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The Power of Do-Overs

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This lovely picture is from last week. Everything started out beautifully. Chuck walked out of his office and said, “Oh my goodness it smells wonderful in here.”  I laughed and told him it was the magic of garlic, onions, and olive oil. Great ingredients to begin with then I added Italian sausage, ground beef, red wine, and balsamic vinegar. (Ten points if you can figure out what I was making.) Then I went outside and got distracted…

The next time Chuck came out of his office, he was banging on the door with his foot,  trying to get my attention. The pot, now in his hands, was pouring out smoke.  I rushed into the house and was instantly enveloped by a grey cloud that reeked of charred meat. Not the eating kind of charred, but the death kind.

We had company arriving in three hours. Dinner is dead and our house makes you want to vomit.

Good times.

Have you ever scorched a conversation? Or burnt a relationship to a crisp? So much so that your heart hurts for days after?  Yeah.  Me too.  In fact. While supper was burning on the stove, I was distracted by a conversation that had an eerie resemblance. Burnt to a crisp. And reeked for days.  So now what?

It is the holy work of Do-Overs. When you know how it could go if you had a chance to start again. To do it better this time.  This is how the mess in my house tutored me in the mess of my conversation.

First, the initial assessment:

No fires. Check.

Windows open and fans on. Check.

Chuck is not burned. Check.

Candles lit. Check.

Second, begin acute cleanup.

Whew. The whole area surrounding the stove was a nightmare. Deep cleaning was required. But immediately I got the stovetop and floor cleaned, so I could cook again right away.

Third, still need to feed the company.

The Lord was so kind. He reminded me that I bought two packs of Italian sausage for two different recipes. Ahh.

Thank you, Lord. I had all I needed for a Do-over.

Fourth, I started again.

I got a clean pan and threw in the garlic, onions, and olive oil. This time, I only left the pot once all the ingredients were simmering happily.  To be clear, I was making this new fragrant dish while choking back the still-present smoke smell. As I peeled and sliced and stirred, I replayed the fiasco. What had I done wrong? Why had it burned like that?

Not enough liquids. I had sauteed the onions and browned the meat but forgot to add the crushed tomatoes. (Yes, it’s spaghetti sauce.) I had wanted to let the meat cook a bit more but ruined it all instead.

I am telling you this because while I was burning my supper, I was engrossed in a difficult meeting via Zoom on my back porch. Turns out, I scorched the meeting the same way.

So again, what had I done wrong? And what to do now?

One. I had to open the windows and give everybody a minute, including myself to get some fresh air. We were all choking.

Two. I had to clean up the mess. Emotionally, spiritually, relationally.

Three. I had to begin again. And learn from my mistakes. Turned out that my meeting had all the ingredients there,  just like my sauce. We just needed to add a little extra liquid— insight, courage, wisdom, and even Living Water. Smile. And I needed to stir and simmer it longer.

Holy Do-Overs.

Can I tell you this is a code word in my family? Chuck and me, and the kids, would often come back after some charred moment and ask: Can I have a Do-Over? I can do that better than I did right there.

Do you know that we still had a lovely spaghetti dinner that night? Even that was healing for me. It reminded me I am a good cook.  Just like I am a good friend and leader.  I just have to keep my focus and clean up my messes.

Honestly, the hardest thing for me was enduring the stench. For days when I walked in my house or leaned too close to the exhaust fan, (oh the irony) I could smell traces of it all over again. The stench reminded me of the stinging in my heart and the hurt to others.  But we keep learning. We keep cleaning. We keep trying to be our best selves.

Lord, we thank you for Holy Do-Overs. Thank you for mercy. Thank you for healing. Thank you for good meals after bad ones. And good relational laughs after tears. Amen.

His Song Creates Change

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Can I just say that the Spirit of God is the medicine for all the world?

Right now, we are witnessing wars, hostage negotiations, trillion-dollar debt deals, abject greed and starvation. And the cherry on top?  My own human heart. Do you feel the chaos and contradiction rise up inside as you watch the events outside? Add a little personal drama to this emotional cocktail and we’ve got ourselves a meltdown. Unless…

The nearness of God has to matter in cases just like this, or, we have bought into some placebo mind game. What was it the theological haters called it? The numbing of the masses? Yeah. Sit down and be quiet. I want to release a testimony.

Just like you, I am navigating the news, work life, family life, and the assaults on my own mind. I felt like I was being crushed. So I did what I knew to do. 

Worship. 

