The goodness of God: John & Revelation
When we speak of God’s goodness in our lives, how often do we allow this simple truth to deeply reside in the crevices of our hearts and settle into our everyday lives where it matters most?
What does it mean to live as though God IS good?
Often, we can understand these truths on the surface, but our hearts and minds have not fully embraced what this means for our current reality– that Jesus is the “light of men” and has overcome darkness, both now and in eternity!
The Goodness of God: In Matthew, Mark & Luke
I always knew my calling was to be a wife and a mother. That dream’s first half became reality when my husband and I married. Many tears were shed, and prayers were spoken about our request to become parents. However, I didn’t know I would have to wait ten years into our marriage before I could fulfill the role of mother.
In the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, there is a story about a woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years. Can you imagine? The Bible doesn’t say, but did she also have other symptoms along with the bleeding?
As Was His Custom: Repent. Believe. Follow.
It wasn’t until I sat in a discipleship seminar that a lightbulb blazed on inside my soul. It was the realization that Jesus preached the Gospel.
Wait- what? I thought the Gospel was Him.
And it is. Jesus is a BIG PART of it. But there’s more. And when I realized what He preached about, when He was preaching about the Gospel, all the bells and whistles began to sync together into a perfectly harmonized song.
As Was His Custom: Submission
I remember it vividly. Michael (my pastor husband) and I were leading a group of engaged couples through several months of pre-marriage counseling and preparation. During that time, we leaned into some heavy passages of Scripture that ruffled a few feathers. This time, Michael asked everyone to open their Bibles to Ephesians 5:22-33. Immediately, once the pages were turned and the passage quickly scanned, I heard several breaths suck in, saw shoulders stiffen, and mouths turn down. The women’s eyes shifted hastily from the page to their future husbands, and the men all seemed to be looking at the ceiling for an auditory word FROM THE LORD.
Submit. That word alone sends shivers down spines. It acts as a gut punch for any woman who has, at one time or another, wanted to lead something in her church or home. It shuts the mouths of prophets, silences wives everywhere, and makes a lot of men in our Western culture uncomfortable. It’s a word that’s been abused in the Church for hundreds, possibly thousands of years.
What’s surprising is that Jesus practiced submissiveness. Wait - submissiveness was a normal custom of a man? The Son of God?
As Was His Custom: Serving
We live in a world preoccupied with greatness. As humans, we follow star athletes, celebrities, artists, and leaders, and we yearn for significance in the individual corners of our own lives. We pursue financial gain, popularity, appeal, and admiration. We seek to be known and praised. We find satisfaction in attention and aspire to feel important in the eyes of others. Throughout history, this obsession has taken many shapes and forms, but it is the same, nonetheless: conquering kingdoms, rising to power, acquiring a following, generating wealth, gaining importance.
When Jesus came, however, He modeled an entirely opposite ambition and aim. Instead of seeking greatness by these standards, Jesus turned our entire way of living on its head, swinging the pendulum to the other extreme. He taught that in His Kingdom, the key to greatness is, in fact, found in becoming less:
Jesus both taught and modeled in His earthly ministry a different objective– Serving is the way of God’s Kingdom.
As Was His Custom: Fellowship Part 2
While the gift of salvation is certainly a personal decision one makes individually, the restoration of fellowship with God opens up the gift of fellowship with His church. Eugene Peterson refers to our association with and participation in the body, the church, as “part of the fabric of redemption.” We can’t separate our fellowship with God from our fellowship with other believers and truly experience the fullness of what Jesus offers. They are inextricably tied, and it is within the context of common fellowship that we experience the fullness of what Jesus came to bring, in community with his Body: his imperfect, beautiful, messy, and beloved church. We see the early church experiencing this same fellowship: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
As Was His Custom: Fellowship Part 1
What comes to mind when you hear the word fellowship? If you grew up in the church as I did, you may envision a potluck dinner after service in the church’s fellowship hall, or perhaps a small group cookout. Fellowship may also spur on ideas of gathering, of togetherness, or simply being with friends and family, within or outside of the church. Fellowship as a whole is a great concept. Who doesn’t want to belong, to be a part of, to have fellow friends and family with whom we share life’s experiences?
In examination of the life of Jesus, he, too, enjoyed the blessings of fellowship. Yet the fellowship he walked in and emulated for us is far more profound than what one may experience simply at a church get-together or gathering with friends. While it certainly can include such experiences, there is so much more. The fellowship seen in and through the life of Jesus is central to His mission, life-altering, and available to each one of us who choose to receive it.
