Category Archives: The Christian Life

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September 11, 2018

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God, hope, Life, The Christian Life, Uh, This is Random

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My Dear Future, [an open letter]

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My Dear Future,

I do not know what you hold. You are the great unknown. You strike fear into my heart. I lose sleep. I bite my fingernails to nothing.

People ask me questions about you. I hate it when they do because then I must admit that I simply do not know you, my own dearest, daunting Future.

You are the next three days.

You are the next three months.

You are the next three years.

You are the next three decades.

Oh, my dear Future. I see so many painful inevitabilities. I see in you unexpected death, broken relationships, rejections, heartache, tears, confusion, new failings, and goodbyes that will break me.

And what is still more frightening is the knowledge that you, my dear Future, quickly become my Present. In what seems like a single pulse of my heart, tomorrow will become today, and next year will become this year.

I will make goals that I will not meet. I will let relationships dissolve. I will watch people I once knew grow and change from a distance. I will make promises only to break them. I will start days with joy and singing and end them with silence.

But I try to put on a smile when it comes to you, my dear Future. I make my plans, answer the questions that just won’t stop, and pretend I know what this whole thing is about.

I don’t know how to talk about you, my fear-drenched Future. I don’t know how to ask for help, am terrified to show weakness, for it seems that once people realize just how much I don’t know, there will be blood in the water. I fear rumors and raised-eyebrows and being seen for what I really am.

But now I see how I’ve gotten this all so wrong. I see that I’ve been following the wrong stars in my thinking. It is, as it turns out, ridiculously simple (but then I am often ridiculously slow).

Here it is: you, my dear Future, are not about me.

My Savior King is the centerpiece, the end of you, the sum of you, my dear Future.

And the fear I have for you, my dear Future, is treason. The fear I have for you—the kind that changes the way I think and make decisions all on an axis of self—should not belong to you. My Savior King is the only One with a rightful claim to my fear, my attention, my decision-making—all on an axis of Jesus.

In so many ways, you are unknown, my dear Future. Unknown to me. But not to my Savior King. And when I am afraid, I can trust in him, can remember who he is. Because my Savior King is the Most High God, the Lord of hosts, King Jesus.

And you, oh Future, hold only my good and his glory.

One day, someday in you, my dear Future, he will return in his glory, and on that day, he will be known as God and King in all the earth.

That day seems so far off, but it is the most real thing I know of you, my dear Future. And it is that one known, promised day that must define every breath drawn into my lungs.

The goals for my near future—the days leading up to my Savior King’s return—are all at once fuzzy and in sharp focus: love God; love people; worship; make disciples; magnify my Maker.

These are my next three days.

These are my next three months.

These are my next three decades.

These are the rest of my life.

And, no, my dear Future, I don’t know what that will always look like—where or with whom. And, yes, I know I will make many mistakes. But I am by no means significant enough or powerful enough to derail the plans of my Savior King.

And when the goodbyes break me, he will lift my head. And when I fail in new ways and all the old ways too, he will pick me up and remind me that his grace covers me. And when relationships fall apart, he will tell me that love covers all offenses.

And, yes, dear Future, I am still afraid of you, but my Savior King does not condemn me for even this treason.

Instead, every day, bit by bit, he calls me to grow more and more confident in him. Every day he gives me what I need to walk on water until one day I will look at you, my dear Future, with no fear or dread. I will be treasonous no more for I will remember always that the greatness of my Savior King knows no equal.

My dear Future, my hopes and dreams live in you.

So I will build my life—this short existence on this pale blue dot—upon the Cornerstone. And he—not I—will bring to pass things more splendid than I can imagine, treasures of silver and gold that will echo into the eternity I spend with him.

My dear Future, I do not know most of what you hold, but that is okay.

With love,

Rosalie

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August 14, 2018

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7 Tips for Preparing for Church

A long while ago, I wrote a post musing about how I’m usually not ready to be in church.

It is high time that I share the follow-up post (aka: this post).

Disclaimer: Part of what’s taken so long to share this post is that I’m still not ready to be in church most of the time, even though I know “what it takes.” It’s hard to get ready, hard to work past the times when I’m just not feeling it or when my brain is scattered like seeds on the wind. So please know that I don’t often take my own advice.

