Category Archives: Healthy Faith

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How to Find Rest for Your Weary Body and Soul in December

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rest

Photo by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash

Almost everyone I talk to right now is exhausted. Not just physically but also emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.

Especially around the holidays. 

I talk with many people (and I feel this some days as well); we just need to make it through the holidays to January!

Our exhaustion comes from a lot of places:

  • You may find yourself as a parent pulling your hair out as you navigate school and schedules.
  • Juggling work, to-do lists, errands. 
  • The parties that never end, the shopping, the gifts. 
  • Most of us rush from one meeting to the next. One thing to the next. 
  • Maybe you are retired or have more time than you used to, but you find yourself mentally exhausted and don’t know why. 
  • Or you may have never been busier or more exhausted in your job.
Why December is so tiring.

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All of this causes us to miss things in life. We miss opportunities because we are too tired, frazzled, and busy. We miss out on moments in relationships because of our pace. 

Our health suffers. As we sleep less, we spend more time on technology. We have become unhealthier and lonelier. We grab sleeping pills or alcohol, anything to help us fall asleep or numb ourselves. 

Our relationship with God suffers as we take less time to talk or listen to him. 

But often, instead of slowing down, we add more things to the list. We double down on working harder, pushing harder when we need to slow down and rest.

In Matthew 11, Jesus gives us one of the most amazing invitations to come to him and rest. He says:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Jesus says so much here that I don’t want us to miss: 

Come to me. Jesus invites us to come. Many of us have this idea that God doesn’t want us, but Jesus tells us that isn’t true. He invites us. Relating to God, spiritual practices begin with the belief, the knowledge that God wants to be with us. To know us, for us to know Him. To experience life and rest in Jesus, we must believe that God wants us to come to him and that God wants to restore our lives. 

Again, who does he invite? 

All you who are weary and burdened. How do you know if that’s you? How do you know if you need to come to Jesus for rest? Often, we think we aren’t that tired or if we can push through this next week or month. But we are usually kidding ourselves with that. Too often, instead of finding rest, we try to survive life with sugar or caffeine throughout the day, a donut to get us going in the morning, 5-hour energy to get us through the afternoon, pushing harder and harder, working late into the night and then when our brains are wired, taking a sleeping pill to fall asleep. 

About this passage, Dane Ortlund said, “You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come.“

You don’t need to unburden or collect yourself and then come to Jesus. Your very burden is what qualifies you to come. -Dane Ortlund

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What an amazing truth. Your burden, weariness, and exhaustion qualify you to come to Jesus.

Jesus says, “I will give you rest.” Rest is a gift from God. It is from his generosity when we come to him.  This is more than a nap or a long night’s sleep. This is soul rest. 

You are at rest…

  • When you know you are loved by God and no longer strive to be loved. 
  • You are at rest…when you no longer work too hard to prove yourself worthwhile to others. 
  • You are at rest…when you no longer try to control everything. 
  • You are at rest…when you stop worrying and surrender your worries and anxieties to God.
How to be truly at rest.

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Jesus says, “Walk with me, take my yoke, and learn from me.” We learn from Jesus as we walk with him. Side by side. In the ancient world, farmers would put two animals in a yoke. One animal was strong, and one was weaker. The weaker animal was often younger or less mature. 

So Jesus invites us to take his yoke, not only cause he is stronger than we are, but so we can learn from him. We can walk with him, apprentice to Jesus, and become more like him as we work and walk with him. Jesus says, “I am stronger than you. Come, and I will do the heavy lifting.” As we practice resting and slowing down, we become more like Jesus. We walk with Jesus. 

What a gift. 

Then, Jesus tells us what we experience in this: I am gentle and humble in heart. 

We run and run, often from God, but from others and ourselves because of fear. Jesus says we can come to him because he is gentle. Jesus is gentle and humble in heart. 

This is who God is. This is the God we rest with. Rest in. One of my kids is a snuggle, and I love when he gets close. I often imagine this is what Jesus is saying here. I am gentle; I will give you comfort. 