Early one morning, I went to the water to quiet the noise. I started hearing Him whisper specific lines from several songs I’ve been soaking in. That night, He woke me up in the wee hours. I grabbed a familiar verse from a dusty version and my eyes popped open. 

“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us” Ephesians 3:20 NASB

Listen, I have nailed down the More Abundantly part and the Ask part. It was the little word Think that stopped me cold. 

His power works within me to Think different.  If I will let Him. 

So I just kept chewing on this word, pressing into His presence while I was doing daily chores. And then it came to me in a rush. I had to stop everything to capture the comfort He was singing over me.

These are lyrics from several songs that He mashed together to answer my fear, my hurt, my longing. My Need. 

(You literally can’t make this stuff up.) 

His New Song…

Why do I care if I don’t know what to do? 

When I live by the strength of Another 

You got me under Your wings

I could worry about many things 

But one thing is needed 

You’re all I need God 

Help me to see that

You got me under Your wings

I need you to heal my heart.

Come lay me down to drink Your cup 

And resurrect me like Your Son 

I’m gonna love again 

You’re faithful to heal my heart

I’ll be the branches if You’ll be the root

To lay on Your shore and be washed by Your waves

‘Cause all I want is You, You know

‘Cause through the joy of letting go

Yeah, I’ve found my peace, I’ve found my hope, I’ve found my home

I need your Shelter 

Hide me away from the harm

Away from it all

I’m safe here in Your loving arms

I need Your shelter

The weight of the world’s falling off of my shoulders

I’m letting go ’cause I know that You hold it

You care for me more than I even know, and

I just need You

Keep your eyes open wide

Guard that beautiful heart

don’t ever let your love grow cold

don’t settle for the easy road

The hardest things will make you  grow

Lord, thank you for singing over us. Your presence works the world right out of our thinking. I love you back. Amen. 

Listen to original songs and find credits here: 

 

Losing or Leveling Up?

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Surrender. Come on, be honest. Did the word make you cringe? I’ve always equated surrender with a white flag, admitting defeat. Losing the battle, game, or ahem, argument. But the other day the Lord gave me a new meaning of why surrender is the pathway to more fullness, more…Life.

 

Me and the Lord have this game we play.  He likes to show me the meaning under the meaning in words. One morning, I was praying with Chuck and a picture just popped into my mind.

Sur render. 

Surrender? I asked.

No. Sur render.

He was trying to redefine the word for me. I had to go look up what the Lord was hinting at.

At the most recent Yes and Amen retreat we talked about how God leads us through a process of transformations. We made a whole list of worldly mindsets we take off and Kingdom mindsets we put on. One of those was Self-sufficiency transformed into Surrender.

When I got home, He kept unpacking this. A weak view of surrender feels like resignation or quitting, or worse, losing. So from that mindset, if we “surrender to God,” it doesn’t always zing in our spirit. But look, there’s more:

Sur means “to be over, above, beyond, in addition.”

Think sur-plus, sur-charge, sur-prise, sur-name .

Render means in artistic terms to “to cause to become.” With this upgrade, Jesus is inviting us to give Him our situation, fear, need, or dream on the understanding that He is above and beyond our skill and pay grade and He wants to create more for us than we can do all by ourselves.

I don’t know about you, but that zings my spirit.

I am not quitting on me or my plans. I am leveling up. With Jesus.

Self-sufficiency to Sur render means we give our plans to Someone who is over and beyond us and then He causes something even better to become. Sure, we can do it. But He can and wants to do it better with us. 

Try it His way. You might like it. Besides, self-sufficiency is exhausting anyway. 

Bigger on the Inside

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Greater is He that is in you…There are some lessons that God never tires of driving home in our hearts. Since truth sets us free, it makes sense that He keeps flooding us with pictures and verses and revelations of who He is, and thus, who we are. We sometimes forget that God is ever working miracles in hidden places.

I have so many God stories about butterflies. I mean, c’mon. We all probably do. Here’s the most recent one. The other day, Lindsey and Christopher told me this story of a caterpillar that they got from their daughter’s school. And it did what caterpillars do, eat and grow and put itself in a chrysalis. Right before they went on vacation. 

So like all good parents, they brought the chrysalis with them. In a padded box. From Tennessee to Florida. 500 miles.

Somehow even this effort speaks to my faith. They KNEW that something amazing was going to happen. So they went to any length necessary to partner with the miracle.

Selah.

In Florida, they watched and waited and a beautiful butterfly emerged from this tiny case. They showed us this picture. It was Christopher who exclaimed, “It’s so big. I don’t know how this big butterfly could even fit inside this little cocoon.”

That’s when I heard the Lord. “It’s bigger on the inside than on the outside.”

