Tag: grace

A Mom for All Seasons

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by guest author Kimberly Hargreaves.

I took this picture last year while heading to our first day of CBS. (Sidenote: If you’ve never heard of Community Bible Study, see if there is one in your area! It’s online this year and can do your heart so much good!) I knew when I started, that was exactly where God was leading me to deepen my relationship with Him, and for my boys as well. They would be learning and growing in love right alongside me. I watched as they got ahead of me, noticing the distance of height in between the two. My little one thinks the big one hung the moon. Of course, I had to turn it into a photo opp. I’ve looked back at this photo many times throughout this past year and thought, if someone had once told me that not only would I one day be a stay at home mom, but a homeschooling mom as well, I would have laughed and said “y’all crazy”. 

If I’m being completely honest, being a stay at home mom has never been a desire of mine. I’m pretty ashamed to say that now. There will always be the debate of which role is harder… stay at home mom vs. working mom. Throughout this life I have been in every role of mommin’… teenage mom, divorced mom, single mom, working mom, working/student mom, full time student mom, stay at home mom, and now homeschooling mom. I can honestly say they are ALL hard. Each of them have their own rewards/challenges that the others may not have. 

Life can throw some ugly curve balls and we often find ourselves in positions we never thought we would be in. A few years ago, my family was doing what we thought was best and we had plans and dreams, but somewhere along the way… I forgot who holds my plans and dreams, and what I wanted became bigger. I didn’t cling to my first love and trust that He knew what was best. So when those dreams came crashing down, I was lost because I allowed my identity to become entangled in them. It was a pretty dark and depressing couple of years. But God. He pulled me out of my own self pity and set my paths straight. He welcomed me back. 

I gave Him my complete trust and He gave me new desires. Not my will, Lord, but Yours. We are going into our third year of homeschooling, and for the first time, I know this is exactly where I’m suppose to be in this season. I’m so thankful He took away that desire for the “American dream,” and set an eternal dream on my heart. 

I see these boys and weariness tries to creep in… God, what if they fall? What if they follow their own hearts and not yours? What if they slip away from their first love? And He answers, “Then I’ll chase them down, like I did you.” Friend, if this is you… He is more than willing to set your paths straight as well. Call out to Him, run back to your Abba. He is always there waiting.

Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love He will no longer rebuke you; but will rejoice over you with singing.” 

Candy Basket

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My Boss carried a basket of candy toward me. “You get one for doing a good deed.” She wanted me to know that I had earned a piece of candy. She encouraged me to take a piece of my choosing.

Meanwhile my coworkers wandered up and a few asked for a piece of candy too. She grinned, nodded, and said something about me taking two pieces then. I turned around to continue with my work and another coworker wandered up the hallway.

My Boss held out the candy basket toward her.

“Do you want a piece of candy?”

The coworker paused at the basket and moved her fingers over the candies.

“How much?” She said. My boss looked a tad puzzled and responded, “One.”

My coworker clearly meant something else, “No How much? Like how much does it cost?”

My Boss laughed, “Ooh nothing!! They’re free!”

Immediately I thought about that basket of candy was a representation of salvation. My coworker fully expected a dollar amount in relation to that candy but the candy wasn’t for sale. She couldn’t earn it, she couldn’t purchase it, she could only receive it and receive it she did.

Ephesians 2:8  (ESV)
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

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Raise the White Flag

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Surrender.

Not the word I wanted when I started praying and seeking God for my “word for the year.”

For the last few years our pastor has encouraged us to pray through December and January and seek a word the Lord was laying on our heart that would be our focus for that year.

My first year was Life. I was struggling with an unseen health issue and felt I was dying. Literally and truly. As I claimed the word Life for that year and sought to walk in faith, the Lord brought me to a healing answer in April, and I spent the rest of the year building strength and fully living again.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10

Then there was my word Grace. Specifically the Lord impressed upon my heart that I was to show grace to my husband! That may not sound hard, but I must confess I was more eager to show grace to strangers than to my husband. He was a Christian, he knew me, he was committed to me,… I held him to a standard no human being could meet. I was unjust, unkind, and completely lacking in grace toward him that January. But throughout that year of God working grace in my heart, and me intentionally seeking to show grace to my husband, our life has taken a sweet turn. Grace offers sweetness to those around us. In this tough world we each need all the grace we can get.

“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:16

So here I sit this year looking at a hateful word. But it’s my word. Surrender. I know it’s my word. I knew it before 2017 struck midnight for the last time. And the Lord has reconfirmed it several times. Most unmistakably through my devotional reading for the year. As I read My Utmost for His Highest on January 1st, in the last sentence of the day, my dear friend Oswald said, “…surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably.” Then today, once again, God spoke directly to me through Mr. Chambers on this last day of the first month. “God cannot deliver me while my interest is merely in my own character. Paul [the apostle] was not conscious of himself. He was recklessly abandoned, totally surrendered, and separated by God for one purpose – to proclaim the gospel of God.”

