BUT in Psalm 13

Dear God,

Will you keep forgetting me?

Why are you hiding from me?

Why do I have to struggle Every. Single. Day?

Why do I have to be sad?

Why do you favor losers who don’t care about you?

If you don’t do something I’m seriously going to die.

Then everyone who’s after me will be glad.

Ever had a journal entry like this? David did. This is my loose interpretation of his journal as recorded in Psalm 13. I read it this week, four honestly brutal verses followed by two humbling hopeful ones.

“How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? 

How long?….” Psalm 13:2 NIV

There are four “how longs” in just two verses. Because life is hard and the hard parts can be just so long it’s easy sometimes to believe that God does it for fun. Since He could stop our pain and doesn’t He must be glad. {We can be whiny babies.} When you get stuck there you aren’t alone, the “how long” theme is all over the Bible.

When I was reading this I found myself identifying with David’s complaints, journaling a good old whiny “high five David!” how long list. I tend to wrestle with inner thoughts and emotions. It doesn’t take much backtracking in this blog to see how proficient I am with thought wrestling.

     If thought wrestling were an Olympic event….well, I digress.

     Bottom line, I often wrestle with my thoughts.

     Thought wrestling wears me slick out. 

And so I rolled my eyes, dragged my thoughts back on target, and read on……

And here’s the thing, if you stick with the Scriptures long enough you will see that after God’s people struggle with the “how longs,” sometimes to the point of despair,
there is always a verse 5 and it starts with….. BUT.

“But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord, for He has been good to me.” 

Psalm 13:5-6 NIV

When I got to verse five in Psalm 13 I was reminded that in all the lists of how longs and misunderstanding and pain there is a place where I must choose to trust without answers. When David asks God to give light to his eyes in verse 3 it says it this way in the Amplified version, "lighten the eyes of my faith to behold your face in the pitch-like darkness." Sit there for just a minute with your biggest darkest "how long" issue before you and then read on. See it? 

BUT

I will choose to trust,

I will choose to rejoice,

I will choose to sing.

And God loves, saves, and shows goodness.

As always God’s part is more difficult. He is moving toward the impossible task of redeeming every single how long on our list and will not be thwarted even by our short-sighted understanding of His affection for us. Our how longs are part of a foreign heavenly process that makes us worthy for Kingdom work. The BUT is where we choose to cooperate with HIS plan for redemption. His.

May we not be shortsighted in the how longs BUT choose to trust and rejoice and yes, even sing.

& Girl....

Sometimes the teacher needs to learn the lesson.....

I've been in a funk.

Which a friend of mine thinks is funny. If she texts me about it long enough she knows I'll end up calling myself "funky" which makes her lol.

But all of us girls know how unfun a funk really is. I recently spent months {MONTHS} teaching my Wednesday morning Bible Study ladies about our God-given temperaments and how we can and should submit them to Jesus. Months on how we should embrace our God-given strengths and kick our sin-filled weakness to the curb. And then my sensitive little melancholy self got kinda discouraged and just let everything I'd both learned and taught slip away forgotten. 

I accidentally shared some of my crazy funk with a friend this week. She encouraged me, we went on with our planning, and a few hours later I got a text. It included a list of things I've taught her and then a big ole' "& girl" at which point she shared a sweet and personal lesson God has taught her that I really needed to hear. 

Do you call your friends Girl? We do around here. There is a lot of "Hey Girl!" and "Bye Sweet Girlies!" going on in my social world. But this friend usually greets me with "Hi Pretty Lady!" which made this & Girl really catch my interest...and then smile that she used the &. I love her.

This is just a short post to challenge you in one thing.

Sometimes your teacher needs the lesson. 

