faith Archives - Page 7 of 10

Reflections on a Christmas Morning

Post author:Gina B
Post published:December 25, 2014
Post category:Christmas faith

Reflections on a Christmas Morning

It’s the wee hours of Christmas morning. The only other person awake is my mom, stuffing our enormous stockings to capacity, leaving the rest as a stack underneath. In our family, we DO stockings!

Once again, I find myself struggling to wrap my heart and mind around the reality of Christmas. I don’t want to walk away from another season with nothing more than warm feelings and a pile of loot. I want the truth of it to sink deep in my soul and change me.

So I ask myself today, “what does Christmas mean for me?”

This is my answer:

Christmas means I have life.

Not just eternal life but abundant life here, now, life with meaning and purpose.

It means having a Savior, a rescuer, not just for eternity but for all those moments when I flounder on my own.

I have a shepherd, a comforter, one who is compassionate on me in my weakness and need.

I am no longer alone.

There is one who sees me, knows me, wants me, holds me fast.

He was willing to be limited, weak, helpless, affected, vulnerable, poor, tired, misunderstood, hated and killed for love of me.

When it says in Isaiah that He will “open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness” – I was the blind, the captive, sitting in darkness. You were you.

Christmas means light, freedom, a way out. All of this on his initiative, moving toward us out of love. When I look at this Jesus, I see the face of God. He is personal and good.

He is zealous for me. For you. For us.

The weary world rejoices.

Welcome to the Kingdom

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 26, 2014
Post category:faith

Welcome to the Kingdom

It feels good to be welcome.

I’m not a volleyball player. I’m not much for any organized sports, actually. In most I am, at best, a liability. It’s ok. I am who I am.

When I was asked to join in a volleyball game at our women’s retreat a few weeks, I gave them fair warning, “I will not add anything to this game.” I thought surely they would regret inviting me.

Within minutes, I discovered this was not the case. In fact, I soon realized that there was no level of mediocrity which would warrant dismissal from the court. It wouldn’t even get a sideways glance. We were all equally average or below. Our only objective was to keep the ball in the air. And it was fun. We celebrated. We cheered each other on. We laughed. It was the most fun I’ve ever had playing volleyball.

It was a beautiful picture of the kingdom of God.
We’re not invited based on merit. It doesn’t matter how good or bad we are, we are welcome. When you mess up, there’s grace. Lots of it. And instead of defeating you, it will make you want to get back up and try again. We celebrate. We cheer each other on. We laugh. It’s good. Welcome.

Faith Like a Child

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 23, 2014
Post category:dependence on God faith

Faith Like a Child

I’ll never forget asking our friend’s four-year-old son to make a wish before blowing out the candles on his birthday cake. Without hesitating, he took a deep breath and said, “I wish I could fly!”

Kids. They ask audaciously. They’re aware of their wants and needs and not afraid to express them. They’re helpless and weak and innocent and foolish and humble.

And to enter the kingdom we’re supposed to be like them.

Being the Adults

I’m an “oldest child” if there ever was one, though ironically, I’m not the oldest. Having an older sister who is mentally challenged thrust me into the role early and hard. It was part of God’s story for me.

But being that oldest, responsible, self-sufficient, trustworthy kid meant I took on a mentality of being the one no one had to worry about. I took care of myself. I was good at it. And I took the same attitude with God. I decided I’d be the one He didn’t have to worry about. I thought I was doing Him a favor. I wasn’t.

Being Like Children

We’re meant to relate to God as children. Helpless, weak, foolish, humble, needy children. Those are not the qualities I most like to exhibit in my life. In fact, they are the ones I am most inclined to avoid. Can I get an amen? Is it only me? Is this thing on?

Lately, God’s been calling me back to this place as a beloved child. He’s reminding me that it’s not only ok to own those places of weakness and mess and need, it’s necessary. It’s when I’m weak that He is strong. It’s in my needs that I find His sufficiency. It’s in my mess that I find the unconditional love I seek.

And from that position of humility, He calls us to ask. Be audacious. Be bold. Tell Him you want a pony. You want to fly. When I’m in that place where I know I don’t have it together, I am incompetent for the task at hand, I am reminded that it doesn’t matter because my Abba is more than enough. He delights to give good gifts to His children. Make a wish.

Me, age 4.

Seeing God in Legos

Post author:Gina B
Post published:September 26, 2014
Post category:faith

Seeing God in Legos

My title is not meant to imply that I have seen the face of God in a Lego creation, a la the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast (especially not the creepy little guy above, courtesy of Ethan); rather, that in watching a young child play with Legos, I saw a bigger picture of Him.

We start our conference days with worship. This morning, the worship leader’s young son was sitting at our table. He availed himself of the large Lego blocks on the table (they’re great – yesterday I made an iphone holder out of them for myself). Over and over he attempted to build a structure using all the blocks, arranging and rearranging them. At this point, I wouldn’t peg this kid as a future structural engineer – a little top heavy, kiddo – but every time the blocks collapsed he laughed. When it was completed, it became a car he drove around the table. Sometimes it carried the candy on the table. Mostly the candy went in his mouth though (who can blame him?).

