Cancel culture is alive and well in America today. 

If you dare to disagree with whatever “they” deem to be acceptable thinking on a topic or issue, the mob gangs up and cancels you — your social media presence, you job or business, whatever it is that is important to you and your livlihood. You’re now a cancel culture victim.

We see it on both sides of the political aisle, as people and companies are boycotted by those who disagree with them, all with the intent of destroying reputations, social status, and finances.

This ultimate rejection isn’t new. It’s an old tactic that’s been around a long time.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows].

John 10:10 Amplified

Satan is the original cancel culture maven. He wants you to fail, so he will do all he can to discourage you, steal your blessings of peace and  joy, kill your relationship with God, and destroy your life’s purpose and calling. In short, his desire is to cancel every Christ-follower. 

How do we recognize our enemy? Let’s look at a few of his tactics.

Sometimes the voice of rejection that is shouting the loudest in my head is my own voice. 

What? How could this be? Well, think about what you’re filling your head with. What thoughts are taking up the precious real estate in your brain, as Dr. Caroline Leaf is fond of saying. 

First, the enemy plants a negative thought in our minds, and before we know it, we’ve not questioned whether it’s true or not, but we’ve accepted it as true, and we let its poison have free rein in our minds.

For instance, after years of believing that God would equip me to do what He was calling me to do, the thought popped into my head that that wouldn’t be true for me any longer.  What God was calling me to do in this next phase of life was just too big for me to do, too audacious.

Who was Just Little Old Me to think that God would take the time to equip me to do this? I chewed on that thought, I hate to admit, for months, and my faith plummeted. I felt stuck, depressed, and lethargic. I wasted a lot of time in the doldrums by letting those thoughts run unchecked through my brain. 

Another problem is the voice of comparison. 

I don’t have to look very far to find those doing similar work as I am who are 

• smarter
• younger
• better connected
• more resourceful
• prettier

By the time I’ve made it to the bottom of that list, I’ve forgotten all about the calling on my life and how God has equipped me in the past. 

But God hasn’t.

Finally, I started listening to the right voice in my head. The voice of the Holy Spirit who reminded me that I can do all things God wants me to do “through Christ who strengthens me.”

I stopped giving the negative voice in my head so much real estate and started thinking God’s thoughts. I realized that Satan was trying to cancel God’s purpose and plans for me in this next phase of life, but that on the cross God had already canceled Satan’s hold on my life. I just needed to believe it.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception [pseudo-intellectual babble] according to the traditions [and musings] of mere men, following the elementary principles of this world, rather than following [the truth — the teachings of] Christ.

Colossians 2:8 Amplified

If we didn’t have a choice in the matter, God would have never told us to “see to it.” It’s my choice what I think and what I believe. Don’t let Satan push the cancel button on your calling.

See to it that you find it and live it out. 

How about you? What is the enemy trying to cancel in your life right now? And what do you need to do to cancel him? Let me know in the comments below.

“Jane,” my husband said in a tone that got my attention. “Are you even listening to what I just said, because your answer didn’t make sense at all.”

I looked up guiltily knowing that I was caught trying to do two things at once — and not doing well at either of them. Too often I try to listen with one ear to my husband while my attention is wandering to something else.

A few days later, I read this verse in my Bible:

“I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the LORD. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God.” Psalm 84:2 NLT

Thinking about that verse and my inattention to my husband, I realized that I often do the same thing to God. “Do I ever do anything with my whole being?” I wondered.

Multitasking = Multifailures

I’ve fallen for the lie that multitasking is a good thing, when in reality it doesn’t play out that way in my life. Multitasking means that my focus is split between multiple things at the same time, so rarely do I ever give my best to any one thing — God, my family, my work, or myself. In Psalm 84, we see that the writer is solely focused on worshiping God: his whole being, body and soul, is consumed with joyfully praising God.

