Eyes to See and Ears to Hear

Just a few days ago, I opened my mouth and found words flowing out that were indeed NOT useful for building one another up or encouraging another person (Ephesians 4:29).  Now I wasn't yelling, or even angry in any sense of the word.  I was offering unsolicited advice, and it did nothing to help the poor friend at the other end of my 'river' of words.  Almost immediately I regretted my loose lips.  My relationship with my friend had been shaken, and I tangibly felt the tension between us rise.  But this post (thankfully!!) is not about the marring effects of sin.  It is about the renewing effects of GRACE!

God is gracious and merciful.  But like many others, I am prone to completely forget the good works God does in my life to sustain and uplift me in His grace.  It is my hope that this post will help us all to not only see His good works, but to remember that He is indeed, faithful to save - even save us from ourselves.

Peacemaking

Dear Friends,

Just before our super fun trip to Alaska (see pictures here!), I found that our oldest two children were almost constantly in battle.  The words of their lips, the actions of their hands (and feet) were almost always against each other.  My last quiet time before the trip had me reading Proverbs 20.  Not surprisingly, I found that God had some wise words waiting for me: a Mom in need of advice.

Verse 3 - Avoiding a fight is a mark of honor; only fools insist on quarreling
Verse 22 - Don't say, "I will get even for this wrong."  Wait for the Lord to handle the matter.
and Chapter 21:23 - Watch your tongue and keep your mouth shut, and you will stay out of trouble.

So, I pose the question to you: What do you do in your house to help maintain the peace?  How would you take these verses and put them into action in your living rooms and back yards? 

Looking forward to hearing from you!
Tracey

The Swing

The Swing by Robert Lewis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing

Up in the air so blue?

Oh I do think it the pleasantest thing 

Ever a child can do.

Up in the air and over the wall

Till I can see so high

Rivers and trees and cattle and all over the countryside

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown

Up in the air I go flying again

Up in the air and down!

I'm Moving!

Hey Everyone!

I figured it was about time to separate my 'writing life' from my daily life (s if they don't intertwine inseparably.)

So I'm officially launching a separate blog spot for my writing (iamcrossingjordan.blogspot.com) and keeping this one for our family updates and silly pictures (called Stories of the Sixpack).  I'd love to see you in both spots, but won't be offended if the pictures and silly ramblings are more your style.  In either case, I hope you enjoy our time together.

Many Blessings,
Tracey

What Does Your Heart Reveal?

I have waited weeks before posting this next segment, mostly because I felt uneasy about it's content. I hadn't quite gotten my hands comfortably around the meat of the message. But last night, God allowed me to handle some of the truths of His Word through a work by the great theologian - Dr. Martin Luther.

I had been searching for the source text for what I 'thought' was a quote by Luther, and ended up providentially coming across a compilation of writing of like-minded fellows called the Book of Concord. In it was Luther's commentary on the very subject this next segment tackles. Thank you, God.

p.s. The picture is just a silly picture of our oldest son pretending to have antlers growing out of his head. It makes me smile.

The Christian Life is a Love Affair of the Heart

OK. So after many delays, here is The Heart of the Family - part 3: The Christian Life is a Love Affair of the Heart....

Brent Curtis opens his book, The Sacred Romance, with the words, “For above all else, the Christian life is a love affair of the heart” (p8). In fact, Augustine (author of Confessions, and City of God) asserted that, “the whole life of the good Christian is holy longing.” The whole of my Christian life is defined by what I long after? My entire life is defined by whom or what I love and whom or what loves me? Above all other things? In short, yes. Let me digress to help make this point.

Last May I read the book, The Shack by Wm. Paul Young. I really enjoyed it, but for some spontaneous reason, I got the feeling that I never really finished reading it and I should do so immediately. I flipped open the book near the end and landed in chapter 14 – Verbs and other Freedoms. The subtitle of this chapter is, “God is a Verb.” God started moving.

The main character, Mack, is conversing with God and asking questions such as, “How come I am not able to tell when you’re around?” God answers, “For you to know or not has nothing at all to do with whether I am actually here or not….You will learn to hear my thoughts in yours…you will better begin to recognize my voice as we continue to grow our relationship” (p196).

A few pages later, Mack asks another question. “Why do you love me, when I have nothing to offer you?” And here comes the beginning of “God is a Verb.”

“It should be very freeing to know that you can offer us (the Triune God) nothing, at least not anything that can add or take away from who we are…That should alleviate any pressure to perform.”

