Peace Like A River

Isaiah 48:17-18

Thus says the Lord,

    your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

“I am the Lord your God,

    who teaches you to profit,

    who leads you in the way you should go.

Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments!

    Then your peace would have been like a river,

    and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;”

Last fall, I encountered the peace and joyful abundance of complete obedience to our Lord, Jesus Christ. It was a miraculous, awesome, exciting time. Afterward, His peace continued and I was amazed by the change I felt in my life and reactions. At least, for a little while… despite my best intentions, I stepped out of the river of peace and back onto the riverbank. I chose stress and anxiety instead of peace.

This is not a perfect story – in fact, it was starting to feel like a very sad story for a while – but now I believe it is a story of redemption. It is my story, the story of today, the place where Christ and I walk together at present. Our MOPS theme asks us to “embrace your story,” so I will right now – and I choose to be faithful to the Holy One who is big enough to change our stories, ways and hearts.

Way back, in December of 2012, God asked me to serve Him by playing music in association with an adoption benefit. He helped me leap over hurdles in lack of confidence, disbelief in administrative skills, discomfort in leadership. He pressed onto my heart a real, deep concern for friends and acquaintances that were obeying His call to adopt. He gave me music, excitement and incredible support. And then, he blessed the efforts of all those involved! He astounded us with His power, might and provision.

It happened like this:

When I finally stepped into true obedience (after many months, weeks, days and hours of prayer from myself and others) and sent out the message of my (God’s!) intention to hold an Adoption Benefit Concert, I received an email providing a free venue within 1 hour. Volunteers willing to help with the planning and organization popped up within 2 days. Musicians desiring to offer their talents surfaced steadily for 2 months.

Everywhere our team went, we were met with confirmation. We knew God’s hand was present. We saw greater and greater need for support of adoptive families in Sheridan. We found our efforts productive rather than frustrated and discovered more and more people willing to help, serve and pray over our event.

The end result? Despite months, days, hours of work, I rested in the supportive arms of our God. I felt alive, able and successful. My fears and doubts were replaced with complete reliance upon the abilities of God. I rested in a river of peace.

The day of the concert things began to fall apart. But, Jesus remained steadfastly on our side. He poured his spirit of peace upon us and we were able to continue without stress, without worry – knowing we were doing God’s will, God’s work. We understood with full confidence that as long as we remained in obedience to Him all would work out as He intended. It was in His hands. And we left it there.

The reward? Peace. And incredible amazement. “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20-21)” God led us in opening a fund to support adoptive families. He pieced together an event. He brought out generous giving. He taught me to never underestimate His provision, His might, His abundance.

In awe and gratitude, my autumn was framed in obedience. I thankfully allowed God to stretch, grow and change me. I rested in His peace that “passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7).” The lessons I began to learn spread themselves to other parts of my life, other places where I had previously refused to surrender control.

I realized my family is not mine. My family is God’s. I cannot protect my children 100%; I have to trust God for that.

God showed me how my anxiety regarding my husband’s safety while he’s elk hunting changes nothing. Giving God my worries, allowing Him to hold my husband – as He always has and always will – and the rest of us while Daddy’s away, that’s the only way. It provided me freedom and a strong sense of peace. I was able to sleep soundly and comfortably while my husband was gone.

And then…

December hit and I grabbed ahold of stress, worry and anxiety again. With fervor. With passion. To the detriment of my family, my mental health, my relationship with God, my relations with friends, and my enjoyment of the holiday season. Peace disappeared. Patience evaporated. And then the struggle began…

And continued…

And continues. I simply returned to old habits, old ways of doing things, my “tried and true” sort of lifestyle. Except this old stuff isn’t better! And I know that with certainty now.

“So?” you say. “What now?”

And my only answer is this:

“Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for all the ways you’ve surprised me with provision. Thank you for showing me a better way. You have promised to never take away your covenant of peace (Isaiah 54:10). Please forgive me for failing to come to you with all my anxieties, for trying to make it once again on my own. I cannot do this life-thing alone! Please lead and guide me once more in the way of peace. May I rest in your great river. Amen.”

Ladies, what is your story? What is God doing in your heart and life today? Are you ready to share it?

