Shining Isn't So Beautiful After All

The Lord has been speaking to me a lot about SHINING lately.

Today I was reading in Romans 13 and came across this verse: "Put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light."

Whoa. Armor of light. That brought my mind racing all the way back to Ephesians 6:10-18, the passage that talks about the armor of God. These two pieces of equipment are one in the same. The armor of God includes the weapons God has given us to fight the enemy: the Word of God, prayer, faith, salvation, righteousness, and peace. Only by equipping ourselves with every piece of the armor -- without one piece missing -- can we fight the spiritual battle that we are in.

The passage in Romans 13 shed new light (Haha, see what I did there?) on my understanding of the armor of God. By using the prepositional phrase "of light," after "armor," Paul is tying back to what he proclaimed in one of his letters.

"...Become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life..." (Philippians 2:15-16)

Basically, Paul is commending us to shine like stars as Christians. We are to stand out among the darkness in our world, and we do this by proclaiming the Gospel of Christ. As Christians, we are called into relationship with God and community with other Christians in order to go out and tell the world about Jesus' saving working on the cross.

But how does one go about this? How does one truly shine the light of Christ, and not of self?

Last week I was browsing Facebook when one of my mentors posted this quote. I don't know who it's from or where she got it, but it struck something within me.

"Shining is always costly. Light comes only at the cost of that which produces it. An unlit candle does no shining. Burning must come before shining. We cannot be of great use to others without cost to ourselves."

I don't know if this is a Christian quote or just a philanthropic quote, but either way, it provides an answer to my question.

Shining cannot occur without burning. And burning hurts.

What does burning entail? Paul gives the answer coincidentally -- or maybe not -- just before he talks about shining like stars. A few verse earlier, we read...

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God

something to be grasped,

but made Himself nothing,

taking on the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to death --

even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:5-8)

That is death. That is burning. That is what Christ our Savior did on the cross for us, and we are called to do the same.

That brings me to another quote (Sorry, the Lord just speaks to me through quotes a lot! Haha.): "Jesus did not die on the cross just to save us from our sins; He died on the cross to teach us how to die on our own cross!"

WOW. That's powerful. No, we cannot forget that Jesus saved us from our sins on the cross. That itself is salvation -- the act of trust and surrendering to God that gives us eternal life. But there was more to Jesus' act than that!

Jesus taught you and me how to die on our own cross by his own act on the cross. Philippians 2:5-8 (above) perfectly correlates with this.

So the call to shining, the call to proclaiming the Gospel among all nations, first involves dying on our own cross. And what does dying on our cross entail?

Surrendering our rights.

Seeing ourself as "dirty, little objects" as C.S. Lewis puts it.

Wasting our life at the feet of Jesus all for His glory.

There is a difference between Christianity without a cross and Christianity with a cross. At an event called "Secret Church" put on by an external ministry organization called IMPACT at my school a little over a year ago, the speaker spoke about just this.

He said that Christianity WITHOUT a cross is comfortable with role-based Christianity. Christians who identify with this type of Christianity do not do anything; they stay put and just go through the motions of church and spiritual disciplines with no real growth.

On the other hand, Christianity WITH a cross consumes, hurts and costs. Christians who identify with this type of Christianity are ablaze for the Lord; they deny their desires and only have their eyes fixed on Jesus. They are not concerned with what the world thinks; they are only concerned about what God thinks. Although they may face persecution, they press onwards towards Christ -- the goal.

What sounds better to you? For me, it's the latter. No, I'm not there yet and every day I must die to myself over and over again. Yes, there are days where I fail. There are days where my flesh wins and my spirit loses. But in the long run, I'm on the road to dying on my cross, because I know that the reward of following God is greater than any temporary reward won by my own strength.

And that's what Thailand is all about. Yes, it may look pretty on the outside, but really, this opportunity is going to be challenging. I'm going to be in a totally foreign location with nothing familiar -- not even the language. But I know this is where the Lord has called me to, so I will not disobey Him.