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For me, preparing for corporate worship has broken down neatly into three primary sections: during the week, Saturday night, and lastly Sunday morning itself.

Let’s get started.

Part One: During the Week

  1. Have daily devotions during the week.

You know how in the spring, you go down to the lake (or the river or the pool or the ocean) for your first swim and the water is chilly at first? When you jump in, it takes you a few minutes to adjust—a few minutes of movement before you’re really enjoying yourself.

It’s not about getting out of the water to warm up before you jump in again. It’s about staying in the water until it’s natural and you get used to it and can even enjoy it. And the jumping in is easier the next time.

Devotions during the week are like staying in the water; they make the next Sunday—the next time you jump in—come more readily and naturally.

  1. When you pray for your pastor and his sermon prep during the week, pray also that you and your church would have ready hearts.

(This could be a no-brainer, but I tend to forget it. So I’m including it.)

We can do all the things we’re “supposed” to be ready for Sunday, but we actually have very little power to do anything. If the Holy Spirit isn’t there cutting and moving and blessing and exhorting no amount of ready or not will make any difference.

He’s the one who does all the heavy-lifting when it comes to being ready, and we have to humbly recognize that. We do the best we can to be ready, and we invite Him to do what we cannot.

Part Two: Saturday Night

  1. Unplug an hour or so before bed.

Unplug from social media. Unplug from the news. Unplug from the movies and TV. Unplug from novels and self-help books. Unplug from YouTube. Unplug from your current project—be it home improvements, a wood-working project, a piece of art, whatever.

We are an increasingly distracted people, yet we are to come undistracted before our holy God.

In his book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, Tony Reinke says this: “God feels distant because we are distracted. Yet he seeks us; he seeks our undivided attention.”

Unplugging from all these diversions helps sweep away the mental clutter. Sleep should come more easily, and your mind will be clearer come morning.

Replace the distractors with things that help focus your mind and heart on God and cultivate an appetite for him.

  1. Read the text.

Read last week’s sermon text and maybe even review your notes so that you’re oriented to what’s happening, especially if your pastor is in the middle of a series.

If possible, read this week’s sermon text. I’m sure your pastor would be delighted to share it with you if you ask him for it. Just shoot a quick text or email over to him and get a jump-start on the message. This, too, will help shift your mind and heart and get your oriented.

  1. Go to bed a little earlier.

Little kids aren’t the only ones who are crabby when they’re tired. And I’m guessing everyone has fought the awful fight to stay awake in a church service.

Get a bit more sleep by not staying up as late; the more rested you are, the more stable and engaged you will be. You’ll have more patience with your family and roommates, and you’ll also have more mental focus.

Part Three: Sunday Morning.

  1. Wake up 15 minutes earlier than you need to.

Yes, I just told you to get more sleep, and now I’m telling you to get up earlier. But bear with me because it’s just a few minutes, and if used well, they are well worth it.

Use this extra time to have a prayer time and read a Psalm or something. Let the first thing you do set the mood for the rest of the day. And then go shower, eat breakfast, and all that jazz.

  1. Stay unplugged.

Resist the urge to check your email or the news or your social medias. Keep the TV off.

In fact, turn your phone on silent.

Set apart your Sunday mornings and don’t get caught up on everything until after lunch.

Let’s drop a bookend on this post.

Sunday mornings are a battleground. Church is about worshiping the living God with other believers. It’s about getting refreshed and prepped for the week to go out and spread the gospel. We cannot waste our Sunday mornings. We cannot autopilot through church. We cannot passively drift.

Hopefully, this helps you as you try to go into Sunday morning ready for what God will do.

With love,

Rosalie

P.S. – Penprints posting days are officially moved from Mondays to Tuesdays, just so you know. Mondays have worked well for the past five years, but now I’m trying something different. Maybe I’ll tell you all about all the whys in a few months. :D

P.P.S. – my third publication—Unexpected—is out and about in the world!

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June 4, 2018

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God, The Christian Life

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When You Don’t Understand the Bible

I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a lot of crazy stuff in the Bible. It is out there. Like, far out there. Wild and confusing things fill the pages of Bible.

And just when I start to think that I know what’s going on, that’s when I come across a passage or book that is way over my head.

But that is okay, and I daresay, a good thing. It’s okay—good even—to be blown away and bewildered by the things that fill the Bible. It’s what we’re talking about on Penprints today (if the title of the post didn’t tell you that already).

