Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Worth It


Phew! This one's a doozy. Lately I've been contemplating 'worth.' One Dictionary defines it as "good or important enough to justify (what is specified)." And that word "enough" is the one that often defeats me. I've had this discussion with many of my friends and, most often, the first question that pops into our heads, being the women that we are, when we experience some form of rejection is, "Am I not worth   ______" And then of course we begin to think about what "enoughs" that we aren't and how we fall short and all of our faults seem to smack us in the face and kick us in the ribs. 

"Am I not worth pursuing?" 
"Am I not worth a 5 second response?"
"Am I not worth a 10 cent Rose?" 
"Am I not worth the time?"
"Am I not worth a text/email/phone call"
"Am I not worth it?"

Those questions, and many very similar to those, have not only gone through my own head a billion times during the course of my life, from the other women I've heard from and talked to, the same questionings of their worth have gone through theirs. If only they were a simple passing thought as forgettable as the 2 minute meet-n-greets we do at Salt every week. These questions might start as a thought, but they quickly become knives and daggers and arrows that pierce through the precious hearts  and souls of us girls. I know it drives guys nuts. One forgotten thing of importance seems to turn into a big deal and the poor fellows are lost trying to figure out what the heck is wrong with this girl that she's all the sudden crying over something that didn't seem like such a big deal. 

So, let me break this down for you...not that I think that terribly many male units out there will read this..but if they do, they need to know this. Try to picture a girls heart as a vase and the true her is the flowers. When the vase has water, the flowers thrive and open up and look beautiful. If you think of love as being the water, you know that when a girls heart is fully loved, the girl will fully be herself as beautiful as the flower God made her to be. Pursuing her is like watering her vase. Granted, we do need to keep in mind that God is the ultimate gardener and only His living water will truly satisfy this flower.
So, when you neglect your precious flower, it wilts, it's not as pretty, and it wonders what it is about it that it wasn't worth maintaining. Maybe it didn't smell as nice, maybe it was a daisy and not as pretty as a rose, maybe it was just too much work. What ever reason, I don't think there was ever an explanation that made it hurt any less. 

Last night our connection group kicked off our first meeting for this Spring Semester. I co-lead with my two closest friends but on account I had all the notes on last night's lesson/the discussion questions, I was the head-leader. although there were 5 girls not present, there were still over a dozen young women there. I don't think I was worried about it til we were half-way through and it was hard to get discussion going. Some seemed bored, not all of them knew my story or what I'm like on a regular basis, and it seemed like one thing after another told me that I was doing a terrible job and that I was just making a fool of myself and everyone was feeling uncomfortable. As I told my co-leaders/friends this on our drive home, they both seemed a little shock. They were both like, "What?? Where is that coming from?? You did great! I thought it went really well!" 

So where did it come from? Let me tell you. In Genesis 3, way back at the beginning of all things, we see how Satan began to whisper those thoughts of self-doubt into the mind of the most perfectly made woman of all times. When he told Eve that by eating the fruit her eyes would be opened and that she would be like God in knowing good and evil, he made her question if she was "good enough" with out knowing the things God knew. Was she good enough just as she was? When she questioned this, she doubted it and her worth and then she fell into sin. And then, of course, the rest of us women get to experience the same thing on top of this wonderful curse to desire a husband. That curse is part of who we are now. We want a man to love us and care for us and provide for us. We want someone to think we are "worth it." 

While Satan stands to accuse us all day long and tries to defeat us in everyway possible by destroying the core of our very being, Christ is at the right hand of God interceding on our behalf. I picture it being much like the scene from one of my favorite Dr. Who episodes where The Doctor and Rory have a little encounter after Rory's girlfriend, Amy, has been killed.

Rory: Can you help her, is there anything you can do?

The Doctor: Yeah, probably, if I had the time.

Rory: The time?!?

The Doctor: All of Creation has just been wiped from the sky. Do you now know how many lives now never happened? All the people who never lived. Your girlfriend isn't more important than the whole Universe.