This conversation chases Mack’s concern over what God expects of him after his encounter with God in the The Shack is over, and God rebukes Mack. “When I hear language abused in favor of rules over sharing life with us, it is difficult for me to remain silent.” The abuse was the word ‘expectations.’ Mack was being admonished because he was looking for rules to live by (God’s expectations of him) and not reveling in the freedom of living in Christ. God continues…

“Those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control.” The conversation continued. “Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expression like responsibility and expectation, are a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty….I will take a verb over a noun anytime.”

Huh? What do verbs and nouns have to do with all of this? Well, if you look at the word expectation (a noun) and turn it into a verb it develops into a sense of expectancy. If you look at responsibility (a noun) and turn it into a verb, it becomes the ability to respond. God is a verb. He is, He was, and He always will be. God is the great I AM. Nouns, on the other hand, “exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but if the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless I AM [really is], there are no verbs, and verbs are what makes the universe alive” (p204).

God asks us to expect Him in life (the verb) and not live by striving to meet expectations (the noun). He is asking us to respond to His love; to live in freedom (to live under grace). He is not asking us to live under the yoke of responsibility (the law…which sometimes I even expand upon and create new laws in my own house!). Can we live in that kind of freedom? Can we trust Him to go before us, and to guide us in expectancy and response? We have to. For “the degree that [we] resort to expectations and responsibilities, to that degree [we] neither know [God] or trust [Him]. And to that degree…[we] live in fear” (p206).

The truth of the gospel is intended to free us to love God and others with our whole heart. It is intended to create in us holy longings; longings not to right the world of unmet expectations, but to live in a sense of expectancy about our relationships; longings not to fulfill responsibilities to our God and others, but to respond to the love affair of our heart. To the degree that we neither know the God who is wooing our heart nor love him enough to follow after the longings of His heart, to that degree we live in fear. And there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). Whom or what do you love? And whom or what are you allowing to fall in love with you? The centrality of the Gospel is clear. God is after your heart. Is your heart after God?

Expectancy in the ER

The next edition to "The Heart of the Family" revisits the idea that God is asking us to live in expectancy and response (and not in the confines of expectations and responsibilities). Much of the text is taken from an earlier post entitled, "God is a Verb."

I say this to preface a little adventure I went on a few weeks ago. Jeff was out of town. Of course, this was the time that our littlest boy, Jack, decided to taste as many Dramamine tablets as he could stomach before getting caught. (Yes - they WERE in a child-proof container). Needless to say, he and I ended up in the ER very quickly after the taste test.

In addition to the many little miracles that occurred that night, one of them being Jack willingly eating an entire cupful of black, charcoal-laden chocolate pudding(!), was my realization that life IS better lived in expectancy.

You see, I had almost 6 straight hours with my little man...all to ourselves (save the leads and wires, and nurses, and doctors). I had absolutely ZERO expectations set upon him. I had no idea what to expect from the hospital visit, and no idea what he would do in that situation. I was living in a moment-by-moment sense of expectancy and response, and NOT by expectations and responsibilities. I was joyfully surprised every time something went 'right' (like eating the pudding, and getting a perfect EKG the very first try), and in the same breath not the least bit frustrated when we had a 'set back' (like getting charcoal pudding all over the sheet, or getting tangled up in the many wires we were wresting with...how's that for alliteration?). I was actually enjoying myself in the ER, but more importantly, I was enjoying my relationship with Jack. Living in expectancy and response was fun, freeing, and rewarding. I wouldn't trade my time in the ER for anything, because it allowed me the chance to see Jack from a different set of eyes - eyes that looked for my chance to respond to him, and not just see the many responsibilities I have towards him. Eyes that saw the joy in living in expectancy and not the frustration of living in my unmet expectations, even of a 2 year old. God was moving that night. He was moving in my heart and giving me a glimpse of life lived in expectancy.

On the other hand, God also gave me the dubious honor of experiencing life on the opposite end of the spectrum - in the throws of expectation and responsibility. A few weeks later, our entire family came down with a nasty cold. It hit the 2 babies and parents the hardest. So needless to say, I was not at my best the morning after two babies developed croup in the middle of the night and I slept fitfully despite great hope set upon NyQuil to cure my troubles.

Jeff had returned home from his trip, but was now required at work, and I had to man the home-front alone. It was not pretty.