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Let’s take just a couple minutes to talk about a few different types of literature in the Bible.

Historical Narrative

This kind of stuff is simple for the most part, once you come to grips with just how depraved humanity is,

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just how holy and righteous and sovereign God is and everything that goes along with that,

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and the literally mind-blowing miracles and such that God does all the time.

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(Why, yes, I did just use two gifs in the middle of a sentence about human depravity and God’s holiness, but it’s just one of those I-don’t-even-care-because-this-is-how-it-is posts.)

Prophecy

Some of the prophecies in the Bible are just… wut.

I have a fairly vivid, expansive imagination due to all the sci-fi, fantasy, and biblical accounts I’ve been exposed to my entire life (thank you, parentals), and I’ve been introduced to theories about prophetic passages my entire life as well (thank you again, parentals). But on first glance, I just don’t know what to make of a lamb standing as though it’s been slain with seven horns and seven eyes.

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actual footage of me trying to talk about prophecy

And that bit imagery is straightforward compared to some of the other pictures painted with prophecy in the Bible.

Poetry

 

So there’s poetry.

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And then there’s ancient Hebrew poetry.

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And then there’s Holy Spirit-inspired, ancient Hebrew poetry.

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Oh, and sometimes the Holy Spirit-inspired, ancient Hebrew poetry is also poetic prophecy.

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So there’s that.

Epistles

Let’s not forget these bad boys. They’re rarely as simple as all the flowery shareables online make them out to be. My goodness, no.

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The epistles read so beautifully, but it’s crazy how quickly you can come to realize that you actually don’t know what all the lovely words mean. Like, a third heaven? What? What does it meant to be “caught up” to this third heaven? And what about the other two heavens?

The point of all this is to say that it is natural to be confused by verses, passages, themes, and whole books of the Bible.

Please don’t get disheartened by what’s confounding. Don’t give up on trying to know God because of the mental strain required to grasp/reconcile the confusing things.

Don’t buy into the lies that you’re not smart enough to understand because you’re “just not cut out for it” or that you’re less spiritual because you don’t understand or that you will never understand, because they are all just that—lies.

As far as your intellect goes, understanding the Bible is not about being smart enough or having the right sort of mind for it. The Bible is richer and deeper than you or I can imagine, but God has not made it inaccessible. He didn’t write it for a select few. Maybe you’re a genius. Maybe you’re more like me. Regardless, you don’t understand parts of the Bible not because you’re “just not cut out for it”; you don’t understand parts of the Bible because the Holy Spirit hasn’t illuminated them to you yet.

(Sidenote: God is far more glorified in making the simple wise than he is in smart people figuring something out on their own.)

When it comes to being more or less spiritual, well, I don’t believe that is a biblical measure (because don’t forget that demons are spiritual). The measure isn’t in being more or less anything than anyone else. The measure is godliness. Christlikeness. In your core, expressed in your words and actions—not in what you do or do not understand.

And you can understand. Just because something’s baffling right now doesn’t mean that it always will be. Be proactive. Take steps to understand what you don’t understand.

  • Ask for the Holy Spirit to open your eyes and help you. Don’t rely on only your mind and human resources.
  • Don’t skip the first suggestion.
  • Get a good commentary (no matter what you may have heard or think about the recent happenings at Moody Bible Institute, the Moody Bible Commentary is an excellent, trustworthy resource to have on your shelf if you’re looking for a whole-Bible commentary).
  • Get a study Bible (the ESV study Bible seems to have solid notes, as does the MacArthur study Bible. Don’t skip research when buying a study Bible. Try to get an idea of who wrote the notes and if they’re trustworthy.)
  • Ask your pastors and small group leaders questions.
  • Read the difficult passage. And then read it again. And then read it again.
  • Don’t give up. Knowing God and his Word isn’t easy, so keep working at it. Keep studying. Keep learning. Don’t throw in the towel.

Friends, when God commanded us to know and keep and love and live his Word, he did not give us an impossible task.

If you’re confused by the Bible, good. Good because it means you’re thinking about a theme or passage deeply and intentionally. It means your brain didn’t drop into autopilot while you were “reading” the Bible. It means you’re invested.

Please don’t feel silly; just seek to understand.