I was amused. He was fun to watch. It occurred to me that I wasn’t the only one enjoying him. God was having a great time watching him too. In fact, I thought, if I can find such joy in watching this little guy, how much more does God? He created our capacity to enjoy, and no one can enjoy like He can.

Do we think of Him that way? So often our view of God is too serious, like He would frown disapprovingly and shush a child playing during worship. The reality is He loves kids. He loves their creativity, their lightheartedness, their pure joy. He made it. He participates in it.

I think God laughs and enjoys His creation more than anyone. How could we enjoy something more than He does? The word says that He inhabits the praise of His people; He inhabits our joy as well.

I want to hear His laughter in ours. I want to see His smile in others’ faces. I want to be conscious of Him enjoying life with me.

Our inclination toward joy is from Him. I saw it today through some Legos.

Redeemed . . . or . . . DIYing Again

Post author:Gina B
Post published:September 20, 2014
Post category:faith growth

DIY Bench

For weeks, Erik and I have intended to continue our DIY activity by making a bench out of the reclaimed dock wood we have. We kept having this conversation:

Gina: We should make the bench.
Erik: Do you have a plan for it?
Gina: Yes!
Erik: Where?
Gina: In my head.
Erik: Could you write it down?
Gina: (blink. blink.)

It finally dawned on Erik that when he said, “plan” what he meant was “detailed schematics of how this bench will be structurally sound” and what I meant was, “vague idea of cool looking bench, probably held together by nails and magic.”

So he made his own plan. And it was good, as you can see from the picture.

I love doing this. I love taking something others have discarded as worthless and making something new from it. Not something perfect – there will always be flaws, but that’s part of the beauty of it. That’s what makes it one of a kind. It can still be something useful, something good, something that gives life.

I love it because it is a picture of redemption. We all have places, moments, chapters, in our lives, that we could count as wasted. Worthless. Ruined.

God isn’t close to finished with them. In fact, that’s where He starts. He takes our broken places and our discarded moments and our lost chapters and he makes something new. These are the places from which we have the greatest potential to give life to others.

What a great gift – anything can be redeemed. Old dock wood. Us. It’s all good.

Just Enough Light for the Road I’m On

Post author:Gina B
Post published:September 16, 2014
Post category:faith truth

One of the downsides of living this far south is that the sun doesn’t come up early, and I’m an early morning girl. It puts a damper on any outdoor exercise in the am, mostly because we live in the boondocks where there are no streetlights. People live out here specifically because they want to get away from all that pesky civilization with its fancy electricity that might light my way.

This morning, I decided to brave the darkness with Scout in tow so I could prayer walk around the neighborhood (is that three birds with one stone, since I also walked the dog? Multi-tasking at its best!).

As I walked, it seemed like there were just enough front porch lights, or kitchen lights of early risers, on to light our way. And during the stretches where there was no light, a car or two drove out of the neighborhood and helped us see.

Just enough light. Not the brightness I would like to feel completely confident, but enough to show me what was next.

I so want to see far ahead. I want to know what the next year, two years, 10 years will look like. But God gives me only enough light for the next step, and not always when I want it, but when I truly need it. Hopefully it keeps me walking slowly, looking to Him for what is next, trusting that what I have seen in the light is still true in the darkness.

“Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path.” Psalm 119:105

Experiencing God

Post author:Gina B
Post published:September 3, 2014
Post category:faith transition

I’ll never forget the phone call from my husband in Singapore, telling me that we’d been asked to move there. The blood drained from my face at the prospect. I didn’t even know where Singapore was. I thought it was near Fiji (it is not near Fiji).

With less than 5 months to process this change, many details had to fall into place. We arrived on a Thursday night, hours after our co-workers there had been given the key to our new apartment. The next morning, as we sat in our empty dining room, we prayed that our shipment would arrive (we’d heard not a peep from the movers). Within 5 minutes, the doorbell rang. It was the moving company.

Looking back on it, I felt God’s tenderness. He knew how hard it was for us to move to Singapore, to leave behind the life we had. All those details falling into place felt like gifts from Him, saying, “I’m going to get you through this.”

Five years later, when we moved back into East Asia, the process wasn’t so smooth. Visa and shipping issues tied us and pushed our leave date again and again. I finally cried out in exasperation, “God, last time you were so tender with us! Why don’t I see it now?”

His answer was clear, “Because that’s not what you need now.”

It was true. I was overjoyed to be moving back to our previous home. I didn’t need comfort. I needed restoration after a long two years of ill health and loneliness. That summer was three months of glorious God-given re-everything: restoration, refreshment, rejuvenation, re-you name it. And through it all, I felt God rejoicing in giving it to me, cause that’s just the kind of God He is.

After those times, I was curious to see what aspect of His character I would experience most in moving back to the U.S. We moved back two years ago today (what??), so I thought it would behoove me to reflect upon it (and also, I like the word “behoove”).

I think more than anything, I have experienced God as the rock who anchors me. He has been my constant, my solid place. He has kept me from drifting too far from home. He has been the place I can rest when the waves are too strong for me. His strength has tethered me when I have reached the end of my resources again and again. He is the deepest truth about who I am when everything else is shifting sands.

