because sometimes there is a simple answer

As we continue to look forward into these next Ten months, let us remember past Truths that have been revealed and concentrate on opening our hearts to the new ones God so loving and continuously presses upon us because of the beautiful gift of Grace.  Oh the many Truths He has for us, age old to Him, but shiny and new to us as we walk in faith ever learning how Jesus's Spirit seeps into every part of our being constantly changing our inner dispositions.

Welcome August, you month of new beginnings, marked with your ability to send children forward into another year of childhood while mama's hearts break and rejoice as their visions of those growing souls before them change in and out with the perfectly remembered picture of a different age and younger, rounder faces.

Ten months are upon us friends.  Ten months of learning, growing, changing, following, leading.  Ten months of figuring and planning and implementing.  Ten months of some things staying the same while others are moving forward.  Ten months of treasuring past and anticipating future, of remembering past Truths and opening your heart to the ones God so lovingly, continuously presses upon us because of the beautiful gift of Grace.

Oh the many Truths He has for us, age old to Him, but shiny and new to us as we walk in faith ever learning how Jesus's spirit seeps into every part of our being constantly changing our inner dispositions. Should we ever really feel the effect of aging when each day we our spirit is being renewed?

It's tempting to take on newness, change, in two different ways.  Depending on personality or possible prior knowledge of the change that is to come, one way is to attempt it all at once.  The other, is to attempt to hide from it completely.  There is the typical battle of getting it all over with, getting it all completed and checked off, versus avoiding the need to begin with, doubting that any change is coming or even necessary.  How often do we drift to an extreme when there is a middle ground of patient faithfulness where we should usually be treading.  For me, it's often on the daily.

Living in this home, and in yours as well, are minds that, as Paul David Tripp puts it, "want to make life all about us, to want little more than our own way, and to live like little self-sovereigns."   Try as I might, I cannot just believe that there are three young monarch wannabes walking the floors of our home.  My heart desires my own way more often than it desires anyone else's.  One major side effect of this most annoying product of the fall--fall of man, not the season--is that it causes us to make much harder than it needs to be.

There are literally dozens of scenarios that come to mind that could entertain you slash make you feel better about your own life.  Just the amount of time wasted while arguing with a child about what socks to put on so that they can make it to baseball practice on time is shocking.  You would think a pair of baseball socks was the simple answer, you would be wrong.  And there is no pride in my head when I think about the attitudes I have illustrated and the time I have wasted being less than loving when that same pair of socks does not find their way back to my designated desired spot after said practice is over when a simple reminder would suffice.  This is only a drop in the bucket.  Only a small innocent example of the much more vile ones that have made their way into history.

Our innate being does not want the simple answer.  It does not want the one held open before us.  Sin has made us desire the complication this world brings, getting lost in the midst of a mess we make as we are bound and determined to find our own way instead of resting in the Peace given through Christ. The ever calming place in the center of any storm.

As we search for the biggest and the best, God uses the humble and contrite.  Even Anne Shirley knew that "All things great are wound up with all things little"

While the end goal for this series is to encourage you to make intentional plans for your next ten months, it would be futile without starting first at the heart level.  Clearing out ourselves so that someone else can fill its place.  Sin clouds our vision.  Our eyes are always looking at something, but where are they actually focusing?

The simple answer in the midst of the complicated world?

He is the alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (Rev. 22:13)  He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by him all things were created...all things were created through Him and for Him...in Him all things hold together. (Col. 15-17) All the things.

As we then seek our next steps, we can do so without succumbing to the complicated goals the world tells us we should be striving for because, "If you delight in the fact that you are God's, you cannot be disappointed in how He's using you." Ryan Johnson, pastor New City Church.

And if you are His, He promises He is using you.

If you have the opportunity right now, read Paul's words from Colossians 1.  It is within this line up of prayers that I find not only encouragement for myself, but petition for you as well.  Long ago this disciple wasn't just praying for those faithful saints in Colossae but also for me and you and every other child God calls to him.  He did not cease to pray for these things, with Christ we can strive for that as well.

As you seek the simplicity of just resting in Christ in the midst of the complicated world, I pray that it will, not just over the next ten months, but for forever, change you to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.  That you will bear fruit in every good work.  That you will increase in the knowledge of God.  That endurance will grow and there will be patience filled with joy.  And that with each day you will be able to give thanks because you will see that He has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

I'm praying for you, pray for me.

for when you long for simplicity

FRIENDS is my favorite.  Yes friends are my favorite too, but FRIENDS, that beloved show of the late 90s and early 2000s, will always have a top ranking in my heart and to my eyes.  Their humor and friendships, the way none of them could take themselves too seriously because each was a hot mess in a different way, even the way they titled their episodes make me love it more.  Seriously, the way they titled their episodes, the one where..., was not just witty but quite helpful.  While I'm thinking about it, efficient wittiness is one of my favorites as well.  For never before seen footage, you had a hint of something that was going to happen by reading the title and later while searching for a desired episode you are reminded at a glance of what that episode held thus providing a quick end to  your search.

