What happened??? I can see the sky through my roof! Vision SPENDIFOROUS!!! OK just kidding. I’m not good at holding a straight face…
I bought a wall sticker on eBay, or should I say ceiling sticker (see below). I have a special affection for blue sky and white clouds. It makes me happy! So I have my very own special one in my entrance hall. There for guests to enjoy. And me EVERY SINGLE TIME!
Opening to heaven. JOY JOY JOY!!!
Psalm 84
1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
Lord Almighty!
2 My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out
for the living God.
Sigh of deep relief and satisfaction! Wow. My spirit sucks in life when I read these verses. It reminds me of God’s presence and how good he is and how deep his life fills me, at those times when he overwhelms me. I am brought back to the place of inner life and sustenance and I DRINK. Hahaha. Nothing like it.
3 Even the sparrow has found a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may have her young—
a place near your altar,
Lord Almighty, my King and my God.
Birds get a mention. I like sparrows. They’re cute and little. Feeling a bit jealous of the sparrow here. Imagine having your babies right near God’s altar. Wow. Talk about safety and atmosphere. Woopee!
4 Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
Yep!
5 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
Oh this is the one. One of my most favourite verses in the Bible. Inspires me to tears. HEARTS SET on PILGRIMAGE. Each word speaks volumes. It’s not your brain set on pilgrimage, it’s your HEART. Oh the innermost part that has such powerful decision making ability. The part that sees broader than the intellect, that knows what the mind cannot. And the heart is not wishy washy here. It is SET!!!!!! FIXED!!! LOCKED!!! Absolutely decided 100%, not moving away, not turning aside. Course set. No more questions! And what is it set on? Oh the joy! PILGRIMAGE. Hahahahahahahaha. Love it!
Pilgrimage. Knowing this is going to be a long journey. Knowing there are going to be many ups and downs. There will be dangers, there will be massive obstacles, there will be temptations and pitfalls, but glorious joys and the opportunity to massive overcoming. It’s a journey with God and in God and to God. And it’s terribly difficult and its amazingly liberating.
It reminds me of another of my favourite verses,
James 1:2-4 – “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
It’s JOYOUS, facing the trials, because they bring GOLD that you can’t get any other way. Every trial is a privilege, an honour, an opportunity. When you go through it with God, in his ways, then you get GOLD. You get maturity, wisdom, patience, humility. Oh wow. The list can go on and on and on. And all of these things are amazingly invaluable, more precious than a mansion with big trees and gorgeous flowers. And they build and grow and bring LIFE. Cos God’s ways are smart and life bringing.
6 As they pass through the Valley of Baka,
they make it a place of springs;
the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
7 They go from strength to strength,
till each appears before God in Zion.
I can’t believe this Psalm just keeps getting more and more awesome. It’s nearly at bursting point. Talk about inspiring. As we pass through the valley of weeping, we don’t just trudge through and come out gasping. No! We make it a place of springs. We make our pain and our trial something amazing and beautiful and life bringing. Bad turns to good. Pain turns to victory. What triumph. What glory. Every trial a privilege and an honour. Let’s stop running from the pain and let’s embrace God’s path through and get true riches! And yep – this means going from strength to strength. Mighty warriors these pilgrims are. Truly satisfying way of living. Stuff of heroes!
8 Hear my prayer, Lord God Almighty;
listen to me, God of Jacob.
9 Look on our shield, O God;
look with favor on your anointed one.
Let’s keep going…
10 Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
Here we go again. Drinking in the awesomeness. So TRUE. Roller coaster at theme park doesn’t compare to the presence of God.
10b I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
I would rather scrub heaven’s golden streets and bask in his presence, than be queen of popularity with God haters. Seriously, we are going to be blown away when we meet Jesus face to face one day. The comparison between the house of God and the tents of the wicked will be ridiculous. Maybe like saying, hey – how would you like to lick that worm, or hey – how would you like to be served by the world’s best chef every day for the rest of your life. I wish everyone could have just a taste of God’s presence, of the inner life that he brings. He is SO much more than a belief and we don’t have to wait until heaven to experience his glory. We get tastes here and some of them are long tastes, and they change us. And you never want to go back to anything else. It’s all muck and slime in comparison!
11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.
12 Lord Almighty,
blessed is the one who trusts in you.
Blessed, blessed, blessed. Means happy, happy, happy. Yep. When I trust him, my heart is free. When I worry – that’s not a path of life. NOT fun as I know from experience. That’s not God’s way. God’s way is trust. That’s the path of pilgrimage. That’s the path of favour and honour. That’s the path I LOVE!
