Tag: faith

An Unbelieving Believer

- dannalundstrom 1 Comment

Life is about enjoying, but as Christians, more than we are comfortable admitting, it is often more about enduring…enduring the diagnosis, enduring the loss of a job, broken relationships, the addiction, the absence of a prodigal child or spouse who likely may never return home. Life is about enduring the daily news, which everyday seems to stir anxiety and summon fear. It’s about enduring the loss of a parent, a sibling and even a child.  The unthinkable, the horrific, the unfair, none of these are strangers to this life we inhabit, and all of them are cloaked around someone who often does not deserve such pain.

Jesus did not deserve such pain. 

Pain is not partial in this life, but perseverance is.  Perseverance is reserved only for those who are fueled by a joy that cannot be bought or manufactured, but given by a relationship with a God who is the only one that can sustain us through extinguishable trials.

This life is full of moments that bring us joy, but equally those that challenge the depth of our faith in a God whose perceived silence feels deafening in the darkest of circumstances.  It is those circumstances, the dark ones, the ones that threaten our identity as a believer, and reveal the fundamental theology that we are living off of.  Sometimes this revelation is not what we would expect, especially to “believers.”

“You are an unbelieving believer.”

These painful, piercing words were spoken to define  me three years ago, by someone who had my best interest at heart.  Like a ball of fire that wold burn my soul, they seared me to my core.  It made me mad, it made me cry, and for a short time, I did not like her. I did not like her until I realized she was absolutely right!

I was going through a hard time.  I was stumbling, struggling and sometimes stalling life down a very unstable road.  Worry, anxiety and fear were my friends.   They were the trinity that were ruling my life. I was an unbelieving believer, because I was not living off of the truths of the gospel.  I was living off of the fears of an opportunistic, fallen world that can easily overtake those who are not deeply anchored to the rock of life-Jesus.

If we believe God is sovereign, if we believe He works all things for the good, if we believe He will not abandon us…how is there room for excessive worry, anxiety and fear in our lives?  There was in mine three years ago, because saying you believe and even thinking you believe are not the same as living as you believe.

Belief is a very active, ongoing, moment to moment renewal to fight to live that which we say we know. It is not enough to know, we have to fight to really know.  It is not enough to hear, we have to fully engage to really hear.  It is not even enough to see, we have to seek to really see for ourselves, otherwise, how can we really believe?

It is not that we should strive to go through this life worry free, anxiety free and fear free.  That is not possible, I know!  The goal is to live this life reflecting the goodness, faithfulness and character of a God who is carrying us well through all those difficult times.

We are allowed to be afraid, Jesus was afraid to the point of what was described in Luke as sweating blood.  We are allowed to have worry and anxiety, but none of these things will have us if God completely has our hearts, our minds and our beliefs surrendered and anchored to  His promises.

A life of surrender looks a lot different, and it feels a lot different.  It feels light and free and it looks not always smooth, but definitely safe.

May we all fight the good fight of belief, even when it makes no sense.  May we fight to believe when we don’t want to, and worry and fear seem like a more appealing choice.  May we fight hardest when God seems quietest. May we all remember that although HE sometimes is seemingly silent, HE is never still. You never endure alone. Spend a little time with Jesus today and allow him to engage you in your endurance.  He will give you rest.

A Little, BIG Choice

- dannalundstrom

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Every morning is a new start, and we wake up to the reality of a simple choice. A choice to choose one of two things that will chart the course of our day-fear or faith. Because we live in a fallen world this is an ongoing choice that has to be renewed daily, sometimes hourly, and even minute by minute. It really is the most daunting, small choice we make each morning.

Frankly, fear is the easier choice. It requires no fight, no hope and when we are tired, weak and weary it accepts us with open arms asking nothing of us. No effort, no commitment, no nothing! It can seemingly be a non-threatning friend whose presence can actually become more secure and comfortable if we abide there too long.

Faith is the harder choice because it requires us to fight: fight to believe when we are tired; fight to trust we we are skeptical; fight to understand when life is unfair, difficult and cruel.

Fear is unpredictable and has many faces. It can grip us to the point of disability. It can make our bodies shake, our hearts race and risk the stability of our physical, emotional and spiritual well being. It can be the quiet whisper or the loud scream of cynicism that burdens us with our unbelief.

Faith, is the more stable choice because it requires of us only one thing-belief. The belief in what is promised will never fail. Fear will fool us, sicken us and make us crazy, and even sometimes comfort us, but it will always fail us. Faith only requires one thing, but it gives much: protection, hope, security, and an assurance of a beautiful, pain free, inheritance that is promised us if we just believe (just to mention a few)! Fight friends!