A complete package is what God wants us from us, fully engaged and focused on him. What that involves probably looks a little different for each one of us. For me, that means that I do the following:

• Shut off the notifications on my phone during devotions so I am not distracted by a new message waiting impatiently for me to read it
• Show up at my  volunteer job prepared and ready to work every Tuesday evening
• Look at my husband when he is talking to me
• Don’t check my email when I’m talking on the phone with family and friends so I can focus on what they’re saying

Healthy Body and Soul

With my whole being also requires taking care of my body and soul because if they’re not as healthy as I can make them, then I won’t be able to give my whole being.

Body

 A strong body makes a healthy place for the Holy Spirit to reside. It gives me energy and vitality to do the work God gives me. Believe me, I know how it is to feel weak and helpless.

• Food — Following a gluten-free diet is important to my health. It was one of the things that allowed me to recover from a several-year illness that had me sidelined and afraid to leave my house. I also  avoid most sugary foods and try to eat greens and other vegetables. The further away a food is from the state God made it in, the farther away I try to stay from it.
• Exercise — It has taken me most of my life to get some discipline where exercise is concerned. I still struggle with it, but now love walking, riding my bike, and paddle boarding when I get the chance. I feel better when I am active on a regular basis. It certainly makes it easier that I have a fit family, but you could be the one that starts this habit in your family.
• Sleep — I am alert and energized when I keep a consistent sleep schedule, and for me that means not staying up late.

Soul

• Devotion — Spending time with God keeps me connected and grounded. It gives me the strength, stamina, and joy to live a balanced life and to be a witness for Him. I’m not perfect at this, but I do aim for several days a week.
• Gifts — God has given each one of us gifts to use in His kingdom, so I need to budget and invest time and resources into developing and using those gifts. I’ve learned not to feel guilty about taking a class, attending a seminar, joining a group, or working on a certification. Granted, I take the time to pray about and seek what God has for me to do before just jumping in. Lest you feel like you’re too old and your best years are behind you,  I’ve found that God bestows new gifts on us during different phases of our lives. So, no excuses! Seek what He has for you now, whether you’re 18 or 88.
• Work — Whatever work God has given me to do, I need to make it a priority. Focusing and concentrating on the tasks at hand and organizing  my time wisely help me to be more productive.
• Rest — We all need times of rest and relaxation where we pull back to regroup and take a break. Schedule small breaks throughout the day. Get up and walk around. Take a 10-minute cat nap. Jog in place for a few minutes. Stretch. Go look out the window and take a short walk outside. As the budget allows, plan for longer times of rest, like a weekend retreat. A new perspective makes for a healthy body and soul.

Start Where You Are

Even if you are in a busy time of life, such as a parent of young children, a caregiver, or in a demanding career, look for small segments of time where you are solely focused on the task at hand. Connect with God by snatching 15 minutes of concentrated prayer before the kids get up; take a prayer walk on your lunch hour at work  (phone off); arrange for a family member to give you a break from caregiving and do something that refreshes you. Start small and as the ebb and flow of your life changes, learn how to grab those times of focus in other areas too.

Practical Tip:  Instead of trying to change everything at once, choose one new area of focus. Actually write it in your calendar or put a sticky note on your desk that says: Get up at 5:45 for devotions or whatever it is and then do it. Once you have established this habit, start another one.

I’m finding out that “with your whole being” is really a habit and a choice. Being aware of the tendency to be fragmented is the first step toward offering a focused body and soul to God, a spouse, and others.

How about you? Please share any tips that enable you to be a “with my whole being” person.

Pray on!

“Therefore, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘Look! I am placing a foundation stone in Jerusalem, a firm and tested stone. It is a precious cornerstone that is safe to build on. Whoever believes need never be shaken. I will test you with the measuring line of justice and the plumb line of righteousness.” (Isaiah 28:16-17a NLT)

In Part 1 of this post, we left Israel in limbo waiting through 400 years of silence from God. I can’t imagine living my whole life without any sign or word from God. Finally, God breaks His silence, and He does it through a series of spectacular angelic visitations.