I just let that phrase percolate with the Lord for several days. And here is what He gave me.

  1. Don’t settle for caterpillar living, when you are destined to be a butterfly.
  2. I must do whatever it takes to partner with miracles.
  3. There is radical transformation happening that I can’t see.
  4. God inside me is bigger than the little world outside me
  5. The afterlife with God is bigger than the chrysalis of death we all face.

    Maybe read those again. Let Him drive truth home one more time. It will set you free.


    You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them,
    because the     one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

    1 John 4:4 NIV

Heal Thyself

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We all go through heartbreaking times. We deal with loss, betrayal, slander, devastation. One hard lesson I have learned through it all is I would prefer to focus on someone else’s problem, sin, or character issue than to work on my own.

 

Ouch. If I work on you, I don’t have to work on me. It’s easier. On me! Seriously, you know it’s true. But God.

Psalm 51 says a lot of needed and beautiful things about healing. And it starts with me and you naked before the Lord.

Surely You desire truth in the inmost being;
You teach me wisdom in the inmost place.

God knows the truth about us deep down. And He wants us to know the truth about us too. But thankfully He doesn’t stop there. He shows us our brokenness, then He teaches us a better way. And then —gasp— He washes us.

Wait what?

 7 Purify me with hyssop, and I will be clean;
wash me, and I will be whiter than snow
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones You have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide Your face from my sins
and blot out all my iniquities.

And if being seen and known, taught a better way and washed is not enough, God goes one step further. He generates a brand new heart and Spirit to spirit connection!

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.

Listen, loved one. You going after your own wholeness and healing with the Living God will do more to right your tough situation than anything else you can offer. 

I see in my recent trials with children and parents that it would be easy to amplify their problems and needs. If I could just fix them… But all the while, the Lord kept saying, “Jana you have work to do. Let Me heal your heart.”

Give yourself to His careful examination. Let Him show you and wash you and heal you. Then you can re-enter your family drama or work drama with a better version of you, a Right Spirit You. 

Pay Day

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Let’s face it. If you work in a non-profit land, it’s pretty safe to say you are not in it for the money. Smile. In the beginning, I would sometimes grumble at the Lord, “I’m not getting paid enough to do this. It’s so hard. I mean, I love you Lord, but dang…is this worth the effort?”

In a kind way, the Lord shifted my appreciation. 

Now, without fail, there comes a specific moment when everything is in place and the event is humming along. 

The Lord whispers, “Don’t miss this. It’s Payday.” 

I stop and breathe it all in, focus on a person or an action I think He is pointing out, and catch a holy moment. 

God doesn’t miss one ounce of our effort. He sees every task, every offering, every sacrifice. And even more, He rewards it. (Hebrews 6:19)

Maybe not in cash, but dare I say it? In His pleasure. He shows us His Big Why we do what we do, and it is far beyond what we could ever hope or imagine. 

Holy Spirit was alllll over the beach retreat last weekend. Through the middle of the night prayers and travailing for breakthrough, He would whisper, “Keep going, payday is coming.”

And it did. We were in a worship session, my eyes were closed and I was just singing and swaying with Him. I was thanking Him for carrying all of us, blessing Him for revealing Himself. And His whisper came. 

“Listen,” He said. I stopped singing. Ahhh their voices. This was a new song to most when we began the weekend, now the women were singing their hearts out here at the end. 

 

You opened up the heavens./ You rained down your love.

Father my heart is toward you./ You’re more than enough.

 

Tears ran down my cheek. Thank you, Jesus. 

Then He said, “Now take a look. It’s payday.”

I carefully turned around to see a room full of women. Their eyes were closed, hands held high, faces glowing with the presence of the Lord, declaring their renewed love and faith in this beautiful God.

It’s why we do what we do. All for His glory. No better payday. 

“And without faith living within us, it would be impossible to please God. For we come to God in faith knowing that he is real and that he rewards the faith of those who passionately seek him.”