- Bethany Tippin, Publicity Leader

Dinner on the Wrong Night

The Bible is full of regular, everyday folks who heard the voice of God. They were usually quite busy, going about their everyday jobs like keeping wolves from eating their sheep, when God would single them out and say something profound that would end up being historical.

“Old age isnʼt an excuse, Noah. Get down to the local hardware store, because you really need to build this giant boat. If you Google the weather, youʼll see itʼs about to change.”

Those who were faithful and righteous were usually quick in their obedience, too.

My friend, Katie, hears God speak quite often. She once told me that the Lord had encouraged her to go on ahead and lay herself off work. As in, she was quite certain that her friend, Jesus, said, “Tell your boss youʼre laying yourself off from the company, and that you wonʼt be taking a paycheck from them any longer, while the company is struggling with some things.” Katie, being one who is quiet enough to know when itʼs the Lord speaking to her and when itʼs just a pesky mosquito buzzing in her ear, did just this. I was stunned. I would have argued relentlessly with Jesus and said, “Seriously? Lay myself off? Because you know thereʼs this thing called a mortgage, right? And you might not have to pay those in Heaven, but I have to pay it right now, and WHERE WILL THE MONEY FOR STARBUCKS COME FROM?” Iʼd like to say that my first instinct would have been faithful obedience, but I know myself. My first instinct would be to fight what I thought couldnʼt be right.

Katie laid herself off work. In the end, Jesus showed off a little bit and worked everything out for the better. Things didnʼt go back to how they WERE before Katie obeyed – things catapulted themselves into being even better than they had been.

Thatʼs kind of Jesusʼ MO. His Method of Operation. How He does things.

But your heart has to be still enough to hear Him speak, and you have to understand that sometimes He asks people to do strange things. In the book of Judges, Gideon didnʼt think he was capable of fighting a massive army with 300 soldiers, but God asked him to do it, and he did. And through Gideonʼs obedience, the Lord shone through, and a small army conquered one that was believed to be undefeatable.

A few years ago, I had a strange request made of me. Iʼd like to say that I blindly jumped to do exactly as I was called to do, but I didnʼt.

My husband and I know a family. A few years ago, they were a young married couple with a pack of very young children. They had children of every age, it seemed, running all over the place. The husband was very outgoing and friendly. He was easy to like, his sense of humor was incredible, and he was downright friendly. Although strikingly beautiful, his wife was the exact opposite. She was hard to get to know because she didnʼt talk much. When she did talk, her conversations were usually full of judgement toward others, and how her tribe of children were so much better than everyone elseʼs children. She was rude, she was unfriendly, and frankly, I wasnʼt interested in getting to know her very well, because she was quick to present a cold shoulder towards everyone she met. She always presented the feeling that she was much better than the world around her, so she couldnʼt be bothered to befriend those beneath her.

A few years ago, they bought a house and gutted it. They took that house down to the shell. They designed a floor plan for it, and they were going to turn it into something amazing. The husband was actually quite handy in the line of carpentry and construction, so he was doing the bulk of the work himself. His wife was helping, and somehow they were managing to get it all done while little kids ran wild everywhere.

On one particularly cold, winter day, I woke up and my VERY FIRST thought of the day was that I needed to take dinner to this family. The usual list of reasons for bringing dinner to someone didnʼt apply. They hadnʼt just delivered a new baby... no one close to them had recently died... no one was sick. And yet, all day long my heart was heavy with the thought that I was supposed to take them a meal for dinner that day.

But do you know what?

I didnʼt like the wife. She had never shown any kind of friendliness to me, or to anyone, really. She was snooty and aloof, and I figured that sheʼd be just fine cooking dinner for her many children that evening. I didnʼt WANT to take dinner to her.

I made a big pot of soup in the crockpot for our familyʼs supper.

Iʼd look at it often throughout the day and feel like I was supposed to load that crockpot up and deliver it to them. I just shook my head, because NO WAY.

Our family ate the soup. Even though cooking is my least favorite domestic chore, Iʼll just go on record and say that this soup was FANTASTIC! Paula Deen would have stood up and applauded me wildly for it. Martha Stewart would have put her fingers in her mouth and whistled her approval.