I would rather die on the battlefield serving my Lord by wearing the armor of light than die in the comfort of my own culture.

"The only call is the cross."

In The Shadow Of The Cross

Silence.

My body molded into the green plush chair, I stare at the pale blue walls. A whiteboard is plastered on the wall with my grandma's name scrawled on it, in addition to the dosage of medicine the doctors have given her.

My right hand hangs awkwardly in my lap, and my left hand coils over the wooden folding table to clench my grandma's cold disfigured hand.
Her frail body lies there almost motionlessly on the thin hospital bed. It had only been five days since her surgery.

I can feel the ache inside of her through her bones.

It's been a year since my grandma had her surgery. The day after Easter, in fact.
I remember waking up at 3:30 a.m. to get to the hospital by 5:00 a.m. My mom, stepdad, younger sister, and I piled into our blue minivan -- and then grandma stepped in. Her face somber, she adjusted herself into the empty "bucket" seat beside me.
The ride to the hospital was almost silent. The only words spoken were those referring to directions.
After arriving at the hospital, we escorted grandma in to the dimly lit waiting room. We filled out the paperwork, and after scampering from one office to another, we left her there. Dressed in a baby blue hospital gown sitting in a wheelchair, she kissed each of us goodbye.

It hurt saying goodbye. I knew I would see her again soon, but the reality of leaving her there under the care of doctors and nurses scared me. What if something went wrong during the surgery? My head flooded with questions I did not know the answers to. I was clueless and afraid.

I expect the disciples felt a similar way when their Teacher, Jesus Christ, was pierced to the cross that solemn Friday night. A perfect and holy man, embodying God himself, hanging on the cross with a crown of thorns on his head and blood coating his entire body.

The man who had taught them everything about life hung there dead, right in front of their faces.
All hope was gone.

It baffles me when I conjure up the thought that the disciples didn't know Easter Sunday was coming. What would it be like to stand in front of the cross, not knowing that the resurrection would happen three days later?

The closest moment I have to that is the moment saying goodbye to my grandma in the hospital waiting room. But even then, I knew I would see her again.

This Easter season, I am reminded of the sorrow and confusion the disciples faced while watching their Savior die on the cross between two thieves. In that moment, there was no more hope. All that had happened the three years previous was meaningless.

Thankfully, Jesus did rise from the grave and now lives in heaven. And we can have eternal life if we confess our sins and believe his death and resurrection washed away our palette of brokenness.

But what would it have been like to not know this eternal hope was coming? How would you have reacted? What would it have been like to be in the shadow of the cross 2,000 years ago?

Grocery Store

Ready, set, go! Grocery shopping time. You park the mini van in the parking lot and hustle in, list-in-hand and ready to dash through the aisles in record time. Immediately after the door opens, you grab a cart and scramble down the produce aisle. Finally, you make your way through the meat, deli, dairy and dry food departments until making your way into the checkout line.

You must be wondering why I've described such a well-known weekly activity among Americans. Almost every family does it, whether they bring their kids to cry through the whole experience or if it's just mom picking up a gallon of 2% milk after work so breakfast can still exist in the morning. Not much thought or emotion is put into the trip.

That's unless memories are carved into that place. When we are brought back to locations of our past, flashbacks slide through our minds of who we once were at that point in time and the chills start to run through our back.

Ambling through the aisles of the grocery store and being stared down by half of the employees automatically thrust those thoughts into my head. Just because I used to date one of the dairy boys.

Surroundings from our past have a keen ability to haunt us of "what once was". Although their appearance may change with time, the exact location does not. A capsule of time is ground into that portion of space.

If you've even gone back to your childhood home or your old elementary school, it would be a similar experience. You remember running through the sprinkler with your siblings on the lawn during the summer, or being put in detention in Mrs. Axel's classroom for two hours after school. Your mind becomes a roll of colored film.