You will find rest. What do we find? Rest. 

A soul rest. 

A peace. 

Contentment. A deep, trusting calm. 

And lifting when we trust God instead of trusting ourselves.

My yoke is easy, and my burden is light. This verse is the only time the word easy is used in the bible. 

Jesus invites us to get as close as possible, to walk with him. When we are linked with him, that’s where rest happens, where life is abundant and full. When we think of God, we often think of him as giving us burdens, but he doesn’t. 

If you and I are carrying burdens, they aren’t from God but things we are to give to God. Anything that is keeping you from rest is given to God. Anything that keeps you from being present with God, others, or yourself, give it to God. Anything that weighs you down keeps you up at night; give it to God. 

This is why Peter invites us to Give all our worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

What do you need to give to Jesus this Christmas so you can rest?

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What yoke do you carry that you need to lay down and let Jesus take?

God wants to walk with us. God wants us to experience rest and life. God wants to take our burdens and help us live free and light. 

How to find rest in December.

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4 Keys to Biblical Generosity

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Over the years, many things have been said in sermons and classes at church about giving and generosity. I’ve heard pastors berate people from the stage, guilt people into giving, or have a narrow view of generosity, which is seen as only about money instead of the broader context that Scripture gives. 

When scripture talks about generosity, it includes money, but it also includes our time and our talents. 

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus and others continually tell us that wherever we spend our time, our talents and treasure matter to us. We can say with our lips that we want to honor God and that God is a priority in our lives, but if we don’t back that up with how we spend our lives, we are fooling ourselves. 

In 1 Timothy 6, Paul wants us to ask ourselves if we are trusting in God or if we are trusting in the uncertainty of wealth. 

So, what does it look like to honor and trust God with our finances? To be generous in a way that honors God. The writers of the New Testament give us 4 words to guide our generosity:

Our generosity should be worshipful, proportional, sacrificial, and intentional.

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Worshipful. Generosity is an act of worship.

Every time we are generous, we are worshiping. Every time we aren’t generous, we are worshiping. 

Being generous with our time, talents, and treasure shows that we believe everything belongs to God and worship him. As Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 6, we place our hope in God. 

But when we are stingy and hold our time, talents, and treasures tightly, we worship something else. That might be security, more prestige, our kid’s sports calendars, etc. 

But Paul tells us every action and decision is an act of worship, either towards God or towards the uncertainty of wealth. 

When we are generous, we are reminding ourselves who owns everything. We are stewarding what God owns and has entrusted to us.

When we share our finances, time, and talents with those around us, we worship and give glory to God, who gave us these things to use. 

Proportional. The word tithe means “tenth,” where giving 10% back to God comes from. If you aren’t giving back to God and want to move forward in generosity, that is a great place to start but not where to end.

What is proportional for one person isn’t for another.

Each year, Katie and I pray through upping our percentage of what we give back to God.

Not only because generosity is the first step to contentment.

But have you ever met someone generous and miserable? I haven’t. They’re always happy.

The same happens with time and talent. Each person has different amounts of time they can give in each stage of life. Your proportion of time is different in your teens, your 30’s, compared to your 60’s. 

Sacrificial. Giving away $100 might be a lot for one person but not for another.

Giving should stretch us. It should change us and our priorities. 

In many ways, it should make us go ouch. That is what sacrifice means. It hurts a little bit. It pushes us and challenges us.

That is what generosity should do.

Andy Stanley said, “Giving 10% makes many people uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable. But then, so is a colonoscopy, and those save countless lives.”

Giving 10% makes many people uncomfortable, extremely uncomfortable. But then, so is a colonoscopy, and those save countless lives. -Andy Stanley

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Being uncomfortable isn’t bad.

Discomfort is sometimes the thing we need to grow in our faith. 

Discomfort is sometimes the thing we need to grow in our faith.

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Intentional. This means you planned it. It didn’t just happen.

In 2 Corinthians 9, when Paul talks about generosity, he says that each person should decide in his heart.