The temperatures dipped well below zero that night.

The next morning, I woke up again thinking about this family. My first thought of that day was, “I was supposed to make them dinner last night.”

So this is what I did. I huffed around my kitchen. I slammed a few measuring cups onto my countertop. I slammed cupboard doors. And in a state of angry irritation, I remade the same pot of soup, from scratch, and tossed it into my crockpot. My husband asked what I was doing. I growled, “Iʼm making soup for THAT FAMILY!” Late that afternoon, I loaded up the hot soup, and I drove to the house that they were doing an extensive remodel on. It was a ways out of town, and I had a hard time finding it in the dark, but I did.

I knocked on their door.

Their kitchen didnʼt exist. Oh, there was a spot FOR the kitchen, but no kitchen was there. They were in the process of mudding the drywall in the kitchen area. Their new stove and refrigerator were in giant boxes in their garage. Theyʼd finished a bathroom already, and it was beautiful. The tile work was amazing, and this was where they washed their dishes -- right there in that bathroom sink. There was a microwave plugged into an outlet on the floor of where the living room would be. There was a dorm-sized refrigerator plugged in across the room. They had no tile or carpet on the floor; it was just subfloors, and the kids were using markers and Crayons to decorate it.

The wife approached me and said, “What are you doing out on a cold night like this?”

I smiled. “I just thought maybe yʼall could use some dinner, so I brought over a big pot of soup and a loaf of French bread.”

She took the soup from me and said, “I already have chili in our crockpot for dinner tonight. I donʼt know when weʼll get to this soup.” She walked off, set the pot of soup on the top of a cardboard box, and picked up a crying baby.

The husband came up to me and said, “Thank you for dinner. Wow! What a surprise. Itʼs really too bad you didnʼt show up LAST NIGHT with the soup! What was it? Six degrees below zero last night? The battery in our mini van died, and I didnʼt have any way to jump it last night, and our neighbors were gone. The kids were starving. Weʼd planned to just get burgers in town last night, but we couldnʼt GET to town, so we fed the kids the packages of graham crackers and saltines that we had for their snacks earlier in the day. THAT was our dinner. Crazy, huh? And then this morning, our neighbors were back. I got the mini vanʼs battery jumped, and my wife went to town to get stuff to make chili. But man! Last nightʼs dinner was slim pickings!”

Yes, God often speaks to plain, everyday people.

But do you know what? His work wonʼt be accomplished if those regular men and women donʼt take His instructions and obey them. I have no idea what would have happened, had I showed up with a crockpot of hot soup the night before. All I know is that this family saw an ill-timed meal brought to them. It didnʼt show up when they needed it most, because I wasnʼt obedient.

Tammy is a wife and mother of 2 children, ages 13 and 1 1/2. She has recently joined MOPS in support of entering the baby and toddler years once again, blessedly, but somewhat unexpectedly. Her presence at our MOPS meetings is a comfort, her love for Jesus a special and hefty gift, and her sense of humor a brilliant light. She keeps us all laughing at the beauty and difficulty of motherhood through her personal blog Jedi Mama: Life at a Jedi House. We are hoping to hear from her often here on the Morning MOPS Blog!

Thursday Thoughts With Theresa: "In Which We Were Built for the Valley"

“We have all had times on the mount, when we have seen things from God’s standpoint and have wanted to stay there; but God will never allow us to stay there. The test of our spiritual life is the power to descend…” Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Have you ever anticipated something big in your life? Or maybe you’ve experienced what it feels like to become a brand new Christian. Or maybe you’ve experienced God revealing something in your life that has brought you immense joy.

As mothers of preschoolers, at the least, we’ve all  experienced the anticipation of becoming a bride and the anticipation of becoming mother. Two of the most glorious times of our lives, I’ll bet. And with each, we’ve understood that mountain top experience. And with each, we’ve had to come down.

We’ve had to come down to the trenches of figuring out how two people with two different personalities and two different upbringings merge as one. And we’ve had to come down to the trenches of sleepless nights with our new infants and temper tantrums with our toddlers; navigating the valleys of our own short temperaments, lack of patience and selfishness.