Hebrews 11:6 TPT

 

Wisdom Finds a Way

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The other day I was driving alone in the car, which very rarely happens these days. I noticed the silence and appreciated it for a moment, until I realized the thoughts that were swirling around in my mind. I was somewhat commiserating with myself about a situation that the Lord and I have been carrying for a while now. I heard a lot of hopeless words floating around so I turned on worship music to battle against them. As I was worshiping I started talking to Jesus. I quickly realized I was holding something close that I was reluctant to reveal to Him. I found myself saying things like, “Here I am again. Talking about this same old thing. I don’t even know what to ask for anymore. I just need some relief. That’s what I need. Relief.” It was as if He said, “Yes, yes you do. And is that really what we’re talking about? Because I see something more…” I knew immediately what He was seeing and replied, “But I love You so much. I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to think it, much less tell you I’m thinking it.” To which He replied, “Yes. But I already know. I can hold it. It’s ok. You don’t have to hold it anymore if you’ll just tell me about it.”
And so I did. I just said it.
I said,  “I know You can do anything. You can grow a 3rd arm on me right now if You wanted to. You make seas part and heal people and bring people back from the dead. And yet I’ve begged You for some relief from this draining relationship and yet here I am. Again. Still carrying it. I love You so much and I don’t want to accuse You of not being good. I know You’re good… And You aren’t acting on my behalf. You see it. You see it all. And yet You don’t move. And I want to be mad at You but I love You so much. So what do I do now with all this?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, I looked over to my left and noticed a billboard that said, “Wisdom Finds A Way” and the peace of Jesus filled my car. Matthew 11:28-30 says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” In that moment, Jesus took my yoke and my burdens and gave me His easy yoke and light burdens instead. I felt no shame or condemnation for my thoughts, only peace and can I dare say relief? Sweet relief.
Maybe that’s you today? Maybe you’re carrying far too much. Whether that’s pain, anger, bitterness, strife, jealousy, shame, sadness or guilt. Whatever your thing may be, can I encourage you today to just say it to Him? Tell Him about it, that which you so desperately want to hide or ignore. He will hear you and will find a way to bring you what you need. He always finds a way.
Contributed by Crystal Freeman

God Hacks for Living – Part 4

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Ready for another truth bomb? We have been doing a series that offers more than clever life hacks and conveniences. Instead, these God Hacks are life changers, if we let them. God hacks, though, they cut deep. Think bone and marrow. Soul and spirit.

As we begin, imagine yourself standing there, a bag of chips in your hand, eating one after the after. Mindlessly. Maybe instead of chips, it’s spoonfuls of ice cream, a bag of weed, or sips of a drink. Maybe you’re swiping a screen, one image after the other, memes to like, clothes to buy, or bodies to lust over. The key word here is, mindlessly.

We have all done it.  Frankly. It never scratches the real itch.

But God.

Today I want to poke that tender place called coping. Coping has a word origin meaning to cover, which lines right up with this verse from Hebrews.

For whatever God says to us is full of living power:

it is sharper than the sharpest dagger,

cutting swift and deep into our innermost thoughts and desires with all their parts,

exposing us for what we really are.

Hebrews 4:12 TLB

We want to cover what we really are, so coping seems like a really good idea at the moment. But God’s powerful word exposes what we really are. For those of you who are shamed-based, that language may seem scary. Exposing us for what we really are. Note it says, what. Not who. God’s love for us, His name and His place for us is unconditional. Our Who we are is secure. The what, however, is a different matter.

There is a good and bad kind of exposing.

Today’s psycho-pop version of coping looks more like pretending, ignoring, denying, and fantasying about an alter-reality. How do I cover up what is really going on inside? But Holy Spirit uses scripture, and any other expression God wants to use, to tell us the truth and take off our masks. He invites us into the real world of His presence. What are we actually feeling, needing, lacking?

Which leads to today’s truth bomb.

God’s Comfort: all addiction is a desperate covering of deep hurt.

Wait. Comfort? Isn’t that the same thing as coping? No. Not at all.

The word origin of comfort is strong or strengthen, from the word Fortis. Think fortify. Fortress. Fort.

Comfort equals strong.  

Coping equals cover.

The reality of coping and addiction is once is never enough. You have to keep covering. masking, hiding. The pain demands that you keep eating, masturbating, snorting, smoking, buying.

It is covering pain — not healing it.

Comfort is God’s strength for you, in you, through you to actually face the pain and heal the pain. Imagine not needing to go through all the coping antics because you no longer feel deep hurt.

What are you looking for?

In some of my hardest moments of coping, the Lord asks me this question. What are we looking for when we are grabbing — fill in the blank? When we are hurting, angry, tired, afraid, exhausted, abandoned, unloved, lonely, or neglected what do we really need?

For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable.

So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews 4:12-16 NLT

Fortify.

I feel compelled to add this thought. How do you comfort? 

You get still with God. You invite His presence into your mess instead of avoiding it. You let Him have all the words, emotions, and needs. Then you wait to hear His perspective, counsel, or affirmation. This is a miraculous moment when Heaven invades Earth. I want to release a testimony of the goodness of God literally invading my worst of moments like a victorious army.