This means you decide ahead of time.

I encourage everyone in our church to give using automated giving on the giving envelope. It means you decide ahead of time.

Here’s the question for us: Is your giving worshipful, proportional, sacrificial, and intentional?

Is your giving worshipful, proportional, sacrificial, and intentional?

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The First Question In Forgiveness and Reconciliation

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Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

At some point in your relationships, you will be hurt. Someone will say something that marks you; it might be a small thing or something that changes your relationship(s) forever. You might be the one who says something. Maybe you have already experienced this and wondered, how do I trust again? How do I forgive that person and move forward?

How do you forgive that person and move forward?

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Whenever this question or situation arises in Christian circles, we often read Matthew 18 and what Jesus says about reconciliation and hurt. Jesus says we must go to our brother or sister alone and tell them about their sin. If they don’t listen, take a friend along. If that doesn’t work, we must bring them before the church. This is challenging, and many times people skip this whole process and end the relationship, which is another blog post.

But, we skip an important part of this passage at the beginning. In verse 15, Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you.”

A question Jesus wants us to ask that we often skip over is: Did they sin against me or just annoy me?

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So, before confronting or bringing someone with us, we need to step back and ask, “Did this person sin against me?” Or did they do something I didn’t like?

I wonder if people often do things that we don’t like or irritate us. You can still go to that person to say, “When you did this or that,” or, “said this or that,” I didn’t like it. But one of the things we know from Proverbs, and a characteristic of a wise person, is the ability to let go of an insult or not be offended. 

Jesus wants us to pause during an emotional situation or a moment of frustration to take a breath and ask, “Have they sinned against me?”

Jesus wants us to pause during an emotional situation or a moment of frustration to take a breath and ask, “Have they sinned against me?

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The God of Delays (John 11)

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Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

What do we do with the delays of life? The moment when we ask God to move, and it doesn’t seem like He’s doing anything or at the very least, He is moving at a very slow pace. The moments when we ask for healing that doesn’t come, for restoration that doesn’t happen, for the mending of a broken heart that seems to break more.

Believing in God’s goodness and love is the hardest in these places.

That happens in John 11 as Jesus gets word that his friend Lazarus is sick. But instead of rushing back to Lazarus to help or to heal him, Jesus stays where he is for two more days (John 11:6). 

If you know how John 11 ends, we can shrug at this verse. But imagine this for a moment. You are Lazarus or his family, and Jesus doesn’t rush to you. Jesus stays where He is. 

This is the moment many of us have experienced. When you prayed for healing that hasn’t happened, for a relationship to be healed and mended that is still broken, for a child to be born or healed, for an addiction to be broken, and it seems like nothing is happening. 

John 11, though, shows us 3 important things about God’s delays:

How to handle the slowness of God.

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They are inevitable. God’s timing is not our timing. The reason God’s delays are inevitable is no matter what God does in our lives; it will almost always feel like a delay to us because we want it now. 

They do not contradict his love. While Jesus stayed two days longer, he showed his love for everyone. He showed his care, not just for Lazarus and his family, as we’ll see, but also for everyone in front of him. 

His delays are not final. He will come in his own time and his way. It will be later than we’d like, but from God’s divine perspective, it will be the right time.

3 things we know about the “delays” of God.

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When Jesus arrives he tells them in verse 23: “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world.”

You can’t have a resurrection without a death.

You can’t have a resurrection without a death.

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Life cannot come without death, without change. 

This means as God changes us, frees us from sin, death must come in areas of our life. Life does not come without what seems like a loss.

And we know this: sometimes healing only comes after a death.

Sometimes healing only comes after a death.

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Sometimes, we must walk through the valley of death to find life. 

Sometimes, a relationship must end for us to find new life. 

Sometimes, we must hit the end of ourselves, rock bottom, to find life. 

How to hold on to faith when life gets hard.

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How to Ask God for Help (Psalm 121)

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psalm 121

Photo by Massimiliano Morosinotto on Unsplash

For most of us, prayer bounces between a plea for help, a running conversation or to-do list with God, a reassurance of God’s power and presence in our lives, a wishlist or a shouting match with God, and wondering if God has forgotten us.