Sometimes past experiences can be joyous and delightful; other times experiences can be painful and quarrelsome with our current self.

Such as times when we started ignoring a friend at school because they weren't "cool" enough for us anymore.

Or in our teenage years when we used to cut during the late hours of night in our room.

Or in the car at the park when we had sex with that guy.

Visiting these places in our past can be a deep struggle and bring a huge amount of regret.

But God didn't create us to live with a guilty conscience. His Son died on the cross so that we may be SAVED from our sin... our past.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." -Romans 8:1

We are justified and redeemed through the blood of the Lamb. We have been made holy and righteous with Him! Nothing can separate us from the Lord. No lie. No failure. No sin. NOTHING.

This doesn't mean we are forever broken free from our past, however. God still allows us to walk through adversity and hardship so we can learn to put our full trust in Him and experience His grace abundantly.

If we didn't struggle with anything, then we wouldn't have any reason for a Savior.

All believers have some kind of junk on their plate. Whether it's presently visible or hidden in the shadows of the past, everyone has their secrets.

The thing that makes some stronger than others is how they deal with their junk. Do they give it to the Lord, or do they mope around with it all day, whining and complaining about their consistent failures?

When we hand our weaknesses over to the Lord, then His strength is made complete in those weaknesses. There's something mysterious and powerful about laying our sin down at the foot of the cross. The Lord picks it up, puts it on His shoulders, and with a smile He says, "Child, you have been made whole."

We don't need to compare ourselves anymore to the person we were in our past. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul writes that we have been transformed into a new creation!

Live in that truth. Allow the Lord to release you of your past burdens, and walk free knowing full well His furious and passionate love for you!

"But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint." -Isaiah 40:31

The Symbol of Love

February 14.

The one day on the calendar when greeting card companies lash out bundles of pink and red heart-patterned cards, grocery stores overstock on freshly cut roses and boxes of chocolate, and couples crowd into restaurants for a romantic dinner over candlelight.

Between all the cheesy love messages scribbled on candy hearts and the classic love songs from the 1950s, the meaning of love is much deeper than our society likes to commercialize it.

Valentine's Day can be wrapped up in one symbol, more or less: The heart. A heart represents the undying love between two people, typically those who have romantic feelings for one another. But it can also represent love among friends and families.

The heart is not a bad representation of the overrated, flowery holiday. However, I think there's a much better symbol that emanates the REAL meaning of love. And what's that, you ask? The cross.

The cross is where true love was birthed. Phil Wickham's song, "True Love", paints a beautiful portrait of the scene of Jesus' death on the cross 2,000 years ago.

The earth was shaking in the dark
All creation felt the Father's broken heart
Tears were filling heaven's eyes
The day that true love died, the day that true love died
When blood and water hit the ground
Walls we couldn't move came crashing down
We were free and made alive
The day that true love died, the day that true love died

Jesus died on the cross for all the ugliness of the world that was in the past, was present at the moment, and was yet to come! He shed His blood so we could be saved and guaranteed a place among the heavens in eternity. That's true love.

Whenever this time of the year comes along, it is hard not to get caught up in the emotional rush of human love (especially when you have a significant other) or give yourself a pity party if you are single. I've been a victim of both of these reactions.

This year, however, I am happily "flying it single" and focusing my eyes and my heart on the Lord. I'm going to spend the day reflecting on His perfect and blameless love. I'm going to rejoice with thankfulness for the showers of mercy and grace He has given me!

There's nothing for me to beat myself up about. I'm not going to gorge myself on Oreos and Nutella because I need an alternate source of satisfaction (although my best friend and I love consuming "heartbreak" food whenever we hang out and have a girl's night).

I can be fully confident that I am loved by the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I am one of His beautiful princesses, and He will never leave me nor forsake me. He works all things together for my good! Now THAT's a good God. Let me leave you with this verse in Jeremiah 31:3, which I think sums up it all:

"The Lord has appeared to us from afar, saying:

'I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.'" <3