I started the day by setting expectations upon everyone, and not telling a soul what they were. Things like, "we will all just sit around quietly today and rest" and "without schoolwork, the children could clean their entire room." When the two little ones didn't stay quiet, and instead cried, whined, and fought their way through breakfast, a good chunk of my patience went out the door with Daddy. When the older two children complained, delayed, and negotiated their way out of cleaning their rooms, "Ugly Mommy" came out to play. As some of you Moms out there may relate - I 'lost it.' Impatient words, furled lip, and stomping feet were but the opening act to the play. The main act included barking orders, crying children (above and beyond what they brought to the breakfast table), and others running for cover. Thankfully, the closing scene was me on my knees praying the very holy prayer of, "Heeeeeeelp!!!

My expectations had been set in stone that morning. I had not shared a single one of them, and yet I held my entire family responsible for throwing them to the ground before I could even finish my first cup of (cold) coffee. I was living in the chaos and frustration of unmet expectations. I was living, in a sense, in death - for I was living in the noun: expectation. It was killing my relationships with my children, killing my hopes for today, and threatening even to kill my desire for tomorrow. Living in the nouns of life is not God's plan. He is not dead. He is alive and calling us to live in the verbs of life: to expect and not to set expectations; to respond and not to be bound in responsibilities. I'll take the ER over that breakfast table any day.

So, with that all said, I'll save the next edition for tomorrow. I've said enough today.

Home is Where the Heart Is

As a child I remember moving into a new house. I was in 8^th grade and I had lived in the same house on 84^th Street most of my life until that time. When we arrived in the new house, something was missing. There had been a plaque upon the kitchen cabinet that stated, “Home is Where the Heart is.” It was artistically decorated and quite lovely. But it was missing from the new house. No matter where I looked, I could not find that plaque. So I replaced it. I made a new one in my little art studio in the basement. It was not perfectly printed, nor quite so artistically decorated, but it clearly represented what I thought was missing in our new home – a declaration of fact. I needed a place to hang my heart. (p.s. The picture to the right is done by Karen A. Goodman...not me :)

Now my childhood home did not have the heartbeat of God hammering the walls. In fact, there was much strife and discontent within and without those walls. My father was an unacknowledged alcoholic, and both parents were frequently fighting. My point however, is this – home is still where the heart is. Whether the heartbeat of the home is barely recognizable, disharmonic and stress inducing, or beating after God’s own heart, the home is where the heart is. It has long been so.

“Home is not where you live but where they understand you.” - Christian Morgenstern

Where we love is home,

Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.

– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Homesick in Heaven

Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule.

- Frederick W. Robertson

Finally:

It takes hands to build a house, but only hearts can build a home. – Author Unknown

If the home really is where the heart is, isn’t it time we learn how to protect, nurture and heal the home? Isn’t it time that we learn how to fear the Lord, and learn what those commandments are that promise to make it well with us and our children forever? If home really is where the heart is, isn’t it time we learn how to guard our heart and ensure the wellspring of life that God offers (Proverbs 4:23)?

Strangely enough, that homemade plaque is still on the wall in my parents’ house despite several consecutive moves into new homes.

The Heart of the Family - Introduction

Here's the conclusion...

In fact, a third experiment showed that humans are just as affected by music. Attitudes such as hostility, fatigue, sadness and tension decreased with classical and ‘designer’ music, but those same negative attitudes dramatically increased with ‘grunge rock’[i]. What exactly is ‘grunge rock’ you ask? You know, groups like Anthrax, Nirvana, and Electric Wizard; the same groups that the online music genome project, Pandora (www.pandora.com), categorizes as ‘Stoner/Doom Metal’. Hmmmm.

The beat of ‘grunge rock’ goes against the natural rhythms of our very own bodies. This conflicting beat triggers stress and results in feelings of hostility, fatigue, sadness and tension. No wonder the rats in the 3^rd group started attacking each other. They had no break what-so-ever from this stress inducing racket! If indeed the popular motivational quote, ‘attitude is everything’ holds any truth, then music really does have a profound influence on life. It affects our very attitudes about life.

So what does all of this have to do with the family? Just this – the clamor of our world has had a significant impact on the heartbeat of today’s family. We are being bombarded by the disharmonic drum beats of a clamoring society and increasingly unable even to hear the heartbeat of God. How are we supposed to be families after God’s own heart when many families are focusing primarily on running the ‘rat race’? God himself cries out, “Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever!” (Deut 5:29). In the same way it is the cry of my heart that families would have the heartbeat of God within them, that they would fear their God and keep all of His commandments always; that they may not only run the race, but that they and their families would have victory over it! And it will be well with their children forever! Will your family be a family after God’s own heart or a family struggling to survive amongst the disharmony and non-synchronized clamor of our world?

