Xapa to the World

Category: Reflections

  • Pipes and Prayer

    Clean drinking water...not self-evident for ev...
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    We have recently had the great city of Hamilton doing work on the city water lines and the attachments leading up to our office building. This is throughout the downtown area, but it feels like they have dug up the same patch of asphalt about 3 times now to do something and then fill it in again. They informed us one day that our water would be shut off for the duration of the morning and then we’d be able to use the restrooms/faucets/fountains again later. The foreman came in to the building soon after it was restored and proceeded to open one of our larger sink faucets to clear out any gunk and air which may now be in the pipes. Have you ever seen the kind of junk that comes out of pipes that have just been worked on? He then ordered us to go through the building to do the same.

    Now, the neat thing about getting your pipes worked on isn’t just the cool, splattering sounds and spurts of water with air blasting from the faucet. No, I think the neatest thing is that at some point, if all goes accordingly, the water clears up, the bubbles diminish, and you see the crystal clear stream of refreshment.  Everyone take a nice sigh with me. *siiiigh* I’m not a huge fan of drinking water, but I know how good for you it is and if I’m really thirsty, nothing will suffice but a cool glass of water.

    In Sunday School this weekend, we were talking about times we have been disappointed with God.  We don’t understand why He allowed something to happen or He doesn’t behave the way we expected Him to.  This can (and within reason rightly so) lead to sadness, anger – God doesn’t ask us not to feel anything.  We have emotions and we will react to events in our lives; the difference is that God wants us to bring them to Him.  He calls us to pour out our hearts to Him when we feel we are in the depths of despair.  Sadness, anger, unfairness – these emotions can lead to bitterness if they are not addressed and God promises an amazing thing when we bring our concerns to Him.

    He takes them and turns them into praise to Him.  I don’t know how He does it.  There are so many times when I have been so upset with God, for whatever big or small reason, and I go to Him fully intending to give Him the biggest “talking to” of my life.  I start with a great show of accusation and tears, but then my heart starts to soften, my tone changes and now as my breath is slowing down, I notice what it is I’m saying to Him:

    “God, You are good. Though I don’t understand You or Your ways, I know that You have promised to always love me and to guide me in the best path possible.  Even when things look dark or seem unfair, You are still there with me.  You love my heart, stained though it is, and You are concerned about the things that concern me.  You are writing my story, which is like no one else’s, and it is one of Your precious ποιημα, Your workmanship. (Eph 2:10) Thank You, Lord, for Your kindness, Your hope and Your love. Let me pour it out to others.”

    It always amazes me. It’s not as though God says, “Pour out your heart to me – all the ugliness – I can take it, but then you’re going to be left with nothing.”  No, He is the Source of hope, the Giver of life, the Lover of our souls.  He will not just leave us emptied, but will come behind us and replace our pain with joy and peace.  (Romans 8:26) Just like the water in the pipes, let out and spurting and dirty then suddenly clean and clear, God refines our hearts and our prayers to bring Him glory and to renew our fellowship with Him.  There’s a reason why He referred to Himself as the Living Water.  His Spirit, residing in us, brings new life and healing when sin and the cares of the world make it necessary to replace faulty equipment in our hearts – lies we have been taught and have either blindly or willingly chosen to believe.  It’s a painful process, the refining, but boy, the outcome is delicious.

  • Review: Poem – Spring Expects Growth

    I don’t usually review my own poetry, but I feel like this one needs some commentary so that in 100 years when people are finally reading my stuff, they are not coming to wrong conclusions of what my intentions were.  What’s the point of writing poetry if everyone’s going to come up with their own ideas of why it was written?  Here’s the poem to help jog your memory.

    May 29, 2011

    Spring expects growth,
    new life and an increase.
    While Winter ran rampant across the earth,
    we expect God to work in the soil,
    in the trunks of the trees,
    in the hearts of men.
    Spring brings disappointment when the Winter is over
    and nothing has changed.
    The garden is empty,
    The trees have no leaves
    and the heart is unsteady.
    No blame is afforded to God –
    only to the stubbornness of the soil.
    It is my fault that I am the same.