One of the most common ways we pray is a prayer for help.

Eugene Peterson said, “Trouble is what gets prayer started.”

Trouble is what gets prayer started. -Eugene Peterson

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And that’s true.

We pray out of desperation. We pray because we aren’t sure what else to do. We rend the heavens in hopes that God will hear and move. We pray through tears, mumbling, and bumbling from a place of helplessness.

We pray for health, healing, relationships to be mended, kids and parents and spouses to be saved, to be changed. We pray for jobs and finances. We pray for those close to us who are destroying their lives. We pray for wisdom in decisions.

And in all this, we are often very helpless to bring about an answer.

So, how do you ask God for help? How does He hear?

Psalm 121 gives us the answer:

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

Here are four things we learn from this Psalm about asking God for help:

4 things to know about asking God for help.

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Admit your need for help. This seems obvious, but asking God for help means admitting our need for help. We don’t do this naturally. We are naturally self-sufficient, self-assured people. We are raised to handle it, get it done, be fine, and not depend on anyone.

The writer of this Psalm is helpless, and they know it. They need help.

Believe God can and will help. Know where your help comes from.

For many of us, once we exhaust our ability to fix something, we still don’t go to prayer. Maybe there is a book, a sermon, a financial move, a Google search I can do, a person I can get advice from. Prayer for too many of us is a last resort.

When we get there, we say, “God, I don’t know if you can help. I don’t know if you care to help. So I’ll look around.”

Be patient. The writer of Psalm 121 reminds us to go to sleep. This communicates that sometimes our prayers will take longer than we think, but God will fight for us and work on things while we sleep.

Sleep is one of the greatest pictures of faith in our lives.

Why?

We worry, are anxious, and replay conversations over and over in our minds at night. We lie there, staring at the clock, thinking about our bank account, job, marriage, kids, and parents. The problems we experience in relationships, worrying about college, bills, health, and so on. Yet, at that moment, there is almost nothing we can do.

The people we worry about are asleep; the people we call for help and advice are asleep. The writer of Psalm 121 says, “Go to sleep.”

God is over all things. Why can we be patient and go to sleep? Not only because God is our help and never sleeps, but because verses 7 and 8 tell us that God is over everything.

He watches all things. He is not surprised by anything. Nothing catches him off guard.

It ends with a crucial word, forevermore.

Forever is a long time, yet that is our God’s scope.

Psalm 121 is a prayer to give us the confidence to ask God for help and confidence as we wait for that help to come.

Psalm 121 is a prayer to give us the confidence to ask God for help and confidence as we wait for that help to come.

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Holding on to Your Faith when Life Knocks You Down

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man wearing black, white, and gray plaid sport shirt covering his face

Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash

In my years as a pastor, I’ve sat with couples who have buried a child, adults burying their parents, I’ve wept with people who just found out they had cancer and a short time to live, listened to the brokenhearted stories about the end of a marriage, a child who wants nothing to do with the family or God, the loss of jobs, financial difficulties, addictions that can’t be beaten.

Every single time, it is heartbreaking to walk through. 

These moments feel like a gut punch. 

What to do when the storms of life beat you down.

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I’ve walked through the loss of friends, difficulty in family and work relationships, loss of jobs, setbacks in life, and difficulties in starting our church. I’ve looked at mountains that seemed impossible to get past, hurt that felt so painful I thought I could never recover, a betrayal that ran deep.

And you have too. 

Walking into the church, we wonder what to do with those feelings, situations, and moments. Where is God in them? Does God care? Does He know? Are we supposed to put on a smile and pretend life is great when we just drug ourselves to church looking for a shred of hope?

This leads us to Romans 8 and one of the most quoted verses in the Bible. One that has been used for encouragement over and over in the lives of thousands since Paul wrote it.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.

Right now, you might be amid a storm in life. You might not be. If you aren’t, the reality is your storm is coming at some point.