Rory: SHE IS TO ME!!! {he hits him}



And that is how we come to catch a glimpse of our heavenly father. It is how we know we were made in His likeness. Because, while we carry this emptiness in our hearts and a longing to be "good enough" to be pursued and chased after, He stands there with His arms out spread asking, "What about me? Am I worth it?" Whilst we run around with our vases trying to find a sink deep enough to fit it under a working faucet, He's standing there with a garden hose wishing we'd ask Him to fill us up.
And when we trust someone to fill our vase and then they don't and we're left with wilting flowers and dead leaves and stems that don't seem to absorb water they way they used to, he patiently and lovingly clips away the things that died, trims the stems to the healthy parts and replaces the flowers that lost their petals. But we look at our wilted, failed, unwanted, and discarded selves and Satan stands there to tells us we are not worth pursuing, we are not worth a conversation, we are not worth the time, or what ever else it is, and Christ in all his heroic anger punches Satan in the jaw and yells, "SHE IS TO ME!"


So what about Christ? Is He worth it? Is He worth pursuing? Is he worth a 5 second response or 10 cents dropped in the offering plate? Is He worth a whole conversation or the 5 minutes it takes to read a passage? Is He worth your life? Your surrender?

He fights so much for us, but do we fight for Him? Do we chase after Him? Do we love Him and admire His beauty? 

Last night as I was last minute trying to find more Bible verses on why we should pursue Christ, I found myself reading over the list of verses that I've been clinging to lately. I pursue Christ because when I am afflicted in every way, I'm not crushed, not abandoned, not destroyed. 
I pursue Him because he renews my heart day by day. 
I pursue Him because He says He is my helper and I need not fear anything. 
I pursue Him because He wipes the tears from my eyes. He gives me joy in all circumstances. He heals my heart when I experience sorrow. He gives life to my heart when I've had the wind knocked out of me. 
I pursue Him because for all the times that I have strayed away, been stuck in sin, grown distant, come to a point of brokenness, He was there and He faithfully whispered to my heart that I was worth it when I couldn't see how that could be. Never once has he left me or forsaken me. Never once have I cried to Him and He didn't come rescue me. He has never left me in a pit or dropped me in a fire. Not only does He bind up my broken heart, He uses pieces of His own heart to patch of the places that are no longer intact. 

So when the accuser comes and tells me that God is not worth being the weirdo in class or sleeping on an old mattress in an other country that has a thriving mosquito population for the sake of sharing the gospel, or when he says Christ is not worth losing a friend over or sacrificing a good grade, when he says Christ is not worth saying "no" to the pleasures of this world when it could be the only chance I'll ever get, my answer is, "He's worth it to me!"




Friday, January 25, 2013

That I May Truly Live

This morning as I sat down with my Jesus I found myself confessing a fear that I didn't really know I had... love. Love heals and love hurts, it is such a strange thing. I have often prayed that God would fill me with love for His people and that my heart would be overcome with compassion. 
I think God has so blessed me with having a heart similar to His that I have caught the slightest, tiniest glimpse of the sorrow He experiences when He loves unsparingly and is often rejected. 
Not that I claim to have a heart as unselfish or near as loving as Christ's, but I've experienced a taste. 

As I sat and contemplated this wonderful aspect of God, a phrase from a song began to play in my head, "Did e'er such love and sorrow meet." At the same moment, "Beloved" by Tenth Avenue North was playing from my Time Alone with God playlist and the words "You're My beloved, Lover I'm yours. Death shall not part us It's you I died for" seemed to come at just the right moment. 


The song about love and sorrow coming together is from a hymn that I've sung a million times but never realized just how beautiful the words are. 


See from His head His hands His feet
Sorrow and love flow mingled down
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet
Or thorns compose so rich a crown

Oh the wonderful cross 
Bids me come and die and find
That I may truly live



Isn't that beautiful? It reminds of Home Alone 2 when Kevin is telling the weird bird lady, "What's the point in having a heart so guarded if you never use it to love others?" You see, I'm quite certain that I've come out of my valley of darkness that lasted almost the entirety of last semester, but I have not yet come to a place where I am on fire or overflowing with joy. I was talking to God about that last night and asking Him when I would come back to that point again. He told me when I let myself get close enough to Him. It's funny, you'd think that wouldn't be a problem for me. But I think I've quite developed a fear of being super close to God because I don't know what He wants to do with me. But I remember my pastor once saying, "When you keep God at a safe distance, you will be safe..and distant." And that is where I am now. I'm not so far from Him that I can't see or hear Him or experience the goodness of His presence, but I'm hesitant to fall in love with Him again because I know  that would I  drink of the same cup. (If that makes sense.)

