Mikki's Blog - Living in the Grace and Love of God » Hope

Hope Against Hope

Mikki — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:50:16 +0000

Hopelessness leaves a man or woman frozen in despair.

Jesus understood that his disciples would be tempted to despair after his crucifixion so he spent time beforehand preparing them, counseling them, and providing hope for them.

Jesus told his disciples that he was leaving and they could not follow him. What kind of news is that when they had just given three years of their life responding to his invitation to “Follow me”?

Change was coming and Jesus tried to prepare his followers. He encouraged them not to allow their hearts to be troubled. How were they supposed to not be troubled when their leader was crucified? They had to have hope. If they could hope in what Jesus was sharing with them, they could look beyond their current crisis and believe that God was going to perform the things that Jesus had taught them.

Jesus told his followers that their separation would be temporary. He was preparing a place for them and they would be with him again.

He told them that they were about to do even greater works than the ones He Himself had done.

Jesus told them that the Father was about to send them a Helper, the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus shared many more words that contained both challenge and hope as recorded in John 14-16. Then he prayed for his disciples.

We find this pattern in Jesus’ ministry. He told Peter that he was about to deny him, but that when he was RESTORED, he would strengthen his friends. Jesus gave him some challenging words but he also gave him hope.

The same pattern is also observable in the lives of Paul and Peter. Sometimes their words were challenging, but there was always a thread of hope.

As Christians, when we interact with others we also need to offer hope. Even in the most desperate circumstance, we need to be able to look at others and believe that God can bring something beautiful out of the situation.

We don’t need to offer false hope or false promises. A person who is hurting can see right through a religious answer that feels like an insincere pat on the back. False hope and false promises feel as empty as a dry well because they are!

So how can we help someone in desperation?

We can acknowledge, honestly, the difficulty of their situation, the depth of their pain. Sometimes this is the most necessary step because it bridges the depths of the loneliness and desperation someone is feeling and says that we are honestly acknowledging where they are emotionally without condemning them. We often don’t know how God can accomplish what needs to happen in a life; we don’t have a formula or a fix but as another human being, we can say, “That must be really hard.” Such a response acknowledges the reality of the pain. Galatians 6:2 instructs us to bear one another’s burdens and this is one way to do that.

Then we can share from our own lives about times when God did something for us when life seemed impossible. This is the power of testimony – which according to Rev. 12:11 is one of the ways to overcome the enemy.

And we can humbly pray for those who are hurting, asking God to do what only He can.

Jesus told his disciples that it was about to be hard, but God would be faithful. And then he prayed for them.

Hurting people need “Jesus with skin on”. They need someone whom Jesus is living in and through to offer hope.

Sometimes we say that we are hoping against hope, a phrase which means that in spite of what looks impossible, we have hope that things will change.

Romans 5:5 tells us that hope doesn’t disappoint because it is based on the love of God.

Is there someone in your life who needs hope?

How can you offer hope to them?

Perhaps you just need to listen without feeling a need to fix anything or anybody.

Perhaps you need to call someone today to say you care.

Maybe a card of encouragement would be just the right thing.

How about a visit?

How about a hug? Many times I have just held someone and let them hurt in my arms. Words are not always necessary.

And as Jesus did, wrap what you do with a prayer for that person. I find that most people are more than happy for you to pray for them. Perhaps you can ask them, “Would it be okay for me to pray for you?” Then do so. It doesn’t need to be long or religious sounding. Don’t try to fix it in your prayer. Just honestly acknowledge the pain and ask for God to help. I often acknowledge in my prayers for others that I don’t know the answer, but I know that God does and I ask for His help. It is more than okay to not have the answers. You know the One who does!

I recently hear Dan Allender teaching and he asked this question which riveted me. He asked, “Who has wept with you and your story?” He suggested that we cannot unlock our stories alone. We need each other.

Will you weep with someone over their pain?

This burden bearing fulfills the law of Christ which is the law of love.

There is hope against hope. It exists because of Christ. Receive it and offer it. It is the intangible tangible.

Why You Must Go Back

Mikki — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:19:36 +0000

God’s ways are mysterious, beyond my understanding and often seem downright contradictory. While in my humanity, I prefer to think in straight lines which lend themselves to defining a goal as completed, a task marked off, I find that God’s ways are usually not pictured best by straight lines. They are paths which appear, at times, intertwined, difficult to map out, going forward, then backward, orbiting around a center, and often perplexing my human mind. The longer I walk with God, the more clearly I see that He is truly not confined to my limited understanding. He is working, often His deepest purposes in me, when I am clueless.

This week, I was meditating on two of the seemingly contradictory ways of God. In the next few days, I want to explore these two thoughts:

1. You must go back.
2. You can never go back.

Huh? Sounds confusing? I hope you are intrigued sufficiently to continue reading for both statements are true and I am not being ambivalent. There are times in life when you must absolutely go back. You must go back, as it were, in your mind, your emotions, your relationships, to moments of the past and experience the moments again. There are some very important reasons for us to go back. And in other ways, we must never go back and in fact, cannot do so, but that is for another day this week.