What have been some things from the Bible you’ve grappled with? What’s been confusing? And what do you do when you don’t understand?

With love,

Rosalie

P.S. – a special shout-out to 2 Corinthians for being confusing to me right now and inspiring this post.

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March 26, 2018

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God, Life, The Christian Life, Uh, This is Random

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What do you mean this post is supposed to have a title? [it’s something about saying the same thing again and again]

About six or eight months ago, I decided to try to post a God-related blog post every other week so that I would write and share thoughts and findings about God, the Christian life, Jesus, etc. more often because I’d been inconsistent in my posting before. Now, I’m thinking about that decision a little more critically.

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Sometimes I worry that I’m just saying the same thing over and over again on this blog.

Sad to be single? –> Be careful not to listen to your emotions too much. Pray. Focus on Jesus. Read the Bible.

Need some hope? –> Be careful not to listen to your emotions too much. Focus on Jesus. Pray. Listen to some good music. Read the Bible. You need the Holy Spirit’s help. You don’t know everything.

Struggling with sleeplessness? –> Pray. Listen to some good music. Work on memorization and meditation. Focus on Jesus. Read the Bible. Also, the Psalms.

Judging others? –> You’ve got some pride. Think about yourself in relation Jesus. Focus on Jesus. You need the Holy Spirit’s help.

Need an appetite for God? –> Think about yourself in relation to Jesus. Pray. You need the Holy Spirit’s help. Also, the Psalms. Read the Bible.

Self-control issues? –> You need the Holy Spirit’s help. Focus on Jesus.

Giving or receiving writing critique? –> You’ve got some pride issues. Be kind.

Trials? – You don’t know everything. You need the Holy Spirit’s help. Focus on Jesus.

In sum: God, Jesus, the Bible. Emotions = fickle and untrustworthy. Pride bad and you’ve got it. Here’s my current playlist on the subject. Read the Bible. You’re having daily devotions, right? The Psalms. Also, the Holy Spirit.

Anyone else noticing a theme? A few common denominators?

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently (aka: the last six to eight months)–if I’m just saying the same thing over and over again, should I simply stop writing about God-related things? Is it useless?

Or is it that maybe the answers to many questions are a lot more simple than we like to believe?

Because, really, how much will our lives change if the Holy Spirit is filling every breathing moment?

Because, really, how much will our lives change if we sit down everyday to carefully read and contemplate the Bible?

Because, really, how much will our lives change if we go daily to our knees and put in the effort to pray like we mean it when we say, “Thank you for this day” and “In Jesus’s name, amen”?

I believe my life, and yours too, will change in ways I cannot begin to imagine.

So while I don’t want to become a broken record on this blog, I don’t want to stop saying what’s true.

1) We over-complicate things, expecting a hundred different solutions to a hundred different problems, but the solution is really quite simple: Read the Bible; pray everyday.

2) We’re creatures who so quickly forget. So, I’ll remind myself and anyone who reads Penprints about the simple truth, the simple Gospel, as long as I need reminding (spoiler alert: that will be a very, very, very long time).

On the other hand, topical blog posts can only take us so far.

I want to start doing something a little different here on Penprints. I want to keep writing topical posts about the Christian life when I have something to say, but I don’t want to speak just to fill the silence every other week.

To balance out the topical posts that seem to all end the same way just with different words, I want to start doing a few more exegetical study posts. I have the four Servant Songs from Isaiah and a few other passages in mind that I want to share studies from sometime this year (“sometime this year” is my way of giving myself an opportunity to procrastinate).

The point of this post.

Some things are worth repeating, but that does not give us *cough cough* me license to grow lazy and simply say the same thing over and over again because I feel like I have to say something but have nothing else new or helpful to say.

It’s just one of those things that’s hard to balance like the Force, but for all our sakes I shall do my best.

What sorts of posts do you want to see on Penprints? What are you up to this happy Monday?

With love,

Rosalie

P.S. – I’m sorry for how last week’s post tried to drag you out of your inbox by giving only an excerpt of the post in the email. I was fiddling with the settings and accidentally hit the wrong button. But I don’t want to be the blogger who tries to up pageviews by not giving her loyal followers the whole post by email as promised (I have unfollowed blogs for that very crime).