What will He show me next?

Two Battles

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 17, 2014
Post category:faith

Two Battles – from Thailand, January 20, 2012

I’ve been trying to think of how to share what we’ve been doing this week here in Thailand (aside from trying not to get sunburned, reading Kindles by the pool, and searching in vain for Coke Zero). We’re at a conference called re-LEAF (Leadership Evaluation and Formation). It’s a time to revisit the process that God started when we all went through this conference the first time.

So how do I summarize what it is we talk about here? I thought this excerpt from The Magnificent Defeat, by Frederick Beuchner might do it. He’s talking about “The Two Battles” Forgive me if it’s a little long – I cut a lot out!:

“The first is a war of conquest . . . All our lives we fight for a place in the sun . . . we feel that we must conquer a territory in time and space that will be ours. And that is true. We must.

“What is the armor to wear in such a war? Not, certainly, the whole armor of God here but, rather the whole armor of man, because this is a man’s war against other men. In such a war, perhaps, you wear something like this: Gird your loin with wisdom . . . put on the breastplate of self-confidence . . . let your feet be shod with the gospel of success . . . above all take the shield of security . . . and the helmet of attractiveness or personality or the sword of wit.

“The other war is not the war to conquer but the war to become whole and at peace inside our skins . . . it is the war to become a human being. This is the goal we are really after and that God is really after. This is the goal that power, success, and security are only forlorn substitutes for.

“(What we must be set free from is) the darkness in ourselves that we never fully see or fully understand or feel fully responsible for, although Heaven knows we are more than a little responsible. (Paul identifies it as,) ‘I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.’ . . . The evil in ourselves as individuals is greater than the evil that we choose, and that is great enough. This is the darkness which we need to be liberated from in order to become human.

“It is for this war, not the other one, that we need the whole armor of God . . . He is the truth about who man really is, about what it means to be really human, and about who God really is . . . In the great war of liberation, it is imperative to keep in touch always with the only one who can liberate.

“Even if we do not find our place in the sun, or not quite the place we want, or a place where the sun is not as bright as we always dreamed that it would be, this is not the end because this is not really the decisive war even though we spend so much of our lives assuming that it is. The decisive war is the other one – to become fully human, which means to become compassionate, honest, brave . . . (this) is the war which every man can win who wills to win because it is the war which God also wills us to win and will arm us to win if only we will accept His armor.”

So I guess we are talking about the battles in our ourselves, and where we are putting our energy – are we still putting it into fighting the first battle? Or are we learning more and more to trust in God and His armor to become who we were really meant to be in Him?

What about you? Which battle are you fighting?

Weekly Word – God is God

Post author:Gina B
Post published:April 1, 2014
Post category:faith word of the year

I swear I was not living under a rock for the past decade or so – just 6,000 miles away, give or take. Somehow, during all that time, I managed to live in blissful ignorance of the conversations, arguments, and divides that are taking place in the church today. Either that, or I came back just in time to witness them. Lucky me!

I don’t share much about my personal views on controversial issues here, mostly because I don’t feel led to do so. I watch, though, as others, particularly in the past week, draw more and more lines in the sand intended to separate one faction from another.

It’s discouraging to see, and I can’t help feeling like our energy is being wasted on all these arguments and not on leading people to the Kingdom. It’s enough for me to just say, “Oh Lord Jesus, come now.”

So I stopped last week and said, “God, what does it look like for me to stay in this mess of a church and abide in you?” And the thought that came to mind was, “God is God.”

He is greater than all this. He doesn’t sit afar wringing His hands, hoping we get it right. He is at work, even in all this.

And that’s enough for me. In the end, all will be clear. All theological arguments will be answered. I can believe whatever I want, but in the end there will be truth and maybe I will be right and maybe I will be wrong. I just hope I can say that I lived in such a way that I drew more people to Him. I hope I am known more for who and how I love than what I am against. I hope He will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I hope He will be pleased.

So today I will abide in this: God is God.

Who was and is and is to come

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 10, 2014
Post category:faith

A few weeks ago, I was wrestling with trust in God. Ok, who I am kidding? I wrestle with trusting God more often than that, but I want to tell you about this particular time. It was regarding our finances. Since coming back to America, I have found life to be more expensive. America is the Land of Opportunity (To Spend More Money on Everything).

As I was struggling to leave this in God’s hands, the phrase came to mind, “Who was and is and is to come.” It’s found several times in Revelations, referring to God. As I pondered that phrase, I realized God was telling me, “Gina, I have provided for you in the past. I am providing for you now. I will provide for you.” It occurred to me that I could say that about any aspect of His character – He has saved, He is saving, He will save. He has loved, He is loving, He will love. He has been good, He is good, He will be good. He has abided, He is abiding, He will abide with me. He was and is and is to come.

It was a great comfort to feel this sense of being surrounded by God in time (and to know that I could therefore trust Him with this issue). This I can count on. Whatever we need. Always. Constant. Faithful. Unchanging. That’s good news. He abides.