Christ did not promise it would be easy to love and follow Him. If anything, He promised that it would be hard and painful and difficult. But He also promised to be close and to carry us through the waters and that He would guard and protect. I think, too often, I've believed that when He says He is my protector that I think that means He will protect me from experiencing pain. That's not true. He promised to protect me from getting crushed when I am pressed. He promised to protect me from being abandoned when I am rejected. He promised to protect me from a normal, boring life. But when we say "yes" to going on an adventure with Jesus, we say "yes" to pain. We say "yes" to love and sorrow. We say "yes" to joy in the midst of trials. We say "yes" to much of the same anguish that the Lord already knows. And in the same incredible instant, we say "yes" to a love more deep and more glorious than we can ever comprehend. We say "yes" to a joy so unmoving and a peace so incomprendable that we could never in a million years wrap our minds around. 

We say "yes" to life. To live is Christ and to die is gain. Christ is love. To live is to love. 

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

And so I have come to a place in my life, for the umpteenth time of course, where I have to make a choice, a choice much like deciding to throw myself out of an airplane. Yes, I can keep on going and be at a safe distance and accept being safe and distant, but my heart will never be satisfied with that. 
Love... it's a choice. Not an emotion or feeling. Love is Jesus. So with some crazy leap of faith and total recklessness that is what I choose. I think my brother said it best just before he jumped 364ft off of a bridge over Victoria Falls, "I'm ready to live."


Monday, January 21, 2013

At Rest

Tomorrow starts the Spring semester. While past years it has seemed like break was way too long and I was bored and more than ready to jump into a routine again, I dread classes starting again. 
In the mean time, I rest. I have so enjoyed these past 5 weeks of rest. I have felt so incredibly loved by God in how He has carried me through hurricanes of pain and trials of darkness. 

I think the darkness is gone now. For a time anyways, I don't think the darkness will ever truly leave until I come face to face with my precious savior. I look forward to that day very much. Even more I have to realize that this world is not my home. My heart was not made for this place..it's far too broken and painful for it to be a place of permanence. Much like the places I've lived with poor management and landlords who were slow to fix with the problems and I looked forward to moving to the next place, I'm quite excited for the place in heaven that my Jesus has gone to prepare for me. 

He says there is no more pain there. No more weeping, or brokenness, or darkness. He waits for me there and I am anxious to run into His arms and hear the words, "Welcome home, Fern."
Not that I wish I was dead. I don't. I'm not suicidal or depressed, but I'm done with pain. I'm sure I have years and years more of it ahead of me, but I'm not excited for it. 
Some days trusting Jesus with my heart is so difficult because His heart is my heart and His heart is broken more often than mine. I'm sure He looks forward to the day when the pain ends as well. 

Whilst sitting in the presence of the Lord earlier my heart began to hurt and as I prayed for God to hold me up I saw a picture of him holding my heart in his hand and my heart was clay. He began to take pieces of His heart (as if it, too, were clay) and place them over the broken places of my heart to patch it up and make it whole again. How loved I am that He sacrifices himself and takes on brokenness for my wholeness. 

I recently came across a verse in 1 John that says, "This is how we know we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence," (1 John 3:19). I like that. I am, indeed, most at rest in His presence. I am most whole in His presence. 

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Blessed Assurance


  1. "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
    Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
    Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
    Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood."


I was blessed to have been raised in a church that sang hymns. Whilst now they are not as commonly known, there is so much truth in the lyrics that were written however many hundreds of years ago. 

I'll be honest, one of my greatest weaknesses as a believer is struggling with what I am worth to others which often translates to me questioning my worth to Christ. Not necessarily my worth IN Christ.. I mean I know that God went through great lengths to rescue me and call me His. But my worth TO others, like, how much of a difference I'm making, how much am I needed, how successful I am at seeing other's needs met?
I mean, I LOVE serving. It's one of my top love languages. But I have often come to a place of feeling like I am not needed and that my efforts are failing to make a difference and that my life isn't really all that impactful either. These thoughts seemed to be justified every time I have experienced rejection and have sent me into some pretty fantastic questionings of what on earth God was thinking when He chose to give me a passion for serving and loving others when people don't always receive that well. 
Of course He is always quick to catch me mid-question and remind me that He made me and has plans for me and that He loves me more than I could possible imagine. 