P.P.S. – For those of you still trying to figure out if you’re in the 15% that knows what the feature image has to do with this post, there is no 15%. The picture has nothing to do with this post. All our minds = blown. Lol, sometimes I think I’m so funny.

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March 12, 2018

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God, hope, The Christian Life

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When Hope Is Gone

I shared in this post a little bit of my struggle with hope recently, and we’re going to explore the battle for/with hope in today’s post.

However, I do want to say from the outset that this is not a post about depression—at least not the go-to-counseling, take-some-medication, etc. kind of depression. This is more about the situational depression that most—if not all—Christians will face at least once in their life, the times when hope is gone.

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As Christians, our lives are based on hope—hope in our Christ, hope for the future given to us by our Christ, hope despite the world of death we live in. Our hope is our confidence in Christ, our trust that He is who He said He is, that He’ll do what He said He will, and that in the end, we will be with Him.

But sometimes our hope can falter or collapse altogether. These are the seasons when our hope for the present time is deferred, and our hearts get sick. We get caught in a situation that beats the confidence right out of us—not the confidence that it will all be okay in the end but the confidence that we can make it through tomorrow.

Pain dims our vision, and it makes it seem like Jesus and all His triumph are so far away, too far away. We know in our heads that God is good. We know in our heads that this mess will end up for our good, eventually. We know in our heads that it will be all right, that God is righteous and kind and trustworthy.

Countless situations wring the hope right out of us. The death of a friend. The unfaithfulness of a spouse. The indifference of a child who’s walked away from God. The church that tears itself—you included—apart. The job that’s draining the lifeblood out of you. The storms that just. won’t. end.

The longer a trial goes on, the harder it is to walk through it with hope, and each of us has a breaking point, the point where pain gets to be too much, the point where we reach for hope and it’s just gone, completely out of reach.

I wish I could give five steps to reclaim hope, but it’s not that simple.

It’s never simple when you try to pray but you can only sit in silence or cry at God. It’s never simple when you’re sobbing four different times in one day. It’s never simple when you try to worship but you can’t lift your head past your hurt. It’s never simple when you need to talk about it but you don’t know how.

It’s never simple when you call out to God and beg for good things, things that are in His Word, things that seem like they would bring Him glory, things that seem like they would be His will, and He says “no” again and again and again and again and again until you don’t know what to pray for.

But hope is never truly gone, and that is what we have to remember.

Hope is never truly gone because God is never gone. Yes, it can feel like He’s far away, but He’s not. Yes, sometimes we have no way of knowing when it will get better—or even if it will get better—but someday it will, even if that day isn’t until we go meet Jesus in the clouds.

Yes, eternity can seem like it’s a lifetime away and the present can be like a millstone, but our hope cannot be fixed in the present. We are a people crafted for an eternity with God. We are a people set apart as priests and prophets and exiles always looking toward our home.

Recently, this was hard truth for me to swallow. I wanted hope for now, but instant hope is flimsy hope. I learned that Jesus alone must be enough, and that He is enough because He is all that is sure and steady in life.

When I came to the end of my hope and I sat on the floor trying to pray while I cried, I encountered comfort from the Holy Spirit. At the end of my strength, He had more than enough. When I wasn’t sure when life would get better, that was all right because He’s promised that eternal life will be better than my wildest imaginings. When my faith and hope gave way, there was an ocean of grace for me to fall into. When I failed, He did not.

And He’s where I fix my hope.

Whenever I come up short, in any way that I come up short, He has plenty.

So when your hope is gone, keep your eyes open. Wrestle with God. Look into eternity. Don’t believe the lies your heart tells you; what you feel does not change what’s true. Weep and mourn when you must. Keep moving with endurance. Remember that God is infinite and far too high for us to always see how He’s working it for good. Read and reread Hebrews—it’s all about faith and hope. Learn to sing when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

Hold fast to your confidence in Christ. Don’t lose heart. Don’t give up. With God, hope is never truly gone. Our Prize is far too valuable to give up now.

With love,

Rosalie

P.S. – thank you to all of you who gave encouragement when I first mentioned my struggles with hope a few weeks ago, especially Gabby and Moya. <3

P.P.S. – this is such a huge subject, and I hardly went into WHY we cannot give up or faith’s relationship with hope, so if you guys are interested, we might be exploring this a little more in the coming year.