In my early 20s I was given the opportunity to preach at my local church. I was excited. Unlike many people who fear public speaking, I love it. I wanted to bring a good smacking sermon. Something with some punch and grit. I decided to speak on obedience.
I presented my great idea to the Holy Spirit, but felt like he said, ‘no – love and obedience’. I didn’t like that answer, so I tried again. Maybe I had heard wrong. But I got the same answer. So I let it be and kept thinking about my sermon on obedience. But I had no peace about it. I kept remembering about love and obedience. But I was miserable about this because I felt that the inclusion of love was going to make my sermon fluffy and nice, with a lack of punch. It reminded me of Sunday school and being good and being nice. All sweet, but I wanted PUNCH! To be honest, I had no heart revelation.
As time was running out I started to feel desperate. And I felt miserable. I was not passionate about the topic and I couldn’t bear to preach without being passionate. I couldn’t fake it! So I earnestly pleaded with God, ‘if you want me to preach on ‘love and obedience’ then you have to give me a revelation!’
I don’t know how much later, but I remember being in my loungeroom in front of the gas heater, in Boronia, Melbourne. I was in the presence of God. I can’t remember how it happened, but I remember that it was incredibly intense. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay in His presence forever. It was so incredibly wonderful, like nothing one can experience in any other possible way. I felt his love SO strong. This was so long ago, but I cry so much just writing this. It was so deeply profound and life changing.
The biggest thing I remember was feeling like I couldn’t wait to be tested on an area of sin, no matter how small, so I could OBEY God. Because I LOVED him! I just couldn’t wait to obey Him so I could express this LOVE. The next day I knew I would be driving to work at Northside Christian College. Haha now I remember what year it was – 2000. I couldn’t wait to get in my car and stick to the speed limit… because I LOVED GOD and I didn’t want to break the road rules – even a little bit. Normally I reluctantly kept to the speed limit, because I knew it was right – but I would push it a bit. I like a bit of adrenalin and a bit of racing and winning. So my driving was to speed off at the lights and beat the other cars, then slow down when I got just over the speed limit, cos I knew 3km over was safe to not get fined. But not this time. I was going to delight in sticking to the speed limit, finding joy in every step of the journey, every practice of patience. It was not a burden, it was an absolute joy! I can’t tell you how much I thoroughly enjoyed this.
The ecstasy of this revelation did not remain at this intense level, but dissipated to a lower level over time. But I have never ever ever forgotten this revelation. It has been written into the core of my heart. When I do what God tells me to do, it is with pleasure and trust, because I love Him. The energy to obey is so different. The gritting one’s teeth is not like it was. It can be hard, it can be tough, but when I think of who is asking, my heart is so, so much quicker to respond and with joy. I love Him so much. This changed my life and the way I view life and sin and reading the Bible. Everything!
I’m not as loving a driver as I was that first day, but I’m still long-term transformed.
Jesus said, “if you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15) and “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me” (John 14:21) and “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching.” (John 14:23). Jesus repeated this over and over to make sure his disciples ‘got it’.
John who recorded these words must have ‘got it’, because in his subsequent letter of 1 John, he writes “in fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,” (1 John 5:3) and then from another angle, “Those who keep his commands live in him, and he in them.” (1 John 3:24)
I used to have a black chair in my office and it was OK. No emotional stirrings, just functional. Yep. Life goes on without your preferred colour.
Then one day something exciting happened. I was on my local community Facebook page and there it was! An ad wanting to give away two desk chairs FOR FREE! And one of them was RED! Super excited I typed in SOLD and hoped for the best. I knew there were a few very small imperfections where the arms had been grazed, but hoping everything else was OK.
I picked it up and brought this beauty home and boy was I happy!
I have a RED office chair. Revolves and wheels perfectly and comfortable. And did I say IT’s RED!!!! I don’t know if you’ve picked this up yet, but I particularly like RED! Especially red coats and red hats and red bags. Not too much – I do appreciate other colours. It’s just one that features in my wardrobe as it generally suits my complexion. And it’s BOLD and FUN and RED!
Every time I glance in my office now, I have a sudden happy feeling, a rush of mild endorphins, a feeling of gratefulness and satisfaction. God gets the kudos for this one. I know he knew I wanted it. He organised it. Don’t care if you disagree. I’m giving him the credit!
And oh – I nearly forgot. A red chair deserves to be sat in by a person wearing a red jacket! C’mon, this is the look people! Such fun!
The stress and exhaustion got to the point, where wise advice from someone really close, was to put our middle child Summer in a home for six months, so that my husband and I could recover and focus on the other children. Summer has microcephaly, a moderate intellectual disability and autism. Challenging behaviour has been part of the package.