As Was His Custom: Fasting
While we don’t hear much about fasting in our modern faith circles, the power of this singular spiritual discipline is wholly worth pursuing. In my own faith journey, I’ve reaped the profound benefits of fasting and prayer, particularly when seeking direction, to hear more clearly from the voice of God, and to experience a breakthrough in an area of struggle. While I find such a powerful and extensive topic intimidating to write about, I’m eager to illuminate Jesus’ example and teaching in this custom while emboldening each of us to follow Jesus and experience more of Him through this practice.
As Was His Custom: Rest
If you had asked me last summer what I thought when I heard “rest,” I would’ve thought of sleeping or running away from my life. When that began to fail me and not satisfy me, I became more tired and more depressed. Growing up, I was raised in the church but was never taught what the word “Sabbath” means. I could probably tell you I didn’t even hear the word until I was about 16 or 17. It wasn’t until last fall that my student pastor said to me, “Halle, when was the last time you sat with God?” I looked at him like he was asking me a stupid question because I just spent the last 15 minutes of service worshiping God. He repeated it and walked away. From that, I walked away confused, but I didn’t know that 10-word sentence would change my life with Jesus.
As Was His Custom: Prayer
Prayer in the life of a believer is both essential and incredibly powerful. Prayer is, perhaps, the most important aspect of one’s life in God. Prayer is how we connect with God the Father and participate with him in His work on the earth. To be effective as a believer, we need to learn how to pray-to be continual students of prayer. What better way than by learning directly from the prayer life of Jesus.
As Was His Custom: Studying Scripture and Meditation
Although many secular scholars label Jesus as a country bumpkin, who probably couldn’t read or write, there’s adequate reason to believe that He could do both. We know from Luke 4:16 that Jesus was invited to read on the Sabbath in his hometown synagogue. While the other Scripture that talks of Jesus’ writing is not found in the earliest manuscripts (John 7:53-8:11), we can deduce that if He knew how to read, He would have also learned to write.
As Was His Custom
Right then, it occurred to me that Jesus led a life filled with habits and customs that He had done His entire life! And He had a lot. If you've heard the term "spiritual disciplines"- they are taken from the habits of Jesus. There's a reason for them- so that we can literally follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
Women of Valor: Elisabeth Elliot
I grew up hearing the story of Elisabeth Elliot and her great empowerment of Christian women. However, I remember hearing her once answer a question on her radio show to a woman who asked a question about what to do since her husband physically abused her. Elisabeth’s response stunned me. She told the woman to stay and submit to her husband. I was appalled. I couldn’t reconcile the eighty-year-old woman whose voice cracked across the radio waves and the brave woman who faced the murderous jungle tribe with a toddler strapped to her torso. For years, I struggled to want to read anything that she wrote. Why would she tell a woman to stay with an abuser?
Women of Valor: Catherine Booth
When I first heard of the Salvation Army and its ministries, I had primarily heard criticism. So, I was astonished when I learned more about what they believe and their dedication to the call of God upon their lives. When I listened to another fellow seminarian speak about Catherine Booth, I felt like I had a soul sister in her.
It’s no longer winter
If you were to ask me, I’d tell you the best thing about winter is when it’s over. I despise the cold, I hate that the sun spends so much time hiding, and I do not enjoy being stuck at home when it snows or the roads are icy. These are all signs of Seasonal Affective Disorder which I have battled for as long as I can remember. Some years I feel it worse than others but I can almost guarantee that once the time changes in the fall, I’m going to start experiencing some signs of depression. As someone who has walked through many seasons of various depths of depression, I’ve learned a few things about how I can manage it with a little more grace and not let the battle in my mind steal my joy. I’d like to share with you what I’ve found helps get me through these times…
What to Look for In a Bible Study
I’m constantly being messaged about what to look for in a Bible study.
“Hey Meg, have you heard anything about this new Bible study author?”
“Do you know of any Bible studies on anxiety?”
“Are there any Bible studies I need to avoid?”
I love getting questions like this. And I generally have answers to these questions. But it does seem as though every time I turn around, I find another new Bible study author, and they don’t always have credentials I’m comfortable with. But I digress. What I initially look for in my study now may surprise most people…
How Can I Understand the Bible?
How can we understand the Bible? Books of the Bible are written for specific audiences. And it’s pretty slim that you fit into that original audience. I mean, there aren’t many of us from first-century Israel… or earlier. If we don’t understand who the author was, where they were from, or who they were writing to, we won’t understand the main depth of the message.
Who will tell them?
My initial reaction was that we still do not understand the intelligence nor the stubbornness of the people of that time to create and build enormous structures, where we are still asking, “How did they do that?”
Don’t be a Martha?
I mean, wasn’t Mary acting rudely towards her sister? Most women at that time were either housekeepers, ran businesses out of them homes, helped the family trade, or were prostitutes. But, I honestly thought Mary was perhaps lazy or just super social and wanted to hang out with the guys. I was also confused for years by Jesus’ response towards Martha.