Here are a few questions to help you see where you are, where God is in the storm you are walking through, and how to have the faith to walk through what you are in and what is ahead:

4 questions to help you trust God when life feels out of your control.

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1. What storm are you facing? It is important to identify the storm you are facing. Often we don’t know what it is. We feel down, or something feels off from what used to be or what we hoped. Often it isn’t a storm we’re in the middle of; we’re simply tired or burned out. Other times we are in the dark place of the storm, and the waves are crashing around us. Also, without identifying our storm, we will struggle to see anything God is doing because we’ll simply go into survival mode or become jaded.

Identifying a storm is key to getting through the storm.

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2. Are there any sins that need to be confronted? By this, have you sinned to get you into the place you are in, or has someone else? Take finances for an example. This can cause an incredibly stressful storm, but many of our financial issues (the housing market, retirement, etc.) are out of our control. Other financial storms are in our control (debt, spending, saving, giving, etc.). Or relational storms: did you hurt someone? Are you holding onto something you need to let go of? Is there someone you need to confront or forgive, and let go?

3. Look back at a storm, hurt, or pain from your past. With some distance from that situation, can you see God’s hand? I know that the further I am from a situation, the more clarity I have. I will often see my pride and sin more clearly, but I also see God’s hand more clearly. Now, on this side of heaven, we will not have answers for everything that happens to us. We aren’t promised that. We are promised that God will never leave or forsake us, that all things serve a purpose in God’s plan, and that all things will bring about God’s glory and good if we are called by Him and love him.

Sometimes you must look back to go forward.

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4. What does looking at your past help you to see about God with what you are facing? What is He trying to do right now? I like to look back on my life because it often helps me move forward. This is why God had the nation of Israel do things to remember how He moved in the past. This is why as followers of Jesus, we do things like communion and baptism to remember how God worked in the past, because that has an enormous impact on our faith in the future.

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How to Fight Your Sin

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We all struggle with something.

We all sin or have some emotion we wish we didn’t have. We carry regrets and shame from past hurts, relationships, or other experiences we hope to eliminate. But for some reason, they hang around. 

We often wonder, am I made new? Has God forgiven me for that? Why do I still struggle (Romans 7:15)? Why do I do what I do?

How to stop doing the things you wished you could stop doing.

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Throughout Scripture (Romans 8:13; Galatians 5:24; Colossians 3:5), we are told to crucify our sin, to put it to death.

But what does that look like?

Right before Galatians 5:24, Paul has two lists: a list of sins (vs. 19 – 21) and a list called the fruit of the Spirit (vs. 22 – 23).

In vs. 19 – 21, there is sexual immorality (which is all sex outside of the bounds of marriage between a man and a woman), impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and things like these.

What is interesting about this list is that Paul seems to put them all on the same level and says, “Living in these will keep you from God” (see the end of Vs. 21). 

What Paul says, though, is these are not occasional sins. In vs. 16 – 17, he describes these as overwhelming, all-encompassing desires that you cannot control the longing of. They are your identity. These things about us follow words like “always” and “never.” I always worry, try to control things, and care what others think. I can never stop this or that. 

Those things slowly become part of our identity, which we carry as part of ourselves. 

For each person, vs. 19 – 21 is where the battle happens. And make no mistake, we all have something. 

But how do you put them to death?

This is where the fruit of the Spirit comes in vs. 22 – 23 of Galatians 5 and the freedom promised to us in Romans 8. 

I love that Paul calls them fruit. It gives this picture of a farmer, of gradual growth; a farmer, not the fruit, does that. The fruit doesn’t make itself grow; God does. Fruit does grow. Not always at the rate we expect or think it should, but it grows.

How God works in our lives.

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The question for a follower of Jesus is, do you see growth in your life in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? Do you see how God is working on your heart in those areas?

We take the fruit of the Spirit and put our sin to death from vs. 19 – 21.

This becomes a daily thing.

Crucifixion in vs. 24 carries this idea that it will be a death. It will be painful, complex, and complicated. Freedom always involves a war.