We are the sum total of our life story. Often we are not really happy about that. We all wish we could erase or at least, rewrite, pages, even entire chapters, of our story. I personally love the undo key on my computer. If only life were so simple! Surely it would be better if we could just get rid of the painful parts of our story! Yet with God, there is a sense in which we become better, stronger, more complete, because of those very parts of our story.

You might say, “How can I embrace the darkest days of my life? How can I accept the darkest parts of my story?” I can only share what I have experienced.
My life story has had many pages, even chapters, of failure, pain, and disappointment. For most of my life, I’ve done my “dead level best” to avoid thinking of those days. I tried my best to forget the painful chapters. Many times I’ve ripped up a photo if it made me think of something painful as if ripping it up would make its reality disappear. I learned to be quite an avoider of painful memories. Then my life fell, what appeared at the time to be, completely apart. Humpty Dumpty, who had a great fall, looked to be in great shape afterwards compared to me. But enter the mystery of God…

I’ve found that God’s deepest work in me often happens during days of my personal suffering. Certainly as Christ suffered on the cross, the greatest work of God was happening in and through the suffering. Suffering changes the human heart. It can transform us into strong, beautiful people who can walk in the contradictions of God’s ways or it can turn us into weak, bitter people who shake their fist at God and anyone else who would get too close to our wounds.

When I found myself in deep brokenness, I could no longer keep my painful memories stuffed inside their deep grave. They sprang forward for they were not dead and I found myself face to face, for the first time, with my story. Like a jack-in-a box, I tried to stuff the story back in but to no avail. Initially, I could only barely stand to take a quick peek at the previous chapters of my life, but I have learned to allow my heart to re-experience my story.

And I found this amazing mystery. It is my story that equips me. It is my story that connects me to humanity. It is my story that offers hope to others. It is my story that makes me accessible, approachable.

So today, I want to encourage you to go back. When the things of your past are still controlling who you are in the present, go back. When the things of your past are still influencing you in unhealthy ways, go back for you must go back in order to go forward. Here are some of the reasons you should go back:

1. To find healing. If a memory is still painful to see, to think about, to reflect upon, perhaps you need another level of healing in that place. God is not confined to time as we are. He can transport you, as it were, to those places where He longs to meet you to bring healing to you.

2. To gain understanding and perspective. When we are able to view our story with Christ, we can often find that it was not exactly what we had believed. Lies can be dismantled.

3. To find God. Going back can allow us to discover where God was in our story.

4. To grieve loss. If we haven’t truly grieved over a loss in our life, then we need to go back and experience that. God’s Word says there is a time to mourn.

5. To break the power of shame, guilt, and pain. Allowing the power of the cross to wash away the power of shame, guilt, and pain can bring deep healing to our souls.

6. To find compassion for your own heart. Many of you need to ask God to show you how to have compassion on your own heart. Self-hatred is a tool of the enemy.

7. To find the common themes of your story. These can help you find your purpose in life.

8. To find hope for the future.

9. To discover keys to helping others.

So today, I want to say, “You must go back!” If part of your story is buried alive, if you have ignored, denied, or avoided your story, it’s time to go back. Redemptively. Just as William Paul Young describes how Mack in The Shack has to go back to a painful time in his life to find restoration and healing, we must do the same. The beauty of going back is the mystery of how the going back becomes the key to going forward.

Perhaps your “going back” should be done in the presence of a spiritual director, a counselor, or a very trusted friend. Certainly, it should always be done with the leading of God’s Spirit for he is THE COUNSELOR. He knows when and how we should address our past. Our part is to cooperate with his work when he is leading us in the paths of redemption. Nothing is wasted with God. As Richard Rohr says, “In God’s reign, “everything belongs,” even the broken and poor parts.”

May God’s grace lead you in paths of healing as you continue to learn more about His mysterious ways.

In the Face of Shame

Mikki — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:15:15 +0000

Have you ever felt ashamed of something you did? Have you ever been embarrassed to look people in the eyes?

On Sunday I began to ponder the effects of shame. I was praying for a beautiful young woman whom I had not seen in a couple of years. The last time I saw her, she asked for prayer because of her marital situation. I had counseled with her, prayed with her and had given her a book as a resource. And here she was again, having a hard time looking into my eyes. The longer I spoke with her, the more obvious it was that she was very ashamed. I knew something of her story. An abusive husband whom she just literally caught in the act of being unfaithful. Not a new story with her. As she cried to me for help, she said, “I don’t want to leave him.” My heart was heavy for her. How I wished I could have taken her troubles away! I wished I could have made her marriage whole. But deep within, I knew that aside from a work of the Spirit of God, things were not going to change in this marriage. She was going to continue to be beaten and betrayed. If she continued to be a prisoner of her shame, she was never going to take the steps she needed to in order to experience acceptance and freedom.

I thought of the shame in her eyes. It was haunting. The tears. The grief. The heartache. I thought of the shame Christ experienced on the cross. The Word says that he despised the shame of the cross while focusing on the joy which was set before him.

