The other morning, Chuck called me, all hyped up. He was taking the girls to school. “I know you are busy, but the sunrise is incredible! If you would leave right now and go to that peak at the park, you would still be able to see it. But you have to hurry.”

I hung up the phone and looked out my window; all I saw was a blurry, dismal gray. Not much of a motivator to leave my warm house and hot coffee. But I did.

I grabbed my keys and drove out of the little hollow that my house sits in and headed for the highest, closest place I could find. Even as the Jeep climbed up the first hill, the light started exploding around me. In my rearview mirror, I got flashes of reds and pinks in the sky. I strained to turn around to see it but couldn’t. Now I was totally motivated.

I drove back down another hill and back into the gray. Waited on a break in traffic. Where should I go? Time and colors were burning. The park was too far. Finally, my turn. Onto Northshore, I turned left. I climbed again but this time I was facing the sun. This time nothing between me and the sky.  I reached the top of a undeveloped subdivision and flash, there it was: the sun and blood reds and warm pinks slashing and splashing across the sky.

My heart was racing. All I could say for a few minutes was, “Wow.”

So quickly the colors in the sky merged and cooled and stretched out. Like an artist had just plopped some paint on a canvas and then with a loving stroke had smoothed them and diluted them into long, lovely strands.

“You sure are a show off,” I said quietly. And I heard, “My mercies are new every morning.”

As I have pondered this over several days, here are a few take-aways:

One, I want to be quick to share when I see something beautiful. If Chuck hadn’t called me, I would have missed this gift.

Two, I want to be quick to respond. If I had depended solely on what I could see, or if I had tarried, I would  have missed out.

And three,  I want to be quick to live in the reality that as beautiful as that sunrise was, it does not compare to the beauty of His mercy. That was the greatest gift — the reminder that every morning, because of Him, I get a clean slate to begin painting on.

“One thing I ask, and I would seek, to see your beauty.”

While hiking the return trip of a long trail in the Smokies with Charis, my six year old, she turned to me and said, “Mama, tell me a story. A long one.” I knew she was running out of gas fast and needed a distraction. So I began with the story of “a little boy who took care of sheep and sang songs of love to God under the stars.”

With full animation, I told her about Saul and Samuel, Goliath, and David’s wife, Michal.  Then I launched into the story about a cripple named Mephibosheth and David’s pursuing him:

“Mephibosheth looked out over the horizon and saw dust stirring in the distance and knew someone was coming. Then the servants called out, ‘It’s the king’s horses!!’ Mephibosheth’s heart froze.  ‘The king? Surely this is the day I DIE!’ ”

(Charis looked up with a gasp.)

“The riders rode into the remote village and stopped in front of the crippled man’s house. They gruffly called out, ‘The king summons you.’

All the sandy, dusty ride there, Mephibosheth looked at his mangled, useless feet. He looked at his worn and faded clothes. ‘So this is it. After all these years of fearing death because I am a descendant of Saul, David’s enemy, my turn has come. My grandfather is dead. My father is dead. And now me.’

But instead of death, King David offered something much different.”

Something rippled in my spirit. And in God’s loving way, while I told my daughter a story, He told His daughter a story, too.

“The great hall was beyond Mephibosheth’s imagination. As he dragged his feet along with crutches you could hear the sound echo — tap, slide, tap, slide, tap, slide. Closer and closer the cripple came to the throne, and his death. When he finally dared to lift his eyes to the king, instead of judgment and fury, he saw arms spread wide open and a broad smile. Then David spoke.

‘Mephibosheth because I loved your father, because I swore an oath to him, and he to me, all that is mine is yours. You will live in my palace, you will be my son, you will dine with me at my table. . . .’ ”

My voice caught in my throat as I said it.

Charis looked up at me and took my hand. “You okay, Mama?”

“Yep,” I said as I cleared my throat. “It is too good to believe. Just because David loved Mephibosheth’s father, he will would live the rest of his life in a king’s house and eat at a king’s table.  Just like God loved our father, Abraham. The same promise is for us, Charis.”