---

[i] “The effects of different types of music on mood, tension, and mental clarity” (McCraty, Barrios-Choplin, Atkinson, Tomassino) Alternative Therapies, Volume 4, No. 1, January 1998

Coming Up Next: Home is Where the Heart is

The Heart of the Family - Introduction

I recently had the privilege of attending a workshop led by Andrew Pudewa, founder of the Institute for Excellence in Writing (www.excellenceinwriting.com). He was giving a talk on the profound influence of music on life and referenced some very interesting scientific experiments done on lab rats.

In one of these experiments, three sets of lab rats were placed in controlled environments where the only difference between each environment was exposure to specific music. The first set of rats, the control group, listened to nothing at all. The second set was subject to sophisticated classical music. The third set listened to repetitive ‘minimalist’ music (i.e. African ritualistic drum beats). The results blew me away.

Each set of rats was placed in a maze and timed. Essentially they were running a ‘rat-race’. All three groups showed similar abilities during the initial run. But this soon changed. The rats exposed to Mozart music from before birth to 60 days old were able to learn the mazes over twice as fast as those with no music, whereas rats exposed to repetitive ‘minimalist’ music not only stopped improving their run time, they actually got worse! Their run times increased to the point of doubling and even tripling their initial timed run. Worse yet, these very same rats brought a surprising halt to the entire experiment because they started killing each other!

What in the world was going on here? Mr. Pudewa continued presenting research data that explained. In a separate experiment, he showed how mice exposed to Strauss waltzes showed increased and orderly neuron development, while those exposed to ‘disharmonic’ non-synchronized drum beats showed erratic and pathological growth of neurons . What this means is that those mice that were exposed to sophisticated, orderly music developed a sophisticated, orderly brain. On the other hand, the mice that were exposed to disharmonic non-synchronized drum beats developed a disorderly, erratic brain. In short, the first group got smarter and the second group got dumber…even to the point of developing aggression and hostility towards themselves and others....

More to come. I'll ask for feedback after the conclusion of the intro. Thanks for taking the time to read.

The Heart of the Family

In early March, I mentioned a sermon about habits becoming loves, and loves becoming idols., etc. Well, I got it wrong. The real quote goes like this:

Sow a thought and you will reap word. Sow a word and you will reap an action. Sow an action and you will reap a habit...reap a character...reap a destiny...reap eternity (Desiderius Gerhard Erasmus).

Another take on this quote is that our thoughts reap words, our words reap actions, our actions reap habits and our habits REVEAL our addictions. From here our addictions REVEAL our loves and our loves REVEAL our idols.

My head spun around trying to make sense of these ideas for over a month, and the end result was a 7 page paper entitled, The Heart of the Family. I'd like to share it with you all, and get your feedback. Don't worry, I'll only post short excerpts at a time. :)

All of this writing came about because of my heartbreak. I cringe when I hear of situations where the family unit is not cherished or upheld, and is replaced by a shallow reflection of God's intention for the family. Unwed, teenage mothers are celebrating their 'new additions' while committed, stable couples are being criticized for 'irresponsibility' when they choose to be fruitful and multiply. A marriage covenant is binding only until one or another doesn't 'feel the love' anymore. And mothers everywhere, and in every walk of life, are pressured to 'do something' with their life instead of being supported to stay at home and raise the children they either 'celebrated' or 'irresponsibly' created.

I have come to the conclusion that the 'heart of the matter is a matter of the heart' (Pastor Jason, TPC). The heart of the family has been attacked, damaged, and trampled. Recovery is all a matter of the heart. It is my hope and prayer that we can somehow turn people's hearts back home. For as The Message puts it:

You're blessed when you get your inside world - your mind and heart - put right. Then you can see God in the outside world (Matthew 5:8).

Part 1 to come tomorrow...

Desires of the Heart

Delight yourself in the LORD ; And He will give you the desires of your heart. - Psalm 37:4

I have wanted to learn to play piano for years. We had one small problem: no piano. Well next week, Sam and I both will have our very first piano lesson...on our very own piano!! Yippeeeeee.

So many words...so little time

Just a quick thought:

I was marveling the other day at how many words it takes to adequately describe a 5 second thought. In my case, it usually takes about a page and a half.

Happy Sunday to you all!

Work of Art

A good friend (yes, you Kim) just sent me a note of encouragement direct from God. I am still blown away at this marvel. Just this morning and most of the early afternoon, I've been second guessing my convictions about a project He's started me on (more to come on that subject later), and along comes this word:

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them (Ephesians 2:10)

Now there there are two ways in which these words perfectly speak to my doubt.