What happened to our glorious mountain top experience? And what do we do with the messes that seem to cloud the anticipation of a bigger picture?

Oswald Chambers tells us that, “We are not built for the mountains, and the dawns and aesthetic affinities, those are for moments of inspiration, that is all. We are built for the valley, for the ordinary stuff we are in, and that is where we have to prove our mettle.”

You see, all this ordinary stuff we do as moms and as wives and as children of God is what we were created for. This is where the real work happens in our lives. We may not see it or feel it when we’re in the trenches, diligent and disciplined, enduring and courageous. But this is where the true test of our spiritual lives rest. The power to come down from that mount and work out our salvation, work at our marriages, and to work through the messes that come with raising these children for his glory.

So dear moms, do not despair when your everydays are not ringing with melodic tunes. God hears the melody even when we don’t. Be diligent. Be courageous. Endure. Your work matters.

And those moments he does give us on those mounts will be all the more glorious because of the valleys we have encountered and trusted him through.

-Theresa Miller, MOPS mom

Theresa is a wife and mother of four children (3, 5, 7, and 9), who are embarking on their first year of homeschooling. Theresa has been involved in Sheridan MOPS for the last 9 ½ years, serving in multiple leadership positions, including Day MOPS Coordinator in 2007-2008. She took one year off, then started the Sheridan Evening MOPS group in September 2009. Theresa has published an article with MOPS International MOMSnext Ezine, in addition to other on-line publications. You can find Theresa encouraging mothers on her blog, Heavenly Glimpses.

Thursday Thoughts with Theresa: "When We Step Out of the Box with God"

I laid there with my face squished into my pillow sobbing that one turbulent day, three weeks into our homeschool journey, "Why, God? If this was your idea for us, then why are you letting this happen? Why is today so hard?" I knew without a doubt that this was what we were supposed to be doing. Although we enjoyed our children's previous school and teachers, the vision for homeschool was greater. So all I could do was wrestle with God over it. Then go back to my four children only to return and wrestle some more.

I was like a Jacob, who needed to be broken before I could be sent forth with a blessing and a new name.

There have been messy days in my life as a mother, but that day was the epitome of messy, wrapped and sealed by guilt. I had been brought to an all-time low and I just couldn't understand why God was allowing that.

And then, shortly after, I stumbled upon this passage on a friend’s blog:

"When we let God out of the box, he doesn't step out with a harness on and offer us the reigns. He bursts out like a lion and dares us to grab a hold of his mane and ride."

That was the answer to my, "Why, God?"

Because I realized that I had been searching for the reigns that day. I wanted a better handle on the direction and predictability of our homeschool.

Here we had stepped out of the box in faith, yet still I wanted everything to look tidy and clean in the process and he was letting me know clearly that there was no tidy little corner reserved for my control.

When we step out of the box with God we step out in pure faith, pure trust.

And it gets messy. And it's hard. But it's supposed to be that way because sometimes he has to break us in order for us to ride that wild lion on, what could be, the greatest adventure of our lives.

The very next day, I woke up to the "Hallelujah" chorus, I am sure. Because it was a new day and it was glorious, refreshing and filled with joy. I ached still a little from the injury to my pride, but I knew this journey had taken a new turn. We'd have our ups. We'd have our downs. But we were all in for where God was taking us.

When we step out of the box and say, "Yes," to what God asks of us, it may get messy. But that does not always indicate that our choice was wrong. God works in and through the messes of our lives to mold us and bring us to the places he has prepared.

I am so glad he has dared me to grab on and trust him for this adventure.

In what areas is he daring you to step out of the box and grab on?

-Theresa Miller, MOPS mom

Theresa is a wife and mother of four children (3, 5, 7, and 9), who are embarking on their first year of homeschooling. Theresa has been involved in Sheridan MOPS for the last 9 ½ years, serving in multiple leadership positions, including Day MOPS Coordinator in 2007-2008. She took one year off, then started the Sheridan Evening MOPS group in September 2009. Theresa has published an article with MOPS International MOMSnext Ezine, in addition to other on-line publications. You can find Theresa encouraging mothers on her blog, Heavenly Glimpses.