faith

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Single-minded

May is migration month for many birds, and I’ve spent a significant amount of time outside lately, watching them fly north.

It truly is an amazing spectacle. I’ve seen tiny warblers (like the Yellow Warbler at left), five inches long and weighing about the same as a dime, who are working their way north from Central America to the boreal forest where they’ll nest and raise their families in the 24-hour sunshine.

Turkey Vultures soar along, perhaps from Texas or further south. Flocks of swallows return to build mud nests under our bridges and the eaves of our houses. You can see them filling intersections in town, swooping after flying insects.

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God’s “Steps to Success”

On most mornings, I grab my breakfast and a cup of tea, open my Bible, and start the day with God…  so it happened that last week I, while munching on scrambled eggs and toast, I read 2 Peter 1:3, 5-8.

[Jesus’] divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness….

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I immediately fixated on that last sentence. Who wants to be ineffective and unproductive? The chart-topping sales of The Purpose-Driven Life tells us that this is a Big Deal for us believers. It is certainly a concern of mine. In fact, after our kids grew up and moved out I spent a lot of years wondering and praying about what God would have me do with the rest of my life. I felt very ineffective and unproductive, and it was quite depressing.

I should have spent more time hearing what Peter (and God through him)  had to say here.

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Here We Go Again

“Well, that’s the last paycheck for now!”

My husband handed me the deposit paperwork and smiled at me. “I’m excited. I wonder what God is going to do this time!”

Excited?

Yup, and actually, I am too. If I’ve learned anything over the last many years, it’s that God is faithful.

Being in full-time ministry, we have a very concrete understanding of the term, “non-profit.” If people ask, we usually say we’re “home-based missionaries on support.” Actually, our ministry pays Pete a salary… but only if there’s money in the account. Right now, the account is empty. Again.

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Rock Your Memory

They say that our memories are the first thing to go… and apparently God agrees.

The third chapter of Joshua relates the story of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River into the promised land. In order to get all those people across from one side to the other, God stopped the flow of water. Instead of rushing by in torrent, the river piled up into a wall far upstream while the tribes walked across on dry land.

While the Jordan miracle was perhaps not quite of the same magnitude as the parting of the Red Sea, it was still an extremely significant milestone in the history of Israel. Moses led the people out of slavery; here Joshua is leading them into the fulfillment of God’s promises.

Such an important event needed to be remembered, so God instructed Joshua to have twelve men, one from each tribe, collect twelve stones from the middle of the river bed (See chapter 4). They carried these stones to their camp and set them up as a memorial. Joshua 4:24 explains, “He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.”

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Eagle’s Flight

I recently added Eagle’s Flight to my blog roll (see the column to the left). Maybe you didn’t notice. Today I’d like to introduce Clark, and let him tell about his blog in his own words.

Pete and I have known Clark for years—since our college days. He’s one of the most insightful people I’ve ever met. He also has an amazing way of stringing words together into blank verse. I have a hard time reading poetry—he manages to do an exceptional job of writing it.

I’m so glad that Clark is willing to share his work with us. You can read each poem as he posts it to his blog, or wait and purchase them all together in his soon-to-be-published new book, Eagle’s Flight. Meanwhile, his first volume, The Walk of the Eagle, is available from Amazon, and no, I’m not getting a percentage of sales.

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An Oasis in the Desert

How many times have you laid in bed, staring upward, trying to pray, but feeling that your thoughts are being absorbed by the ceiling? Or you’re diligently reading through your Bible, hoping the Holy Spirit will speak to you, but all you get are meaningless phrases, and you’re not even in the genealogies? You’re praying, you’re reading, you’re listening, begging, for some sign of life, but all you get is silence?

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there. When I committed to writing this blog, I realized that I was going out on a limb. Because, more importantly than the recipes, media reviews, and hopefully helpful advice, I want to share my walk with God. A hundred years from now it won’t matter how the carrot cake tasted, or even what our credit rating was. Our relationship with God is eternal .

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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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