Tag: Faith

Categories
Uncategorized

Should We Be Surprised?

“Tammy, all your life you have been ashamed and embarrassed. Now you have a way to make dignity for all others. Trust me. Trust me. Open a dignity center.” Thus spoke God to Tammy Jewell. She knew very little about the Bible and she hadn’t gone to church in close to 40 years, but she always believed Jesus was real. “Oh my God, a prostitute, a broken prostitute?!?” she thought to herself. Tammy had been raised in extreme poverty and quit school after the fifth grade because she was dirty and bullied for it. Then sold into human trafficking at a very young age, she lived much of her life tethered to prostitution by the invisible chains of addiction and intimidation before escaping its confines. But now she kept hearing God’s voice “clearer and louder each day.” “Father,” she said, “if it’s you, then you know my education’s only in the fifth grade.” But God persisted in His call: “Tammy! If you listen to me, Tammy, you will provide [dignity to] hundreds and thousands of others. Do not worry about your education. Do not worry about the money. Do not worry. Do what I’m telling you to do.”

Jesus surprises us. Returning to Jacob’s well from the village of Sychar, His disciples “were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, ‘What do you want?’ or ‘Why are you talking with her?’”1 But then why should we be surprised by One who will not let the cultural conventions of human construct isolate Him from His people whom He loves? If Jesus never engaged us face-to-face or heart-to-heart, how could He preach good news to the poor . . . bind up the brokenhearted . . . proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners . . . or comfort all who mourn”?2 Of course, God speaks to us—He loves us. And as we long to hear His voice, even more so does He desire for us to trust Him and do what He says.

Tammy did. In 2015, she opened God’s Hygiene Help Center (GHHC) in Columbus, Ohio, which now serves between 400 and 500 people each month from their primary location. GHHC has added two more help centers in the meantime and now partners with other service organizations and government agencies in the area. Plans are underway to collaborate with still more support organizations and to provide hygiene products—and the dignity they provide—through additional help centers. All because God spoke, and Tammy heard. Tammy obeyed God, and through her, One has blessed hundreds. Should we be surprised?

Father, You speak to us because You love us. Find us to be humble that we would hear Your voice; find us to be faithful, that we would trust and obey. In Christ we pray. Amen.

1 John 4:27
2 Isaiah 61:1-2

Categories
Uncategorized

A Time To Speak

Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen.1—Jesus, to Nicodemus.

I didn’t talk until I was two years old. Oh, there was “Mommy” and “Daddy” and a few other words—very few—but that was about it. But when the time finally came, my thoughts poured forth in sentences: “I want some foup (soup),” I said to my startled mother, and there it began. For two years, I had absorbed the world around me—watching and listening—and now it was time to engage it. To this day, I prefer listening over talking, and gathering my thoughts before voicing them. Yet as Solomon said, there is “a time to be silent and a time to speak.”2

We long to bask in the presence of God and to hear His voice, yet there comes a time for us to share what we have heard. For as a friend once observed, “When God speaks to me for something, it is always to accomplish an overall objective greater than [myself].” The apostle Paul wrote that the Spirit of God knows the thoughts of God, and He shares them with all who have received the Spirit through faith in Christ. This is very empowering to us, for in Christ “we speak not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.”3 God’s voice is the voice of truth—whether it proceeds through His Word, or a still, small voice within—that we would both receive it for own well-being and share it, when called, for the well-being of others.

And here is the greater beauty of it all: When the God of all creation engages us, He speaks truth that sets us free.4 His whispers of comfort release us with the witness of hope. His words of assurance equip us with contagious joy. His personal promise of forgiveness emboldens us with good news of unending life. God’s personal presence is uncontainable. Proclaimed Peter to those who would silence the gospel, “We cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.”5 This is freedom. These are the words of one who has heard God. This is you, and this is me.

Father, every word You speak accomplishes what You desire and achieves Your purpose.6 Grace me to hear words I cannot contain. In Christ I pray. Amen.

1 John 3:11
2 Ecclesiastes 3:7
3 1 Corinthians 2:13
4 John 8:32
5 Acts 4:20 NASB
6 Isaiah 55:11

Categories
Uncategorized

The Accuser and the Advocate

It was during the Christmas holidays when I took some “prayer walks” over a several-day period . . . I found myself confessing to God some specific sin patterns in my life . . . There was no harshness, no beating myself up, and no cowering before Him. Rather, this was a refreshing time of open and honest response to His Holy Spirit, for He had gently revealed these shortfalls to a heart that had come to trust Him. I’d long ago learned to discern between the devil’s sharp, accusatory tones—always meant to berate, harm, discourage, and destroy—and the Spirit’s gentle, caring voice of correction and guidance. This was the latter, so I was eager to listen, understand, and respond.1

Over the past 13 weeks, we have been focusing on hearing God, and this excerpt from my first book, Christ in Me, gets at the heart of today’s topic—distinguishing the voice of our Advocate from that of our accuser. So let’s start here: we sin. God knows it, we know it and Satan knows it, too. But how God responds to our wrong is far different than what Satan desires. Both are illustrated in the prophet Zechariah’s vision about Joshua the high priest standing before God in filthy clothes (symbolic of sin) and “Satan standing at his right side to accuse him.”2 This is who the devil is: “The accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night.”3 Then how did God respond to this finger-pointing nemesis? “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! . . . Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”4 Where the enemy sought guilt and condemnation, God proclaimed salvation and forgiveness.

Does this mean God marginalizes sin? Quite the opposite, Christ died to paid its price and lives to give us life. “If anybody does sin,” wrote John, “we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”5 For as Paul taught us, “in Christ God [reconciled] the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.”6 Then He sent His Holy Spirit to “convict the world regarding sin.”7 But God’s purpose in pointing out our wrong is to call us away from the chaos of sin and turn us back to Himself in truth, peace and joy as the people of His highest affection. He draws us into His Word “to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.”8 This is the way of the Father, and love is the tone of His voice. We need not be afraid, but to listen, understand, and respond.

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.9 Amen.

1 Paul Nordman, Christ in Me, (Maitland, Florida: Xulon Press), 13.
2 Zechariah 3:1
3 Revelation 12:10
4 Zechariah 3:2
5 1 John 2:1
6 2 Corinthians 5:19 ESV
7 John 16:8 NSAB
8 2 Timothy 3:16 NLT
9 Psalm 139:23-24