Dying to Self

- dannalundstrom

Living the Christian life is a constant, daily renewal of ourselves in so many ways.  One of those ways is dying to the desires of our flesh, so that we may seek and walk the path that Jesus has laid for us.  Sometimes this is hard, very hard.  The desires within us are not a bad thing, but it is us within the desires that is the problem.  When we hold on too tightly to a desire, it can easily preoccupy our mind in a way that gives more time and energy to the desire, and less focus to God.

This is something I have to remain aware of every morning when I wake up.  I have a lot of desires.  Most of them good, healthy desires, but certainly all of them could control me if I didn’t daily submit them to Jesus upon waking.  I have started a new habit ever morning.  Either before getting out of bed, or just upon waking, I thank Jesus for giving me another day, and then I ask him this:  Jesus please get me aligned and focused with you vertically before I begin interacting horizontally with the world.  Please help me to filter my words, actions, and thoughts through a  lens that is reflective of you.  Amen.

One desire I struggle with is to live close to my family.  They all live 3 states away, and this is very hard for me.  Holidays are especially hard.  When I think of all the get-together’s, birthdays, dinners, weddings, and much more that I miss, it makes me sad.  I could really dwell on this and be consumed by my sadness and my will to be closer if I didn’t re-submit it to God every morning.  It is a daily “dying to self” and believing that this is where my Heavenly Father, the one who loves me beyond all others; the one who desires what is best for me more than anyone;  and the one who protects me in ways I cannot understand and no one else can, would have me be.

 

It is not an easy thing!  It is hard for me to understand why?  It is difficult to comprehend why something that feels so wrong can be right.  Belief is hard work!  Sometimes it is the most difficult work I do every day.  If we can bathe ourselves in Jesus’s promises, however, and allow ourselves to believe in HIM, it all becomes a little easier, at least it does for me.  He does not promise us we will understand, but HE does promise us that HE works all things for the good of those who love HIM.

Ecclesiastes 11:5~  As you do not know the path of the wind, or how a baby is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the maker of all things.

Romans 8:28~  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.

These types of promise are the only things that keep me at peace in a world where desires of my flesh run wild.  Giving my selfish needs to my loving Savior daily is the only way.  It is not always the easy way, but nowhere in the Kingdom, only in the world, does it say the right way will be the easy way this side of Eden.

Whatever desires you are struggling with, and my guess is there are many because I cannot believe you are that different from me, submit them.  Submit them daily, and sometimes that even means hourly.  Ask Jesus to help you to be content where he has you, and fight to believe he has you there because it is where you belong in his story, not yours.  I ask him every day, Jesus please help me to be content no matter what my zip code reads.  It took me a long time to get to a place where I could give him that desire, still have it, but leave him in charge of it and my happiness, not me!  It took me a long time, the desire is still there, but my desire to trust and believe My Father, and walk in his way,  is stronger as long as I keep giving it to Him!

 

Divine Interruptions

- dannalundstrom 1 Comment

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This has been on my mind a lot this week. We go about our lives planning our days and our family’s days. We set our sights on goals, and achievements which is a good thing, but sometimes we get lost in the pursuit of those goals and we loose living, really living because our plans overshadow our purpose. The problem with this is that so many of these goals are not eternal, and in the blink of an eye they can be snatched from us with no warning and no apology.

Like a thief that has broken into our sacred space, we are left feeling stripped, lost and defeated. Interruptions to our plans steal our joy and our purpose when we are so strongly married to an outcome that we perceive as success. It’s hard to accept that something that feels so wrong could be right when these unwelcome interruptions come along, but it is a fact of life we must fight to embrace because we are not in control and our picture of success that is based on anything of this world is an illusion.

I pray to fight harder and believe stronger that these interruptions, are divine redirections even when it feels counterintuitive. I pray to not let myself be so warped up in an outcome that an interruption or providential re-positioning cannot move or shake me, but rather peak curiosity laced excitement about where my future surrendered to THE one who paves my paths, and my family’s paths will lead. Mostly, belief is a hard fight. I pray to keep my fighting gloves always laced up and ready to fight for what I know to be true by faith, and not necessarily what appears to be true by sight.

Believe

- dannalundstrom 1 Comment

As I’m writing today, I’m preaching to myself. That’s not odd, right? Speak it until we believe it. Believing it in our heads is not good enough, not when it comes to this beautiful, hard fight of choosing faith over fear, courage over discouragement, rest over resolving, peace over planning… It’s not good enough until we get the believing down into our bones, our muscles, our blood, so that it can begin to fill all the hollow, empty spaces where hidden, slow drips of poisonous unbelief taint our peace and compromise our joy.