  1. Perfect submission, perfect delight,
  2. Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
  3. Angels, descending, bring from above
  4. Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

  5. Occasionally, my precious Savior gives me a small glimpse of what He is doing in my life and WITH my life. As a Senior in college, you'd think I'd have a semi-solid plan for my future in mind... I don't. I have no clue what I'm going to do with myself..or what God wants me to do with myself or what God wants to do WITH me. You see, I want to be used. I don't really want to settle into some comfy life of luxury where I go to work everyday, attend church on Sundays and what ever else not that comes with that. I want to serve. I want to be used in some way. I want to be needed and depended on. I want my life to bless others. I want to be a blessing.  
  6. The funny thing about that is, as a believer, you have to learn to not care about what other's think about you and care only what your heavenly Father thinks. I struggle with that because words of affirmation are my top love language and so I much like to hear people tell me good things about me. And thus, when I hear people tell me not good things about me, I perceive it as unlove. Dislike. Indifference. Hate.Etc.  I have often felt that even if 99 out of 100 people liked me, but one person hated me, that I had failed.  Of course the first question is, "What is wrong with me?" That's probably my most asked question of myself. 
  7. But here's what I'm learning, it doesn't matter. Jesus is often whispering into my little vein heart, "They hated me too. First, in fact." And while I might try to come up with some sort of clever argument that would show that my situation is more desperate, He always wins.. of course. Even his closest friends bailed on him when he needed them most. 

  8. Perfect submission, all is at rest,
  9. I in my Savior am happy and blest,
  10. Watching and waiting, looking above,
  11. Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.
  12. So, last semester, I decided to try a little experiment in my classes. Be myself and let God be my life.I would be transparent in and out of class. I would be honest in how I felt and wouldn't pretend to have it all together if i didn't.  I was going to love Jesus with everything I had and I wasn't going to care if people found it offensive. More than that, I was going to make friends with everyone I sat by. Or at least.. I was going to reach out a friendly hand, introduce myself, and ask how their day was going. And above all, I wasn't going to care if they thought I was weird. Jesus was my life, so if they asked me a question and the answer was "Jesus" then that's what they were going to hear. Of course I seemed to always be sitting by someone new for the first several weeks in some of my classes. The responses I got varied, most were pleasant, some were cold. By the end of the semester, I had made 5 or 6 new friends, and I shared my testimony 3 or 4 times (even with one professor). While all that was going on, my life was falling apart around me. Of course, in my resolution to be transparent, all those closest to me had seen more tears and heard more of my heart's sorrows than I've ever dared to share before. But as a result I found myself surrounded by an army of prayer warriors, constant voices of encouragement, and people who pointed me to the Truth more often than I knew I needed. Even my classmate friends showed care and gentleness and offered encouragement when things weren't going well. 
  13. This is my story, this is my song,
    Praising my Savior all the day long;
    This is my story, this is my song,
    Praising my Savior all the day long.

    I followed God. I did what He asked of me. And when I gladly drove home and put the past behind me, I wondered, "what was that for?" "What kind of example is that?" I didn't feel like I had much to show for the 4 months that I had been surrendering to Christ other than the works he had done in my own heart. Let me explain, I like to feel needed. I like to BE needed. I like to serve and help and...fix things. I like to build up those who have been torn down, I like to be a friend to those who need friends. But, it seemed that for 4 months, I had been dependent on everyone I had met. I coveted prayer from anyone who would offer, I sought Truth from anyone who seemed to know it, I asked advice from anyone who seemed to have some...I needed people. So in my own little mind whilst driving home i thought, "Well gee, how will anyone ever know to ask me for anything when alls they saw was me asking for things from others?" 

    Last night as I was falling asleep, I found this little message in my inbox from one of my non-believing classmates:

    "Hey Lady! I hope you are having a great break! I could use a bit of help and knew you were just the person to ask. I was wondering if you knew any verses or chapters to help keep a person strong when they are scared...
    I seem to have hit a bit of of a bump in the road of life; and while I feel confident that it will all work out, a little encouragement might do a girl good.
     Could use a little extra prayer once in a while and a good word if you know what I mean. "


    Well praise the Lord! If nothing else, at least people can come to me and ask what verses to cling to when the valleys are so deep the sun can hardly peak over the next mountain to climb. 

    I like telling stories. I love captivating an audience and hearing them laugh at some ridiculous something that happened to me somehow. I like stories of heroic rescues and adventures and happy endings. I follow Jesus and that is an adventure. There are a fountain of stories that come from knowing him. He is my story. 

    "Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
    Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.