For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race. Romans 9:3

Am I willing? Willing to surrender? To surrender myself, surrender my will, surrender my hands-1139098_640image, surrender my inclusion in Christ if that’s what it takes for the redemption of another? I must truthfully say, No. Not at this point. The Lord is beginning this work of surrender in me. But I’m not a completed pot of clay in His hand. I’m the lump being molded and shaped upon the Potter’s wheel, and squashed down and built up again until I reach the shape of surrender. What is the shape of surrender, I wonder? Is it flat? Prone? Facedown?

I have a feeling it will be a hard year but a good one. It is always hard for us when we have to die to self. To surrender self. To lay self on the altar to be burned up in sacrifice. I’m like the ram caught in the thicket that was sacrificed in the place of Isaac. I don’t by nature willingly or eagerly surrender; God has to catch me in the branches to prepare me to die to myself. I imagine I’m not alone. I assume this is the human, fleshly reaction. But the apostle Paul had been so transformed into the image of Christ that His reaction was not the fleshly one. His specific statement from his heart was:

“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21.

 

That is surrender. Will I reach that point of surrender? Will you?

Find your word from the Lord for this year, be it a single word or verse. Seek the point of focus God has for you this year.

Make it your aim to allow Him to work it out in you this year and to live it out at every opportunity. Lay yourself out before the Father daily as you hear from Him in His word. Allow His shaping process in your life.

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Forfeit your queen at the feet of The King!

When the Tables Are Turned

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A young friend in her late twenties came to me recently with an unusual concern.

She is the only one in her small group who has chosen not to drink alcohol because of her Christian faith. It’s not that she’s never tasted alcohol. Nor is she rigid, prudish, or legalistic. It is a conscious choice she has made.

I don’t know all her reasons. Our conversation was more on the reactions she had received to her choice than on the choice itself. She had made that decision when she realized that alcoholic beverages offered no benefit to her and didn’t draw her closer to God, and that there are always risks associated with drinking alcohol. So she made the intentional decision not to use alcohol. In my mind I immediately thought of the verse in 1 Corinthians 6:12 “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable,” and I understood her decision.

But that was not the case with others she had encountered. At a small group meeting the prior week, she had found herself conspicuously being the only one not consuming alcohol. She did not feel out-of-place in her spirit and was enjoying her fellowship time. She also had the strength of character to not feel compelled to drink just because the rest were. So where was the issue? One of the young men approached her offering a drink. She declined, and he reacted!

He was offended that she wasn’t drinking. He chastised her for it and questioned her on it. She explained that she wasn’t judging him; she had just chosen not to consume any alcohol. A discussion ensued and suddenly she was the one feeling judged for her abstinence. We are told in Romans 14:16 to “not let what you know is good be spoken of as evil.” So she had to stand up for her convictions to another member of the body of Christ, one who should have been encouraging her and building her up instead of undermining her convictions.

Has our society so infiltrated the church that this is what we’ve come to?

Has it become a world where it is “politically correct” in the body of Christ to be so open-minded about alcohol that we condemn those who choose to abstain?

In another situation, a family friend in her early 30s recovering from alcoholism encountered her church friends, who knew her well, drinking at a class gathering they knew she would attend. She was surprised and let down. How could brothers and sisters in Christ choose to exercise their “freedom” at the jeopardy of her sobriety? Is Paul’s warning forgotten? “It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall.” (Romans 14:21)

A skewed view of grace has been slowly rising to the surface over the years, one that says a follower of Christ can do anything they choose and it doesn’t matter because God will forgive. Has the church bought into this so much so that a person who walks in purity and holiness is seen as an affront to this false interpretation of grace? In Romans 6:15, the apostle Paul admonishes us, “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” Are we so caught up in our freedom, that we are careless with our responsibility toward other believers?

Just as Christ has given us grace, we are called on to offer grace to those around us. In our Christian walk, let us extend compassionate love and care by respecting others weaknesses and not causing them to stumble by our actions. Let us also refrain from judging another for choices they make, that while they don’t go against scriptures we would perhaps consider a sin for us.

And on the other side of that coin, let us all also refrain from undermining a brother or sister in Christ who has chosen a higher standard than we are living. That is often difficult, especially when we feel conviction or condemnation simply by being in their presence. Instead of questioning the high road they have taken, when that conviction comes upon us let us pull aside, and seek God to see if He is using their example as a way of calling us to a deeper walk of holiness.