• The angel Gabriel appears to Zacharias the priest when Zacharias is burning incense in the temple of the Lord. Gabriel explains that Zacharias and Elizabeth (who are elderly and childless) will be blessed with a baby who will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. ( Luke 1:5-25)
• Appearing with even more astounding news, Gabriel also visits a virgin Mary to tell her that she is blessed among women because she has found favor with God and will bear the Son of the Highest. (Luke 1: 26-38)
• An angel of the Lord appears to Mary’s fiancé, Joseph, in a dream and tells him to not be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because the child she carries is conceived by the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18-25)
• An angel of the Lord appears to shepherds in a field to tell them of the Savior’s birth, and then a whole host of angels lights up the sky before them rejoicing. (Luke 2:8-20)
• Three wise men from the East are divinely warned in a dream not to return to Herod after they have seen the baby Jesus. (Matthew 2:12)

Exit Law Enter the Grace of the Cross

To our eternal benefit, God sends a heavenly baby to earth and in that action He does away with the law as a means of forgiving sin. No one had been able to keep the law until, that is, Jesus came to earth and lived a sinless life. Jesus did what no one before Him was able to do and no one after Him will ever be able to do. God put the penalty of the world’s sin on Jesus. His death on the cross included payment for my sin and your sin. God then forever broke the power of sin and death with Jesus’s spectacular Resurrection three days after His death.

We now have a new plumb line: the cross.

When we confess our sins and accept Jesus’ payment for them on the cross, we are forever in true with God because of the plumb line of the cross! And each day, we can align ourselves with Jesus and the Holy Spirit to make sure we are continually transformed into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18).

God has always provided a plumb line for us. For the rest of history, that plumb line is Jesus and the cross.

No matter how crooked your life may look right now, the plumb line of the cross can straighten you out with God. You can start your journey with God by praying this simple prayer:

Dear God,

I admit that I am a sinner. I ask that you forgive me for my sins. I realize on my own I can do nothing to make up for them. I accept Jesus’ death on the cross as payment for my sins, and I ask Him to take charge of my life. Amen.

If you just prayed that prayer and you are able to do so, please leave us a message below in the comments. God bless you.

Pray on!

Then he showed me another vision. I saw the Lord standing beside a wall that had been built using a plumb line. He was using a plumb line to see if it was still straight. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”

I answered, “A plumb line.”

And the Lord replied, “I will test my people with this plumb line. I will no longer ignore all their sins. The pagan shrines of your ancestors[a] will be ruined, and the temples of Israel will be destroyed; I will bring the dynasty of King Jeroboam to a sudden end.”                    Amos 7:7-9

~

(Just in case you’ve never used a plumb line, let me explain how it works. Basically a plumb line is a long string with a weight at the end. When you want to establish what is perfectly true or vertical, you suspend the string from the top of a structure and then let it unfurl itself so that the weight dangles straight down without touching the wall or object you’re trying to align.  When it stops moving the vertical line or true has been established. I used one years ago when I was wallpapering my kitchen.)

I am so taken with these scriptures today. I can just picture God  

a plumb line from his hand and then turning his gaze upon His children Israel to see how they line up. Now that makes me nervous. Why? Because I know I could very well be next on the test list!

Stickler for Perfection

Well, we can clearly see that God who created our world and everything in it is a stickler for perfection. We need only consider the beauty of creation in Genesis 1 to see that. Unfortunately, the perfect world God created didn’t last too long. Sin marred the garden and all of creation including people, and we haven’t been the same since. It bothered God that His world and His people were out of true.

At the stage of history that Amos finds himself in, the Israelites were a crooked mess. They had set up pagan shrines and were worshiping false gods, among many other things. We may wonder if they were helpless to do anything about it. After all, the perfect world God made was gone.

The simple answer is “No.”

God had given the Israelites a plumb line to align themselves with, and that plumb line was the law — the rules, regulations, commandments, worship, and sacrifices that God had taught them. This was the way for them to atone for their sins so that they could continue to stay in relationship with Him.  We can see that throughout the Old Testament, the Israelites spent a good amount of time in and out of true and suffering the consequences for it: wandering in the desert for 40 years, enduring the rule of evil kings, and being defeated and taken as captives to Babylon.