If, like me, you feel like most of your life is lived in the valley rather than on a mountaintop, take heart. Down on our knees looking up is a great position to be, for this is where we grow, learn and mature. This is where we stay aligned with our Father who longs to be in deep relationship with us. Perspective is very distorted from a distance looking down. Things seem smaller and often blurry. We seem larger than we are because everything else appears so small. This is a false illusion that feeds into the hungry mouth of the enemy who wants us to feel larger than life and in control. Control is a very seductive, insidious illusion; a funnel cloud waiting to unleash its wrath on a misguided life.

In the midst of valleys, I find that those days are sometimes more about fighting to remember and believe what I know, than perfect rest. On those days, I constantly have to ask HIM, “Dear Jesus, help me believe.” Life is messy and painful. I am weak and am under constant attack of an opportunistic enemy who wants to turn my gaze to the world and its problems, my problems.

We all find ourselves in these difficult spaces from time to time. Spaces where we have to fight harder than other times. In these moments, I have to intentionally and frequently align my gaze to the Father. It is where we fix our gaze that our hearts follow.~Julie Sparkman It’s not always an easy thing to do. It is like intense exercise, exercising the faith muscles, exercising dying to self. I have never liked exercise, but I know it is the only way to get the results I desire. The same applies with my relationship with The Father. It is hard work. It takes intentionality, focus, and time. It is by no means an efficient relationship, but I know it is effective!

So as I sit here this morning fighting, I say to you fight with me. Keep building those faith muscles. It is a struggle from the cradle to the grave, and we are all in the same fight, our arenas just look different.

This fight I’m speaking of, the tribulations that sometimes riddle our days; their presence should be of no surprise. The Bible is loaded with warnings of the trials we will suffer this side of Eden, but blessed are we that these warnings are always wed to hope. Psalm 90:10 says: The length of our days is seventy years–or eighty if we have strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

…And we fly away. As fighting believers, we can take heart in the fruits of our suffering. Every painful experience is another pruning of our thorny exterior by our loving Creator who longs to make us beautiful in HIS image. The things of this world, the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, they are all fleeting, but the refinement of our souls has eternal value. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

So again I say to you, as I am preaching to myself, Take Heart, it is in our weakness we find strength (2 Corinthians 12:9). It is in our most desperate times that we find our most dedicated Savior who longs for us to lock eyes with him, and fight to keep our sight fixed on him, and not the spawning storms around us. When things look dark, when all hope seems lost, look for him, HE is near!

Many times I miss Jesus’ presence in my life due to expectations and cloudy vision. Expectations of an answer, expectations of time frames, expectations of how the situation will play out… Expectations are thieves of souls, so I’m learning. Their fallibility robs us of innocence and joy. They are the dressed up impostures that follow us around promising us great things, but they never make good on the plans they devise in the minds of believers with misplaced vision and trust. We may be looking for a certain answer to a situation that is not changing, or we are seeing different outcomes than we were anticipating. God has an anointed time for everything, and Jesus himself tells the apostles that in the book of Acts: “The Father alone has the authority to set those dates and times, and they are not for you to know.” (Acts 1:7)

Often I overlook Jesus’ abundant fingerprints all over my life because I am too busy looking for HIS one big handprint. I am still learning that, yes, sometimes God works in big and mighty ways, but more often he works in slow, intentional, small ways that are designed with a specific purpose and perfect timing. Also, I am learning that every time I loose sight of belief, and take charge to corral things into my story, time frame or outcome, I am never standing in victory at the end. Defeat and discouragement are always obliged to greet me with heavy arms at the finish line of a race I run by myself.

I see only the bottom step of the immense staircase of my life. The Author sees the whole staircase. (Isaiah 55:9) Why would I want to be the one in charge? Because I, like you, and everyone one else from time to time forget WHOSE we are. Isn’t it great that HE knows this of us? Isn’t it great that we are welcomed to run back into the forgiving, soft, robed arms of a loving Savior every time? This makes me take a deep breath, and taste such freedom there. Will you rest with me in HIS strong, gentle arms and let him whisper over and again, My child, I’ve got this! (Luke 15:20)

Today, or tomorrow, or when you are residing in the valley again, fight with me to choose encouragement over discouragement. James 1:2-4 says: Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it opportunity for pure joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

When I exercise my power to choose, and choose right, I find immense freedom in God’s sovereignty. It is like a large, shady, oak tree under which we can find great renewal for our weary souls! Let’s keep fighting to be alive in freedom, friends!