dried up. There was just enough trickling in to pay our office overhead, but no salaries. We said good-bye to our office assistant, who needed a job with a paycheck. Our other co-worker, Cecilia, drastically simplified her life, and incredibly stuck with us as she undertook her own journey of faith.

And there we were. Pete and I had a mortgage. We had the normal expenses of owning two cars, living in a house, and wearing clothes. We had a habit of eating regular meals. We had one daughter, still in college, who was planning a wedding. Our other daughter, already graduated and gainfully employed,  was more and more frequently referring to this guy named Jeremy. Hmm. Parents aren’t that dense.

I should add here that we regularly tithed to our church. We gave additional support to an assortment of ministries and missionaries. Never, not once, did we believe that God was judging or punishing us for any extravagance or lack of generosity on our part. It was with a clear conscience that we went to God and asked,

“So, what’s your plan to pay for all this?”

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No Visible Means of Support

[3rd in a series about God’s provision]

Pete was still capable of earning a lot of money as a consultant to the computer industry. In fact, it was just as we were in the process of moving that he was offered an absurd sum to put his ministry on hold for three to five years while he worked for a secular company. Then we’d have plenty of money to do whatever God wanted. This was so clearly a test, it wasn’t even a temptation. We had our marching orders.

We arrived in Colorado with no visible means of support.

The unexpected extra profit from the sale of our Silicon Valley house covered our expenses for the first couple of years. Then that was gone. While we prayed hard and followed excellent advice for generating donations, our income was still far short of what we thought we needed. Maybe we weren’t very good at raising funds. As “behind the lines” workers, living in beautiful Colorado, we certainly didn’t measure up to most people’s notion of supported missionaries. Maybe, however, God decided it was time to answer my prayers from five years earlier.

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When God Makes No Sense

[2nd in a series about God’s provision]

I’d like to tell you a little about our life in the last few years, as one story illustrating God’s goodness in trying circumstances. Perhaps it will give hope in a dark season.

I’ll start sixteen years ago, although that is certainly not the beginning. We were living near San Jose, living the Silicon Valley lifestyle. We had the requisite house, two cars, two kids, and a steady, dependable income that covered our expenses with a bit left over.

Even at this point, we weren’t quite typical. Pete worked as a computer technology consultant. He was paid on an hourly basis by his many clients. As his rates climbed with his growing expertise, instead of raising our standard of living, he started to work less. We determined how much money we needed to live on, and stopped there. The time this generated was donated to various local Christian mission organizations.

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The Value of Hard Times

Hard times. They come and go.

There will always be some people who are wealthy enough not to be affected by the vagaries of the economy. Their retirement funds are overflowing, their income is secure, and they are living their version of the Good Life. On the other hand, as Jesus said, the poor we will always have with us.

Some times are harder than others. We are certainly in a time of economic crisis, and we are possibly only at the beginning. Who knows how bad things will get? More and more of us will be identifying with the poor that Jesus referred to.

But, is this cause for concern? What about all the promises of wealth and prosperity in the Bible? Will we, as Christians, experience the same financial hardships as non-believers?

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Sitting in God’s Chair

Life was hard. Even though we were blessed in many ways, life was hard. The year was 2002. Pete was working overtime, and had been for ages, but he hadn’t been paid in months (this comes with the territory, when you have a non-profit ministry). We had just moved my elderly dad from his dream home in Mendocino, California to Colorado Springs. I had done much of the packing and unpacking. Now he was having medical issues that required an enormous amount of my time and attention.

I was in transition from full-time mom to empty-nester. I was feeling worthless, at a loss without a well-defined role to tell me who I was. We desperately needed money, but I couldn’t get a normal job because of my responsibilities in caring for my dad.

Looking back now, it doesn’t seem that bad (or I’ve grown since), but at the time, between the financial stress, the stress dealing with my dad’s medical issues, my lack of purpose, and the stress on our marriage, I was seriously struggling.

It’s when we’re feeling miserable that God is most able to get our attention. I was writing volumes in my journal, crying out to God, asking Him for direction, for encouragement—pretty much asking for anything from Him, just so I could know He was aware of me. All I got was silence. I’d never been stretched so thin.

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