Why was Christ ashamed on the cross? What brings shame into a human life?

My mind kept going to Romans 5.

Today, I did a little study on the original meanings of the words in Romans 5. Here is my translation: (MV – Mikki’s version!)

Since we have been made just and innocent by faith, we have peace with God. This peace flows through the channel of our Lord Jesus Christ. This channel of access gives us admission by faith into the grace where we stand. We have confidence in the hope of the very apparent glory of God. Not only that, but we can also be confident during the pressures and trials of our life knowing that they will accomplish the purpose of teaching us to endure. This endurance brings to a maturity our trust in Christ. This trust helps us hope with anticipation, expecting and confidently believing. And hope does not make us ashamed. It does not disgrace us or cause us to be dishonored because God’s love is poured out in our hearts, in our feelings and thoughts, and our minds, by God’s Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The hope we have in God through Jesus Christ will never make us ashamed because the love of God pours into our hearts and minds.

Can you visualize having water poured over you –covering you from your head down? If God’s love is poured over us and we find hope in Christ, we will never have to be disgraced or dishonored in our relationship with Christ.

Isn’t that the source of shame –pain that comes from relationships? This young woman I prayed with was so ashamed – not because of what she had done but because of what had been done to her. She was never intended to be put to that shame in her marriage relationship. What was intended was for her husband to minister to her in such a way that one day he would present her to Christ as his bride who was beautiful – with no shame.

Shame makes us bow our heads in disgrace. We don’t want to look into anyone’s eyes. We want to avoid everything that makes us think of our shame.

Shame causes us to hide. Adam and Eve hid from God because of their sin. But God came after them. He always comes after us. He calls us out of hiding and asks us to allow Him to cover our nakedness just as He did Adam and Eve’s. The first shame separated man and woman from each other and from God. But God called Adam and Eve into light and truth, and He covered them.

Christ became our ultimate covering. He covers us with his blood. His red blood washes us and makes us clean, and our life is in His blood.

As I studied the Greek word for shame, I found that one of the meanings is to disfigure. Dan Allender teaches that we can find the glory of God in the face of others. Is it any wonder that Satan would try to disfigure our faces with shame and the painful effects of sin?

This passage in Romans 5 talks about how we stand in grace. Shame or disgrace bends us low. Grace calls us to stand and look into Christ’s eyes. When we do that, he promises that his hope will not disappoint us because he will fill our hearts with his love. A heart that understands God’s love doesn’t have a lot of room for shame. His love pours over us.

On the cross, Christ took our sins into his heart so that our hearts can be whole. We can know that when our hearts are broken, Christ has felt our brokenness. He has felt our shame, our disgrace. He has experienced the ultimate shame. Our sins on his sinless body. His body hanging naked as a public display so that our sins can be covered. Not excused, but covered.

How do we deal with shame in our lives?

Here is my simple list:

Identify it. Find the source of what makes you feel disgraced, dishonored, what makes you blush in shame.
Begin to think about the fact that Christ was “put to an open shame” so you could be free from shame. When he paid for our sins, he literally took onto his own body all the things that make you and me ashamed. Although he had never committed sin, he embraced our sins. He took them upon himself – into his heart and he bore them. He carried them all. Then he paid for them. He took their penalty.
Realize that God does not want you or me to live in shame. He doesn’t want us to live in avoidance. He wants us to live in freedom. Not as a prisoner who is condemned because of his or her wrongdoing, but as one released from the prison of our own condemnation and the condemnation of others.
Take the first step of offering your shame to God and exchanging it for His acceptance and glory.
Do the hard work that is necessary to live free of shame. Enlist the help of those who can guide you in that work.

Christ always draws us to him. He always invites us to look into his eyes. He always pursues us. He always calls us to stand in his love unashamed. Satan always condemns us. He always bows our heads down in shame. He always pushes us away from the One who loves us most.

I guess my favorite Bible story is of the Samaritan woman. Some of you know that already. You are probably saying, “Does she know another story?” No, not really. I don’t. The only story I know is that in my shame, he accepted me. He called me out of hiding and asked me to look into his eyes of love. Then he paid for my shame. Just as the woman came to Jesus in desperation, I found him the same way. I couldn’t resist one who would offer me that kind of love.

Is there anything more irresistible than love? Is there anything that makes us feel safer than experiencing unconditional love? Is there anything more beautiful than feeling that we are loved in our weakness? In our imperfection? In our sin?

Our earthly relationships are designed to give us a glimpse of this kind of love. They will always fail us at some point. I don’t say that to be discouraging. It is just that we humans are imperfect, and we all fail one another in many ways.

But God invites us into a place of hope that will never disappoint us. A hope that calls us to stand. A hope that gives us peace. A hope that will take us through troubles and trying times. A hope that will birth in us the character of God. A hope that pours His love on us.

I once heard that called “Living drenched”.

The hope still pours out today. Will you stand under the flow? Lift your face to the One who will take all your shame. As his love pours over you, everything else will wash away.