    Sarah ><>

    —–

    I wrote this poem in Spring and it wasn’t meant to convey any spiritual Truth, only to illustrate a truth in my own heart.  I’ve been doing a study with some ladies at church and this week, while we were discussing feeling frustrated and disappointed with the stage of faith that we are in, I remembered this poem.  It seems to encapsulate all my feelings of waiting and the season God has for me.  I feel frustrated that my times of waiting are so much longer than I think they should be.  I feel disappointed that I don’t seem to be making the progress “required” to move on from my time of waiting to actively serving God.

    But as I thought of the poem and the thoughts that are speaking out of it, a big, glaring “LIE” was stamped across it.  This is a lie that has taken root in my heart and is permeating through my faith that A + B = C.  In faith, it is not always the case.  Faith + Time does not = certain growth.  Growth in faith is not contingent, is not comparable to the amount of time spent in waiting.  It is a lie to think that God expects you to be at a certain stage or level of faith at the end of a time of teaching or testing. (I’m saying this a couple different ways because I know we all think and process things differently.)  Those expectations are man-made and Satan-fed.

    How many of us have been told by our parents, “You’re xx old now, you ought to be…?”  My life has been filled with “ought to’s.”  We have come up with a word in our Bible Study that I think expresses what God’s expectations are for his children – “verbing.”  Verbing represents the act of pursuing God or working on whatever He has for you.  Whether that task is growing your patience, practicing faith, trusting Him more, serving Him and others – the -ing signifies that the verb is continually taking place.  You are either verbing, or you are not.  What verbing does not explain is the speed or strength at which it is happening.  For example, a child may be running to greet his dad at the front door.  An Olympic runner may be sprinting a world record.  Both of them are running, but the pace is completely different. 

    God is not concerned about the pace at which we are following Him.  He only wants us to follow Him.  Verbing.

    You might be wondering how I can say this – as a person with the gift of prophecy, I will take you to Scripture.  Noah, preparing for the flood, took years to complete the Ark.  God did not tell him he had so much time to finish the Ark, not until 7 days before the floods were going to come and, at this point, the Ark was completed.  He had only to gather the animals onto the Ark and then God sealed it up Himself.  Verbing – Noah was verbing what God commanded.  God was not concerned about the amount of time it took, so long as Noah was faithful.

    Elijah is another example.  I love the story of Elijah challenging the prophets of baal and wooping their butts – literally, they were all massacred after the victory.  And the rains came, and Jezebel sought his life so he ran and ran.  And God came to him and asked him what he was doing.  Elijah said “I have been very jealous for You, Yahweh, that Israel would worship You.”  And then God told him to go out of the cave he was hiding in.  There was a strong wind that tore apart trees and then an earthquake and then a fire, but God wasn’t in any of these things.  He was in the whisper, and the whisper asked Elijah again what he was doing.  When Elijah repeats his plan, God tells him that who Elijah is to anoint as king, who is to be prophet after him and that there are 7,000 others in Israel who have not bowed down to baal.  Elijah’s faith reached a point where it was verbing at a very slow pace, but it was still there.  He was still seeking to glorify God and God didn’t discredit him because he had just done this great thing in faith and “ought to” know better.  God still had plans for Elijah.

    My final example is Jonah.  Jonah is a whole basket case of verbing and non-verbing.  He ran from God’s initial call.  Then when he finally obeyed God, he went up on a mountain to wait for God’s wrath to pour on the people of Nineveh.  And when it didn’t, he non-verbed.  He began to despair of his life.  The book of Jonah ends with God chastising him for thinking a little tree that Jonah didn’t make grow is more important than a whole city filled with innocent children who could not even tell their left hand from their right hand.  Jonah was not verbing and THAT was what God took issue with.  He was no longer trying to understand God, to know Him and to let His Word abide in his heart.  God had just caused a fish to swallow him and to spit him up after 3 days, and yet Jonah did not get the message.  God’s compassion was on the people in that great city who were finally verbing after such a long and terrible life.

    I may not be verbing strong enough in some people’s opinions, but I’m verbing to God and all He’s concerned about is that.  Not with how hard, how fast, how much – just that I’m doing it.  And that’s what this life on earth is for – to be verbing towards God.  One day, when His children reach heaven, we will no longer need to be verbing – we will just verb.  And we won’t be verbing towards God, we will verb with God.  How I long for that day.