And the ripples continued.

Two days later I was worshipping and listening to one of my favorite team of artists, Shane and Shane.  The song, Carry Away randomly came on.  I have heard that song a thousand times. But this day I heard for the first time the line, “and I dine with you…only you, Lord.”  I thought my rejoicing spirit was going to blow the cars off the interstate like some kind of super power blast.

Oh crippled woman that I was, to be pursued out in the desert, only to dine at the King’s table and be called His daughter.

Hallelujah!

Carry Away by Shane and Shane

at what point did i,
did i know that i would be around?
at what point did i,
did i know that i would be found?
and dine with You

carry away my mind, carry me away
carry away my mind
carry away my time, sweep me away
carry away my time

who gave the right to interrupt my life
with thoughts of You
needless to say, i bid my rights good day
i’m here to live and dine with You
only You. Lord

if You will lead on
forsake not Your song in me
Jesus, song in me

(Philippians 1:6; 4:8, John 6:44; 6:65, Romans 12:2)

A Well Laid Plan

My friend Steve is one of the funniest people I have ever met. I kid you not, when he tells one of his crazy stories, people are crying because they are laughing so hard. Including Steve.

So I saw his wife, Christie, the other day and she told me that Steve came to her and said, “I have just remembered a funny story I have never told you before.”

That in itself is a joke because we’re all thinking that we have heard and enjoyed all of Steve’s stories for the last 15 years.

Did I mention that Steve has a memory problem? He can’t remember movies he has watched. Ever. So if you say, “Steve, did you see _____?” he will look at Christie and say, “Did I see that?”

This guy is funny.

The newly recalled story goes like this. (Did I mention that all his stories are true?)

A long time ago in his B.C. days (before Christ), he dated this girl and they  played pranks on each other. Well, this girl had scared Steve really badly. And putting one over on Steve is like declaring war.

So they had been out somewhere and were going back to her apartment, but they were driving separate cars. Steve races back, uses her spare key to get in the apartment, and hides in her shower to scare her. He waits and waits.

Finally he hears someone come in the bathroom and sit down on the toilet. Steve throws the shower curtain back and begins screaming and waving his hands around like a madman.

The woman sitting on the toilet, pants around her ankles, begins screaming and waving her hands too.

But it wasn’t Steve’s girlfriend.

It was the girl’s mother. Whom Steve had never met.

So here is a strange man in her daughter’s shower screaming at her, and she is on the toilet unable to do anything. But scream.

Laughter does the heart good like medicine…

I tell the women at our classes and events that the answer to every question is “Jee-sus.” Said with a respectful Southern drawl and hyper-pronounced syllables.

But it really is true. The question is, do we see and hear Him in all the places He shows up and speaks up?

For example, Salem got a hand made puzzle at church and she wanted me to see if I could do it. “It’s hard, Mom,” she warned.

A few days later, I was cleaning up the house and the envelope on her desk caught my eye. I felt a tug to sit down and do it. Being somewhat of a puzzle queen, I did what I always do with puzzles. I sorted everything out, turned the pieces face up and looked for the edges. It was clearly a box of candy. This is will be a piece of cake, er, make that candy, I thought.

First, I lined up the pieces that had the weight and kilos printed on them. Then I noticed there was a rough edge where it had been torn, so I grouped those knowing that they had to form one side of the box.

But a curious thing happened. It DID get hard. It didn’t make sense. There were only three colors on the pieces: blue, red, white. The product was clearly a Nestle’s Crunch item. There were less than 20 total pieces. How hard could it be?

Here is the “Jee-sus” part.

I had to stopping trying to make the puzzle work according to what I thought I saw. I knew the word had to spell CRUNCH. But the pieces just didn’t fit. No effort on my part made them fit. I had to stop looking at the word Crunch and look at each piece, how each was shaped, where there were color alignments. The curve of the U was actually the H turned slightly. And those ruffled edges I was so confident of? They were actually split in two sections.