He is with us. He sees every intimate detail of our lives.

Let us run to Holy Strength and be healed. The God of all comfort. 

 

Back in Them Thar Hills

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Chuck and I are happily back in Knoxville for a visit. It’s a whirlwind with meetings, New Wine Church, Holy Spirit Class, GTC starting, Men’s group and the Team Planning for 2024!

Whew! I have more God Hacks and other revelations God is releasing. But today is something a little different. During our team prayer, I heard the line from an OG song by Chris Tomlin. Would you read it slowly?  Let it seep into your spirit and refresh you. Let it keep you aware of the Cross. Let it remind you of how dearly loved by Jesus you are.

 

Clean Hands

We bow our hearts, we bend our knees

Oh Spirit come make us humble

We turn our eyes from evil things

Oh Lord we cast down our idols

So give us clean hands and give us pure hearts

Let us not lift our souls to another

Oh God let this be a generation that seeks

Who seeks Your face, oh God of Jacob

Oh God let us be a generation that seeks

Who seeks Your face, oh God of Jacob

God Hacks for Living – Part 3

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Oh Lawdy. Take a deep breath. We have been talking about Life Hacks and their suggested better ways to do life. Meanwhile, God, because He is so smart, has been dropping some pithy truth bombs that will actually change our life trajectory. Today’s God Hack has to do with being stuck, paralyzed, frozen, or (ouch) comfortable.

Getting unstuck means we must live a different life.

For those of us who loooove our comfort zones, this one makes us squirm. 

If I coddle my excuses and my story, which is often a very sad story, then I get to shed my personal power and expect no forward motion. I don’t have to change anything. Because, I am, after all, stuck.

If I am stuck and willing to remain so, I can talk about the problem ad nauseam, but never take the next step of correction.

If I never spend the time with God to discern the truth about the lie that binds me, I will roll around in that denial for months. Or decades.

If I know the truth but never actually take the steps to change the course, or far worse, never follow the Lord’s instructions about how to get free, I will give days, years, and seasons of my precious life to an enemy whose intent is to keep me immobile, ineffective, silenced, and unproductive.

Listen. I love to soak in the Lord, but I rarely experience time with Him without coming back to this world fired up to do my part in bringing heaven to earth. The love of God, His big picture of restoring His beautiful world drives me, and you, forward into action.

“Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth.” 1 John 3:18

Getting unstuck means doing whatever it takes to let go of lies, unforgiveness, stinking thinking, bad habits, sinful choices, or easy excuses. Your destiny is a stake.

Almost certainly it means receiving help from others. We may have to humble ourselves and admit we need any variety of counsel, money, creativity, or accountability. Some of us literally need a swift kick in the ass like a spiritual defibrillator to shock our hearts into beating again. All of us need a plan of action to live a life that is Unstuck.

The stuck people that Jesus unstuck in the gospels had to learn how to do life completely differently. The blind man, the lame man, the possessed woman, the leper, all of them had created life patterns around their stuck places. Now that was gone. That old identity was gone. They had to deliberately create new habits for this new unstuck life.

I speak from personal experience. I kept running in this toxic mental circle. Think hamster-wheel devised by the evil one. I would tell the Lord about this wonky feeling. The Lord told me, after I had ignored it for a month, you need to name it. I made a lame attempt and said it feels like a worth issue. (That sounded noble.) Back and forth, thinking, praying, musing, and massaging. Still no progress.

Don’t miss this. If I didn’t really know what it was…I didn’t really have to change.

But God. He told me to call a coaching friend. Not a soft, squishy friend who cares about my warm, fuzzy feelings. No, this friend told me I was full of shit. “That’s not what the problem is at all. The problem is people pleasing.”

I was so offended. Or was that exposed?

People pleasing is a sin problem. And sin ALWAYS has a remedy.

Maybe, just maybe, we would rather be people who have wounds so we can be victims. Rather than be people who have sin issues that need a Savior.

Whether we have legitimate wounds or blatant sin, we can get unstuck!

God reveals the truth. And the truth sets us free. We don’t have to live in gray, unnamed, can’t-pin-it-down spaces. This works in one of two ways. God either names so it can be healed. Or He reveals it as a demonic attack. In that case, we break the agreement and the assignment to confound us and replace it with His truth. Either way, getting unstuck is part of our operating system.

Humans are born forward. The reason we dislike being “stuck” in the first place is because something deep inside of us knows we can be and should be advancing. It is at the core of our being.  Let’s get used to unstuck. Let’s get used to different. 

More God Hacks for Living