Freedom always involves a war.

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One of the best ways to walk this road is through confession. We practice confession daily, each week, at the communion table. Why? Because “when we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). 

One thing I’ve learned about God’s grace is that many times, the reason we don’t experience God’s grace and freedom in Jesus is that we won’t allow ourselves to. 

We too often choose to stay stuck in our sins. This is why Paul talks so much about the mind in the New Testament (Romans 8:5, 12:1 – 2; Colossians 3:12). The daily choices make up our lives, and that pertains to the choices we make to sin or not sin. Paul tells us that we have the power to conquer all that lies before us (Romans 8:11), but many of us live already defeated lives. 

What if, this week, you lived as if the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead lives in you? Because He does. 

How to fight your sin.

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5 Questions About Prayer

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One of the questions many people wrestle with is, “Does prayer work?” Many of us have prayed for something: healing, a wound to be taken away, a relationship to be restored, only to have it not answered.

We have also seen moments when we prayed for something, and that prayer wasn’t answered the way we expected it.

This leaves us to ask, “Does prayer work? Is prayer even worth the time and effort?”

In James 5:13 – 20, James lays out how to pray, the role of the unconfessed in prayers, and how a church should gather to pray together.

This passage is often used to pray for the sick, which it is about. But the word for sick in James 5 doesn’t just mean physically ill but also includes spiritual and emotional weakness. This is one reason James uses the example of Elijah because Elijah was spiritually and emotionally weak in 1 Kings. That idea completely changed my thoughts about this passage and my prayer life as I prepped this message. 

In chapter 5, James gives us five questions to ask so that we can see prayer be more effective in our lives: 

5 reasons why prayer doesn’t work.

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Are you self-made and have little need for God? Many of us are self-made, able to work hard, strategic thinkers, or people who can feel our way out of things.

Without realizing it, we create lives that have little need for the power of God.

This begs the question of when we start praying about something and how long it takes us to ask God for help.

Do you see the hard and good times as things God has allowed? In James 5, James talks about Job and Elijah as examples for us to understand his point. Job said, “God gives, and God takes; blessed be the name of the Lord.” James wants us to see how this interacts with our prayers. Do we see the good and the hard as from God? Or just the hard?

Do you pray for your will and not God’s? Jesus taught his disciples in Matthew 6 that when they pray, they are to pray for God’s will, not their own.

But one of our frustrations with prayer is that God doesn’t answer us on our timetable or the way we want.

This is the crux of prayer. Because we will often ask for A, and God gives us B. The question we have to wrestle with is, do we believe God heard us? Do we believe God spoke to the other person? This is when we are reminded how little control we have in life, and that’s hard. 

Do you pray specifically? I know it can be scary to pray specifically because I am opening myself up to being let down or opening myself up to potential doubts and struggles. What if I ask for this specific healing and don’t get it? What if I ask God to do this or that, and it doesn’t happen?

That’s hard. 

But the example that James uses is Elijah, who was a man who prayed specifically. He was also a very flawed man, which is also incredibly encouraging. 

Do you live in unconfessed sin? Unconfessed sin creates a barrier between you, God, and others. And James tells us it is a hindrance to our prayer lives. James connects the confession of sin to answered prayer and healing. 

This is important because the healing we are promised is spiritual, physical, and emotional, but we aren’t promised when that healing will come, just that we will have it. 

5 questions to ask about your prayer life.

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What Happens While we Wait on God

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You will find yourself waiting on God at some point in your life.

We will often find ourselves waiting for God to answer a prayer, to speak to us and give us direction, or maybe you find yourself waiting for God to provide you with a reason for the season of pain or difficulty you are in.

What we do in those moments might be some of the most critical moments of our faith journey. Those are the moments when God is doing a lot in us, even if we don’t see it at the time.

In James 5, James gives us a few things to be aware of and ask ourselves while we wait:

4 questions to ask while you wait on God.

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Am I controlling what I can control and releasing what I can’t?