I do Jesus like that. I approach His word, my relationship with Him, like I already know what it says and I know what He will say. I already know how to do it. I know a pattern, I have the system down. I already know…

But when I step out of my paradigms and boxes, I find I look at each piece with intention, curiosity and (dare I say it?) wonder. When I stop focusing on what I know, I find out what I missed, the angle of that piece, the curve of that letter is different… When I allow my heart and spirit to discover and wonder and relish the time looking at God and all that He is, I find a much much bigger picture that I thought existed.

And then I find I don’t know quite as much as I thought I did. Which is a good thing.

Ears to Hear…

“That’s it?” Amanda exclaimed as she threw her pen down on her open Bible. “That’s all it takes after two years of trying to do this God thing?”

We tried not to laugh because she was so fired up. But her incredulous, wide-eyed dismay cracked us all up.

I shook my head and smiled. “That’s it, friend. That’s really all I did to begin to hear from God.”

I hear these questions a lot: How do you hear God talking to you? How do you know if it’s Him? What if it’s not? How can I be sure? What if I am wrong?

Here is the scoop. A few years back, I heard one of my all-time favorite teachers, John Dee, talk about hearing from God. He said that God is the God who knows the language that our heart speaks and He is quite good at conversing if we will listen and believe. John also said that we don’t sit around stirring up God thoughts and notions on our own. He went to so far as to chide us lovingly that there is not enough good in us apart from Jesus to ever throw anything heavenward.

John said every heaven thought came from heaven to us and was pointing us back to heaven. His premise was that the Holy Spirit was constantly talking to us; pointing us to Jesus; causing us to learn, desire and hear. In short, John said, “It takes the Spirit of God to stir the spirit of God in us.”

Let me say that again: It takes the SPIRIT of God to stir the spirit of God in us.

I had to sit on that for about a week. And it dawned on me that all the good and God thoughts, warm fuzzies about Jesus, gentle convictions, desire for Scripture, hunger for worship, awareness of His beauty in nature, equating my joy as I looked in my baby’s eyes with God’s joy as He looked at me, the delight of enjoying great chocolate, cool grass under bare feet, a long sigh in the summer rain…all those notions and experiences were generated by His Spirit trying to awaken the God spirit in me to move me back toward my Father in awe, adoration and praise.

Over time, I purposed a step further. I decided in my heart that if I had a God thought, I would trust it was from God, and believe it was for me. After all, I never question hearing from the devil. Do you? So why then would we be so skeptical about hearing from the One who made us and loves us?

I  found once I had the willingness to hear from God, He had a lot to say! A perfect example is one time at the beach, I asked God to reassure me that I was in fact hearing from Him, that I wasn’t losing my mind. And I heard, Look down. When I did, I saw several seashells perfectly shaped like an ear and I heard this Scripture in my heart:

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

The tongue has the power of life and death. Proverbs 18:21

Power, life and death. Let’s linger over these words a little longer.

Power is a God-like word that speaks of super-sized strength and ability.

Life is not just mere mortal life as we know it, not just bills and homework, but the life of Christ in us.

Death is when we agree with the enemy that all is hopeless and helpless.

All this on the tip of our tongues.

So put all these together and you have a dynamite-packed promise from God. Just as He spoke the world into existence, He gives us the same authority to speak, to declare, to choose His life of blessings and favor, or choose a death-like, God-less existence.

II Corinthians pushes even farther and says we have “divine power” to break every stronghold that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. The tongue is a vehicle that drives our decisions, beliefs, dreams.

Therefore speak life. Bless and do not curse. Speak life over your heart, your loved ones, your health and homes, finances and future. And watch God release His power, divine favor and strength into your reality.

Friends,

Spent yesterday on a trail in the Smokies.  At one point I found I was getting tired and I had my head down looking at my feet plodding on the trail, thinking about how hard it was.

And then I sensed the Lord saying, “Jana you are missing the beauty. Look farther down the path, instead of at your feet. That way you will be able to look at the wonders around you as you are going.”

When I raised my head, the view was breath taking, to the left and right vibrant colors, overhead a canopy of autumn glory. My feet may still have hurt but my heart sure was lifted.