There is a large part of me that wants to go back and change the title of everything I've written renaming them each with efficient wittiness, both for myself and for others, so that at a glance it is known what might be held in the heart of the words; so that at a glance the hard fought lessons, encouragements, and words of the past can prick the consciousness giving reminders to carry into the future.

For today the title would be for when you long for simplicity.

At first glance, it might seem like a thematic seasonal post is coming next filled with reminders that in this season, this bustling December brimming with parties, appointments, shopping, and whatnot, you must force yourself to stop, slow the race around you, and breathe to soak in the peace of Advent, the peace we now get to have because we are no longer waiting on the Messiah's first arrival but living in Him; anticipating His return while remembering long ago those who faithfully waited on His initial appearance.

Yes, all good things and just writing those words immediately brought a calm to my Spirit and a smile to my face, but what about the rest of time?  The other days when the Christian calendar might not be as obviously beckoning for your stillness.

Does it seem, as of late, to anyone else besides the controller of these words, that there is a heavier overall desire to minimize, to simplify.

Whether it's paring down the number of objects owned, or cancelling appointments on the calendar, or deciding what to dos on the list really aren't necessary, or cutting out relationships in your life that require more work than seems worth it, or, or, or.  It is a real, and becoming much more common, occurrence to do whatever can be done to make life more simple and less arduous because we feel in our hearts that complication is what is reigning.

To the human heart and mind it makes perfect sense. 

A handful of friends spent this year magically tidying up and shed themselves of gobs, yes I said gobs, of unneeded, undesired items.  I even followed suit, just without reading the official magic words.  Getting rid of items can mean less work on upkeep and therefore more time available.  It teaches and reminds that wants and needs are not the same thing and having more just to have more is just more.  Purging your life of things that don't bring joy will, in theory, allow more focus on things that do.  However, seeking joy from any material possession will always leave you lacking.

Likewise with those over scheduled schedules, the obvious solution is to get rid of the things you don't want to do or don't feel called to do if you want to add a more socially, 'christianly' acceptable spin.  We all have a breaking point, some of us just require a little extra pressure, and the first thing done is paring down those schedules.  Gone will be the weight from doing what is expected, what is assumed, instead of what is desired, what is meant specifically for you.  Somewhere in the lessons you realize you could not keep up the pace, you realize you just cannot do it all.  The blessing beneath that curse is that you were never meant to. 

In a recent sermon I heard a now favorite colloquial phrase in regards to this subject, and I quote, the bible is chock full of things you can't do.  I just love that phrase chock full.  To a southern heart it means full to the brim, not one more thing can be stuffed in there without it overflowing and making a mess everywhere.  It also doesn't hurt that it is straight Truth.  The creator of the world, which means your creator as well, never required you to do it all, and He certainly never required you to do it alone.

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer has quickly become one of the books I will forever treasure for opening my eyes to life as it was designed to be lived, for helping me pay attention to that sweet Spirit within who has never ceased pointing and guiding all the way.  Though not even quite finished reading it for the first time through, my copy is already worn from use and heavy from the extra ink, and the occasional crayon, needed for underlining and margin notes.

Tozer, or A Dub'ya, as my Friday morning ladies and I call him writes, "Be thou exalted is the language of victorious spiritual experience.  It is a little key to unlock the door to great treasures of grace.  It is central in the life of a godly man.  Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually, Be thou exalted, and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once.  His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity."

The very essence.  Simplicity.  Be Thou Exalted.  God first.

Life as a Christian was never going to be easy, going against everything the world holds in highest honor is a hard row to hoe, but holding the same things as the world in highest places is when everything becomes disjointed.

For this girl who yearns for simplicity, for all of us who seek and change and ignore and purge and do without just to taste a hint of a simpler life, this is balm.  This is a single step.  A scary one for some, a difficult one for some, a giant leap for some, but one that brings immediate and lasting simplicity.    
There will be no perfection, for only One is perfect, or even the illusion of perfection, that are what many see as the greatest success of life.  But there will be peace no matter the chaos around because the lines are now in order, the rightful one holds the lead spot and everything else can see where they fit, where they have longed to belong.

Everything falls into place because of God.

Yes, 'tis the season now but 'tis the season always.  Life in Christ changes you not for a moment, not for a five week period between two holidays, but forever.  Your inner disposition finds simplicity when it's only focus is Christ and your attitude about life falls into step as your heart clings to Him.

Praying for you to simply need Christ, pray for me.