Many of you reading are already attached to a Bible Study. You have a Sunday School teacher or a small group leader or a mentor or a minister's wife that you love. One that you know struggles sometimes, but is always able to shake it off and hear your issues and questions and send you off feeling encouraged as if you were just able to take a big deep breath. If you have someone like that in your life you are blessed. It's exactly the way believing life is supposed to be (Titus 2). But keep in mind, your teachers are people who get discouraged and probably are pros at hiding it. They don't need bossy correction, they need sincere encouragement. So when your teacher gives you an honest look at her struggle follow my friend's three-part little formula:

Specifically repeat back to her what you've learned from her. 

Add a really great affectionate & Girl... (or whatever you say where you live)

Follow up with what God has taught you as you've sought after Him all on your own. Because there is nothing as encouraging to a mentor/teacher than seeing one of their students or spiritual daughters digging out and walking in Truth all on her own. 

"It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it. 

I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." 

3 John 3-4 NIV

Choose Joy

“Thank you for bringing my family to me.

Thank you for joy.

And I love my dog Izzie.”

This was part of my youngest daughter’s prayer one night last week.  It had been a joyless few days and hearing it was a bit like having the air knocked out of me.  It hurt like the dickens for a second and then I could take a prayerful breath, deeper than I had in a while.

My Baby Girl finding joy in the rain today.

This is always a tricky time of year for me and I hadn’t been taking very good care of myself (in a bunch of ways, as indicated by the use of the word “dickens”).  The effects of my dry spirit and tired body were wreaking havoc on my frayed emotions.

(For example I went running that morning and as I opened up my running app it said something along the lines of “welcome – your last run was 26 days ago”.  When I launched into defense mode including a lecture TO MY IPHONE about how hot it’s been and an (exaggerated) list of the number of times I ran on the treadmill that she knows nothing about….I realized I just needed to get moving before my emotions got the best of me and I ended up finishing off the box of Reese’s pieces I had started the night before.)

I digress….badly.

As I ran my daughter’s prayer encouraged me.  And when I say it encouraged me what I mean is that it gave me courage, inspired courage in me.  For a lot of reasons that are mostly selfish I had forgotten that joy is a gift to be thankful for, but it is also a choice. 

And sometimes a choice that takes a lot of courage. 

“…we who have fled [to Him] for refuge....have mighty indwelling strength and strong encouragement to grasp and hold fast the hope appointed for us and set before [us].”  Hebrews 6:18 AMP

So be encouraged, encourage another. 

Choose Joy.

Encouragement

Encouragement is something we talk about quite a bit, but don’t do very well. Real encouragement inspires someone to be courageous.  It doesn’t inflate their ego (flattery) or push them toward our view of a more positive version of them (manipulation) or prove our opinions are right (pride).

Encouragement tells the Truth in a way that inspires (EN) courage (COURAGE) and it’s very powerful.

I had my 40^th birthday this week.  As a part of the celebration my husband asked many of our friends and family to write letters for a book that he gave me.  This encouraged me.  Seriously. Encouraged. Me. 

As I read precious thoughts from my children, husband, siblings, parents, family, and friends there were some beautifully recurrent themes; both deep and shallow, funny and serious.  It was humbling to see some accomplishment of goals I’d set and worked to achieve.  It was much more humbling to see some things that just are….me that have mattered to someone else.

Less than a week before I received this gift (but weeks after the hubby started this project) I had one of those great giant unexpected onslaughts of insecurity.  You know the kind?  It fills up your heart like a sinking emotional boat even while your mind is trying to bail with great futile effort, until you just decide you might let yourself drown in a big bunch of ugh. I just felt irritatingly inadequate.

This book was a gift not just in the timing, but also in the content.  Don’t underestimate the power of encouragement.  We all need courage to live well through our days, and we all can give it to one another.  So today, look around and give true encouragement.  Not the counterfeit versions of flattery and manipulation and pride that really only serve you, but real Truth. 

Truth that has paid enough attention to see and know another. 

Truth that can recognize the unique beauty of another’s strengths and the marks of the calling of their Creator. 

Truth that inspires courageous faith-filled action.

Tell it.

“So speak encouraging words to one another.

Build up hope so you'll all be together in this, 
no one left out, no one left behind.”

1 Thessalonians 5:11

The Message