Anxiety medication for our daughter was always a last resort, and so we thought this would be the time to try it. Better than giving her up for six months.
But another dear lady, in a two hour soul emergency phone call, urged me to rest in Jesus. She also had had an adrenal crash one year prior, and had gone deep with Jesus. I caught the vision.
I spent three days with my primary focus as sitting in my super comfy lounge recliner. Resting in Jesus. I knew I had to do this. Even if the medication helped Summer, I was too wrecked to even look after five normal kids, let alone two with special needs. I needed a personal breakthrough.
I sat in my super comfy chair and I didn’t want to get up.
OK I have to do this quick aside… It’s about the chair… In the week prior, I was watching a Facebook page where local people sell stuff, often cheap and occasionally for free. Well there was a 3 seater couch and 2 recliners up for sale. $500 cos it needed to go the next day. Originally bought for $4000. I really wanted it, to replace our uncomfortable stained 3 seater and 2 one seaters, but hey – $500 wasn’t growing on trees in our place. But then the next morning, the guy put ‘free to a good home’, cos he had to empty his place that day as he was moving. Well I was the first person to respond and boy did I write SOLD. My husband picked them up with the guys help that afternoon. And I tell you the whole thing was immaculate and the most comfortable lounge suite I have ever sat on in my life!
I can’t tell you how excited and pleased and thrilled and totally hap-hap-happy I was! Joy spilling all over. I sat in that recliner chair and I did NOT want to get up!
So… fast forward to resting in Jesus. God set me up to want to stay in that chair. So stay I did. And I sat there and thought about praying. But then I thought – no – I have to rest. Praying is work. Good work, but that’s not my job at the moment. And I didn’t want to just rest. I’ve done that a lot in the past 11 months trying to recover from the adrenal crash. I needed to rest in Jesus. How do I do that?
So I laid back in the recliner and with a sigh of relief, rested my inner being, as if I was just leaning right into Jesus. God must have given me grace to do this, because as I took on an inner posture of relief and relaxing into Jesus, I started to laugh, which made me cry. And then I laughed and cried out loud for ages. Friends of mine call this craughing! Love that word! When I stopped laughing, I would redo the relaxing in Jesus posture and it would set me off again.
When I thought to pray, it wasn’t restful, so then I would just relax into Jesus again. He became my place of rest, my place of safety and no striving and absolute freedom. No judgment, no stress, no weights. I can’t help crying writing this. It was absolutely wonderful. And my gut started to feel peaceful and rested. I don’t remember ever feeling my gut being rested. It always felt uptight. I would tell the psychologist that I’ve been seeing, since my crash last year, that I could feel constant uptightness in my gut. It wasn’t relaxing, but just a present reality that I didn’t know how to get rid of.
So then I felt immensely grateful and relieved to have this new feeling of rest deep within my gut. The best way to describe it was like having rivers of living water flowing within me. I laughed, because this is in the Bible (John 7:38). But I’d never experienced it quite like this.
Then on the third day of resting in Jesus, I hadn’t started Summer on the medication yet and I didn’t have carers helping me that afternoon or my husband. So I was bracing myself for having the five kids on my own, after a very tough prior weekend with Summer. I remember the kids all coming in the door after school and milling around. I was expecting them to bubble manically around me, but as soon as they came near, it was like they bounced into my peace and dissolved. They were calm. I watched their energy diffuse without me saying a word. The whole afternoon and evening was so much easier. I was OK. I was peaceful. I can’t tell you how good that was.
The next day I didn’t want to start Summer on the medication cos I wanted to see if this new inner peace impact could continue. My friend cautioned me not to use up all my new God energy on Summer. She wanted me to recover quicker. The next morning I woke up with clarity. I thought God will get the glory in the end. We can tackle this from a multi-faceted way. I started her on the medication, which we were told would have no positive impact until two weeks after starting. Summer has been consistently calmer for five weeks now, starting from two days before we started the medication.
Since then my peace and rest has been up and down, as I spend less time resting in Jesus. I can’t stay in the chair all day, as I have stuff that needs doing. So I am practicing negotiating the balance between resting in Jesus and also living life. I want to grow in this rest. God showed me what is possible with extra grace in those first three days and now I want to grow in this and practice it. I believe the medication is helping Summer continue this calm, while I am still practicing and it is helping her personally wherever she is.
I love how God shows me what is possible and then helps me journey to grow into it!
I love paying tithes! You can probably guess two of my reasons. But the third might be a bit of a shock…
(For those who don’t know what tithing is – it is setting aside 10% of one’s income for God).