So my prayer for you today is that you will look down the path you are on instead of at your feet taking one tiresome step at a time. He knows you are weary. He knows your muscles are sore. But he also knows where you are going. And he has surrounded you with his beauty.

Look for God along the way and you will surely see him.

I was trying to think of something humorous….How about this?

Jana is driving 7 sixth graders
in a 15 year old van that doesn’t go into reverse
to Greeneville today.

Just let your  mind dwell on that for a few minutes.
I will keep you posted….

What does it mean really to do life with God?  What does it look like when your kid falls out of her seat, you need a shower really bad, and things couldn’t get any crazier?  How do you watch for to God show up in the middle of that?

Thursdays are going to be our God-story days.  Stories of how and where we see him show up in both the big and little ways. Join us as we expectantly look for God sightings!

So I have a Great Dane dog named Pearl. That means everything is our dog world is big – very big. Big portions, big bowls, big pillows, big clippers. But that is not all that is very, very big. Did I mention that she is an inside, outside dog?  Or that she is getting old?  So this morning, we got up and put her outside and breathed a sigh of relief that we had caught her before she did her Great Dane Business in the house on our hardwood floors.

We had a cup of coffee, snuggled the girls and Chuck left early for work. Salem, our oldest daughter, went out to feed Pearl but Pearl quickly rushed in the house.  Now the humans in the house think she is coming to get on our bed, which is a very special treat. But she comes in to the bedroom with a panicked look on her face, turns one circle and squats. Walks two steps and squats. And so on.

Life for me began to go into slow motion.

The sweet sounds of our voices singing out “Come on Pearlie, get on the bed” turned into shrieks and yells of  “OH NO! Pearlie get out of the house.”  And out she did go but not before leaving several land mines both liquid and solid. Did I mention that we have carpet in our bedroom?

But after the door slammed and as the stench rose there was a odd, eerie silence. I realized the girls were looking at me, watching me, waiting to see what I would do. My first action was to become a command center: Open windows. Get vinegar. Get paper towels. Lots of them. But after the scurrying died down and I was on my hands and knees cleaning, I prayed, ‘Lord, give me something more than blowing a gasket.’

I got one word: “Pollyana.” God is so funny.

That is an ANCIENT movie but the gist of the little girl’s philosophy on life was to play the “Glad Game,” where you take every hard circumstance and try to find something to be glad about.

“Well,” I said slowly, “I guess we were planning to get new carpet anyway, right? We can be glad about that.” And the girls caught on immediately. “Glad she didn’t poop on the bed,” said Charis, the little one. “Glad I don’t have to clean that up,” said Salem, the realist. “Glad I have lots of paper towels,” I laughed. And Charis took the prize with “Glad Dad didn’t have to be here to do this!”

Yes, I mused silently, the little darling, he missed all the fun. But then, I found I was even glad about that because had he tarried five more minutes he would have missed a really important celebration with dear friend.

Thessalonians says to “give thanks in all things.” Maybe God really did know what he was talking about. Maybe, just maybe, Pollyanna was on the right track to look for the good and glad in life. Because God lives there.

Real Answer #1:

There is a head side of this question and heart side. Here is the head side.

In Psalm 16, God uses the word pleasure. He says that we would find eternal pleasures. Not just the passing fancies, or “Wow’s” of life. But eternal, lasting forever pleasures. The ones that do not fade or spoil.

Psalm 16:11

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Isn’t that an odd choice of words, unless, unless. . . . Unless we are made in his image, so the whole notion or idea of pleasure comes from Him anyway.

So in a heart way, try to remember what you said you would do at age 10, age 15, age 20.  Somewhere in there are desires and thoughts and dreams you had before the world started knocking you around and down. Write them down and pray over them and let God sort, reveal and refine.

Still stuck? Try doing a vision board, a collage of pictures torn from magazines, that express aches, wants, “wish I could” ideas. And let the Lord surprise you over time with more revelation of who you are and what he had in mind for you.