Farmers in the first century didn’t have irrigation systems or even weather radars to know when a storm was coming. They were utterly dependent on the rain. They had to lean into what they could control and what they couldn’t.

We will often feel like we are utterly powerless in life or overestimate how much power we have.

One exercise that has been helpful to me is one Henry Cloud suggests in his book Necessary Endings: list out what you control and what you don’t control in a situation. You might find that you have control and agency over some things you didn’t think and you might find yourself worrying over something you have no control over.

Am I being patient?

James uses the example of a farmer to show us something important while we wait: the kind of patience we are to have.

Farmers cannot make crops grow, but they can do things while waiting.

Patience isn’t something we usually want (at least I don’t), but we must lean into it because things do not change or grow quickly.

James tells us to be patient in our suffering and difficulty, for the Lord’s return is near. This is a reminder that all we are going through will one day be made right, be made new, and that everything we are going through is under the rule and reign of God, which is why James harkens back to the story of Job.

Am I strengthening my heart?

Then he tells us to strengthen our hearts because the Lord’s return is near.

We strengthen our hearts by being in the word of God, by spending time with Him, listening to Him and speaking to him, casting our cares on Him (1 Peter 5:7), and sharing our sighs with him (Psalm 5:2).

We also strengthen our hearts in community, being with people who can help to encourage us and spur us on, but who can also help us carry our burdens and point out when we need to have things pointed out to us to grow in our faith. 

Am I guarding my heart?

James then switches gears in verse 9 to tell us to guard our hearts. 

Why?

While we are waiting and walking through pain and difficulty, we are vulnerable. 

He says: Brothers and sisters, do not complain about one another, so that you will not be judged. Look, the judge stands at the door!

That vulnerability can lead us to complain about each other, judge each other, criticize people or take judgment into our own hands. 

James says, be on guard. 

This is important because, amid our pain, frustration, and hurt, we can easily hurt those around us and take our anger out on them. 

4 questions to ask yourself if you’re going through a hard season.

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What is God doing in you now as you walk forward in a hard season?

It is easy to look forward, to look for a reason for it, but God is looking to grow us in those moments. 

Pete Scazzero said, “To mature in Jesus and learn true faith requires we go through walls, dark nights, and valleys. There is no other way.”

To mature in Jesus and learn true faith requires we go through walls, dark nights, and valleys. There is no other way. -Pete Scazzero

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Finding God’s Hand

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Photo by Tony Eight Media on Unsplash

The other day in my Bible reading, I was in Matthew 11—the story of when John the Baptist was in prison.

I imagine that John is struggling and trying to figure out what God is doing in his life and the world around him. He sought to do what God called him to do and ended up in prison for it.

He hears reports of all Jesus is doing, yet John is still in prison.

So, John sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?”

This is a question many of us ask at different points.

If you are a pastor, you see how God works in another church, city, or state and wonder, “Why there and not here?”

You see the life and marriage of someone else and see God’s hand and wonder, “Why them and not me?”

This is the first question of faith for many of us, why does God seem to be active there but not here?

And it isn’t that God is only active there, but that it is often more apparent to us when God is active in someone else’s world than being able to see His activity in our world.

It is often more obvious to us when God is active in someone else’s world than being able to see his activity in our world.

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Part of this struggle is learning to celebrate when God works somewhere you aren’t a part of. As pastors, we should be grateful that churches other than ours are growing, but that can be hard. 

One of my favorite small group practices is sharing evidence of God’s grace: going around the table and sharing where we’ve seen God at work in the past week. When I struggle to see God’s hand, hearing how God is at work in the life of others reminds me that God is at work. 

It also helps me look harder at my life and see what God is doing. 

Then Jesus says something in verse 6 that I’ve always found curious: Blessed is anyone who does not stumble because of me.

We will struggle with faith when God doesn’t do what we think He should or want Him to do. 

Many of us had a crisis in our faith when God didn’t answer a prayer, heal someone or ourselves, or change something. That is the moment when our trust becomes real.