  • Reflections on the Planning

    I love and hate that God asks us to do things that are way outside of our comfort zone.  My pastor has mentioned often that he is a huge introvert and really doesn’t like getting up in front of people.  But God called him to be a pastor and he’s an amazing one!  For me, I can’t stand planning things.  Even planning a get together with friends drives me nuts!  I would much rather someone else make all the decisions and let me know where I need to be when and what I’m supposed to do.  And yet, inevitably, I will feel God say to me, “Sarah, I think you could plan such and such.  You know, I really want you to plan such and such.  It would be great for you if you would plan such and such.”  And I start down the fairly stressful path of planning an event. 

    I don’t do this often.  It’s really God who has to convince me that it’s something I need to do.  But He did so back in November of last year.  If you can’t tell, something that weighs heavy on my heart is the atrocity of human trafficking.  I’ve been in exposure and awareness mode for the last few years – learning as much as I can, attending various events, getting connected with others who are concerned about it as well.  But, as I helped out with a Fall shopping day for Stop Traffick Fashion, I really began to feel like it was something our church needed as well. 

    And I cringed.  I would have preferred to tell the ladies in my church about it and then they plan it.  I would even have consented to talking about it in front of the church (another thing I’m not a huge fan of doing), but with the words coming out of my mouth, the task was placed in my hands.  Our WMU leader was really excited about the idea, because she had been reading a couple of articles recently about human trafficking in the church women’s literature.  God was in this.  I’m not saying that I did it all – by no means – Brenda Heckman and Julie Johnson (Christmas tablecloths and all *wink) and Amy Jones and Jo Collas…they are some amazing ladies.  I’m so grateful to have them as role models to learn from, especially in regards to unity of kindred women and…the dreaded – hospitality. 

    I am not practiced in hospitality at all.  I can’t remember what all is needed to make people feel comfortable.  For me, I go to an event to learn something and to network…and I assume everyone else is there for the same reason.  Shocking, but that’s not really the case.  Thankfully, the ladies mentioned above organized the food and decorating and there wasn’t much for me to do on that part besides being a grunt and moving tables and chairs. 

    My primary task was organizing speakers and getting the word out to the community.  I may not have done the last part as well – and really the first part, I’m thinking went exactly as it should have gone, but nothing like I planned.  I was anticipating having a speaker share at each hour something in regards to human trafficking.  Emily would share about Stop Traffick Fashion and Hagar International.  I would talk about the Christian responsibility and upcoming events in the community.  And the one I was most excited about, a Hamilton Police Officer would come and share about human trafficking in our community, state and nation. 

    It was awkward trying to figure out how we were going to stop everything and have everyone listen to a speaker for all of 5-10 mins and then go on their way with eating and shopping.  The only really solid group of “fresh” people was right between 10:30 and 11:15.  So, I asked for Officer Collins to share with everyone what she had been researching.  And it was great!

    I wasn’t surprised that, as a local police officer, there wouldn’t be much experience with human trafficking.  I would be surprised if even the local sheriff’s department had any experience with human trafficking.  Our wonderful local sheriff isn’t that keen on the rights of illegals – no matter what condition they are in.  So, I wasn’t surprised when she shared that she got wide eyes and remarks of disbelief or discredit from fellow officers when commenting that human trafficking may be an issue in Butler County, OH.  She talked about not finding much information within the department to go off of, so she began to broaden her scope to the state of Ohio and then to the US.  She was surprised to find that Toledo is #4 in Top Cities of Human Trafficking.  Ohio is #7 in the US for human trafficking.  It’s an issue in every city (which would include Fairfield and Hamilton…”every” being an all-inclusive term).

    I think that about 50 people came to the event.  Most of them bought something from STF.  But what I’m most excited is how God brought me to a job where I would meet this police officer, who I could then coordinate with and share a concern and a need in our community with.  And that she would then become interested in the issue and maybe work on spreading it to the rest of the department. 

    I don’t know what this means for Butler County.  I don’t know if we’re on the edge of something starting or if it will take a few more years for anything to get going.  I don’t know what my part will be or if I will even have a part in it.  But I know that I am available to God – even if it involves more planning – that I will keep going until He stops me. 

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