One of my passions is to know God’s ways and walk in them. I read the Bible with eyes that seek to discern his ways and his heart, even if it seems to contradict the traditions I have been taught. Some times I spot things in the Bible that seem controversial because of the cultural or religious parameters I currently experience. I meditate on such Scriptures, trying to discern the difference between God’s thinking and ours, and what needs to change. Even Old Testament passages on laws that no longer apply in New Testament times, give me insight into how God thinks, what he values and what works.
Well I found a passage on tithing that really got me thinking. Have a squiz…
Deuteronomy 14:22-28:
“Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year. Eat the tithe of your grain, new wine and olive oil, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks in the presence of the Lord your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name, so that you may learn to revere the Lord your God always. But if that place is too distant and you have been blessed by the Lord your God and cannot carry your tithe (because the place where the Lord will choose to put his Name is so far away), then exchange your tithe for silver, and take the silver with you and go to the place the Lord your God will choose. Use the silver to buy whatever you like: cattle, sheep, wine or other fermented drink, or anything you wish. Then you and your household shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God and rejoice. And do not neglect the Levites living in your towns, for they have no allotment or inheritance of their own.
At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year’s produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”
I have to admit. This one baffled me, as I’ve never heard it taught before. I’d only ever heard of people paying tithes to the church, or some people would give tithes to charities or missionaries. But here in Scripture the people were instructed to eat their tithes, to have a party, a celebration. And no small celebration at that. A whole year’s worth of tithes!!! And they all did this it seems at the same place and at the same time. What a ginormous incredible lavish celebration this would have been! But God didn’t want to leave out the religious leaders (Levites) – they got to celebrate too. And of course every third year, the tithe went to providing for the religious leaders and the needy.
But the primary purpose of the tithe seemed to be for feasting and rejoicing in God’s presence, with the whole community, to teach them to revere the Lord always.
How incredibly exciting. A party of epic proportions. Wow!!!
This was doing my head in. I was thinking. What does this say about God? What was he aiming to achieve in this, that can teach us practical wisdom for now? What benefits are we missing out on by not doing this today? Here is my thought journey…
But… my heart is also to share financial responsibility for my local church home, as expressed in point number one at the top. I value this and consider it very important and necessary.
So I talked with my husband and we decided to continue our current level of tithing to our local church. And any additional income we received, we would put aside a tithe for an annual celebration before God. Again I really felt the Holy Spirit’s pleasure and excitement for this.
So last November, our family of seven had its first tithe celebration. Now this was an event! We have never taken the whole family out to a restaurant before. One, it’s too hard with our middle child who has microcephaly and autism. And two, I hate wasting money, especially as we’re not loaded. My husband and I rarely go to restaurants for this reason, so I couldn’t fathom paying not only for the two of us, but then pay for five kids as well!!! Yes, I know – stingy mentality!
So this was a Jack family first!!! And we had to find a way to make it work for our special needs daughter, or it would be a disaster. With this in mind we chose an international all you can eat buffet restaurant. This was not only perfect for lavish celebration – food everywhere and as much as you want. But it was also conducive for our middle child Summer – she could wander around and be a yo-yo at the table, and it wouldn’t matter. I invited the Oma too, so she could look out for Summer so we could all relax.
I’m telling you, the kids were beside themselves with excitement. When I first told them what we were going to do, they were counting down, they were telling their friends. They couldn’t wait. And I read the Scripture, I told them we were celebrating before God, that we were so grateful for his provision. Wow. Look how much God has blessed us, that we can have this lavish feast!!!
We were all agog at the table when we sat down to lunch. We said grace and then we went for it! I was going to advise the kids to have savoury first, but then I thought – what the heck – let the kids have whatever they want and as much as they want. Well, little five year old Micah went straight for the marshmallows and lollies. He awed at the chocolate fondue fountain. The dessert bar got lots of visits from him and the older two. Summer and Sarah, our two special needs girls were very happy too, but perhaps a little overwhelmed. They ate a bit, but needed helping. Summer went wandering around the Christmas tree that was up already one month before Christmas. She did laps. But nobody minded.
We had such joy! And there was no stress about the bill!! Hahahahahahahahahaha! Oh the joy!
I’m telling you. I was so grateful to God for this experience. I’m crying as I’m writing. I felt such freedom and joy and marvel at how amazing, big, out of this world God is.
The kids have been asking when the next celebration is. They want it twice a year. I’ve put it in the diary as an annual event. They have to wait. Next time I want to make a week of it! Glory to God!!!