Throughout these many years, God sent prophets calling the Israelites to return to the Lord, to get back in true. When they obeyed the law, God would bless them. When they ignored the call to repentance, He would allow bad things like enemy attacks to draw them back to Him, to straighten them out. Sometimes they did. Many times they didn’t. Can’t you just see Israel swinging back and forth like a pendulum on a clock? Something had to give.

Finally, God is silent for 400 years. I can’t imagine going 400 years without hearing from God, but that’s what happened. The Israelites had to wait that long for the next plumb line to appear.

We’ll talk about that in How To Measure Up to God’s Standard, Part 2.

In the meantime, share your thoughts in the comments below about why the plumb line of the law didn’t work so well for the Israelites.

Pray on!

photo credit: Wayne Hatcher via photopin cc

 

Doubt. Hopelessness. Discouragement.

Three feelings that I have struggled with today because of a situation that is very slow to resolve. Yet in the midst of this, God shows me what my place needs to be in this story by encouraging me with another’s story, that of Obadiah.

1 Kings 18 opens with a vignette of Obadiah’s life. He lived in a precarious time, during the reign of King Ahab of Israel. As you may know, King Ahab goes down as one of the most wicked kings in Israel; he was married to Jezebel, a notorious woman in her own right. Together they were a formidable pair. The people of Israel had been suffering through a three-year drought when Obadiah is introduced. The Bible describes him as “a devoted follower of the Lord.” I was then shocked to find out what his job was: Obadiah was in charge of the palace! Imagine that. Talk about being in the lion’s den.

In his position, he, a devout believer, would have constant contact with the royal family. As I thought about that, it occurred to me that it was no accident that Obadiah was where he was. God strategically put this man of faith in the place where he would be able to thwart the evil that was going on around him. And the Bible shows us that he did that. When Jezebel tried to kill all the Lord’s prophets, Obadiah heroically hid 100 of them and supplied them with food and water. He probably would not have been privy to the inside information (and resources) that tipped him off to the prophets’ plight had he been living anywhere else.

As I was lamenting my own situation, I began to see that God also has me exactly where he wants me. Right in the midst of this mess that needs the prayer of a believer. Because only God can “unmess” it. Just like Obadiah, I need to put my intercessory prayers in that gap between heaven and earth as I pray for a resolution to this problem. I may not like the situation, but I need to make myself useful while I am here.

How about you? Where does God have you at today? That illness, that relationship tangle, that addiction is just the place where he needs a prayer warrior courageously interceding for healing and reconciliation. It’s time to get to work.

Doubt. Hopelessness. Discouragement + Prayer =  Faith. Hope. Encouragement.

Pray on!

 Wounds of the heart are never easy to bear, no matter who or what causes them.

Last month, we suffered the loss of our sweet border collie, Daisy, who has been our companion, protector, playmate, and fellow adventurer for the last 14 years. I know that losing a pet pales in comparison to losing a person. But there’s no denying that Daisy was intertwined around our hearts. She grew up with our kids, and her escapades often mirrored theirs. Since Amber and Jesse have been on their own for a few years now, the house seems especially empty without Daisy to fill it up.

Amber’s heartfelt words capture some of her emotions as she tried to juxtapose two events that happened on the same day: her husband’s graduation from seminary and Daisy’s death. She captures an important truth that I think we all need to remember as we celebrate life with those we love:

Andrew’s graduation from seminary is tonight, which is so exciting. At the same time, my heart is full of mourning for my beloved puppy of 14 years who just passed away. While it’s so hard to reconcile these two emotions, I know that Daisy would want me to be happy and celebrate with Andrew. If she were here, she would be chasing her tail in joy right now.

Daisy has always been a dog of celebration. Especially of the smallest things, like walks, and ice cream, and pond swimming. But maybe Daisy had it right. Let’s celebrate the small joys that we do as a family. Let’s celebrate family moments and togetherness. Let’s celebrate each other. Even the smallest things can turn into tail-chasing adventures if they’re done with the people we love. In the end, those are the best things. And I’m so thankful that I got to have many tail-chasing adventures with my sweet puppy, Daisy May.

~~~~~~

I think Amber and Daisy are right. The small joys that God gives us in life often turn out to be the biggest blessings of all.