1. God has asked me to write. Not just in this blog...although in a way I think this is part of the bigger plan as well. But to write about my convictions regarding the state of the family in today's world and how we (as Christians) might go about changing it. These words from Ephesians are an encouragement that the work set before me (to write about the family) is indeed God's work prepared beforehand so that I would walk in them. Now to figure out what 'walk in them' means?

2. Kim also passed along a commentary regarding this scripture:

"The word translated 'workmanship,' poiema, indicates that we are His poem, His masterpiece. Each of our lives is the canvas on which the Master is producing a work of art that will fill the everlasting ages with His praise." It is God who created us and takes responsibility for our lives; therefore as His child, we can trust Him to lead us.

Kim sent this to me because she knows I am struggling to learn what it means to whole heartedly trust the Lord. Because I am His child; because I am like a work of art - a poem delicately composed and intricately arranged - I can know He created me with passion and an investment of time. I was not an afterthought, a hurriedly scribbled down mess of notes, or something thrown together in the last hour. I am a masterpiece. His greatest work. How can I not trust Him to take care of the workmanship of His very own hands?

What Kim didn't know is that I'm sitting here trying to put together my journey of trust with my new-found mission to write about the state of the family. And this commentary put it together. I am learning to trust God and I am writing about it in this blog. Maybe my writing assignment (on the family) is to be permanent reminder of how God lead and guided me through the process. Maybe the completion of this 'good work' will be a testimony to how I learned to trust God and really believe His words apply to me. Maybe it will only be a means to make me an 'exact man' (quote from Sir Francis Bacon: Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man). But it is my desire that somehow, someway, it would also bring glory to God and others closer to Him.

Shedding Dragon Skin

If you haven't taken the time to read the Chronicles of Narnia, I highly suggest you do so. We have been listening to the entire series in the car on audio CD (from Focus on the Family Radio Theatre - They're wonderful!!).

Anyway, a few weeks ago we were listening to the fifth book in the series called The Dawn Treader. This story tells of a ship of the same name and the adventures of the crew - one of whom is a 'beastly' little boy named Eustace. Along the way Eustace falls into some magic that turns him into a dragon, and spends the greater part of the book trying to figure out how be 'undone'.

This is where Eustace and I intersect. Earlier in the year, I shared my experience at a retreat that urged me to remove the 'mask' that I wear around most of the people in my life. The short of the story is that I was/am afraid to totally trust God not only to take it off, but to live without it. In The Dawn Treader, Eustace experiences the removal of his dragon 'mask' by the very hand of God. I so wish I could just put an .mp3 file here with the audio content...but since I can't I'll type it out for you.

...the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don't know if he said anywords out loud or not.
"I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, though I, that's what the lion mean. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully...In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
"But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they just were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before....So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
"Well, exactly the same thing happened again (and again)...Then the lion said...'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
"The very first tear that He made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off...
"Well he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt - and there it was lying on the grass: only ever ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the other had been..."

There you go. I may try to remove the mask myself, and it may even seem like I've achieved some success at it, but the real mask is still underneath. God himself will have to remove it. And it will hurt - a lot. It will pierce the very heart of my grip on it. But the beastly stuff will lay there on the grass some day. Looking thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking that anything I was able to scratch off.

I was nearly in tears driving down the road that day. My children had no idea, but my Father knew the very reason why I was crying. He had touched my heart.

God is a Verb

So last week I wrote that God was talking to me, going before me and guiding me. But what I realized is that I haven’t shared much of that movement. I’m here today to start filling in the gaps.

Last May I read the book, The Shack by Wm. Paul Young. I really enjoyed it, but for some spontaneous reason last week, I got the feeling that I never really finished reading it and I should do so now. I flipped the book open near the end and landed in chapter 14 – Verbs and other Freedoms. The subtitle of this chapter is, “God is a Verb.” He started moving.

The main character, Mack, is conversing with God and asking questions such as, “How come I am not able to tell when you’re around?” God answers, “For you to know or not has nothing at all to do with whether I am actually here or not….You will learn to hear my thoughts in yours…you will better begin to recognize my voice as we continue to grow our relationship” (p196). These are the words I needed to hear. He was talking to me. He was talking to me.

A few pages later, Mack asks another question. “Why do you love me, when I have nothing to offer you?” (p200). And here comes the beginning of “God is a Verb.”

“It should be very freeing to know that you can offer us (the Triune God) nothing, at least not anything that can add or take away from who we are…That should alleviate any pressure to perform.”

This conversation pursues Mack’s concern over what God expects of him after his encounter with God in the The Shack is over, and God rebukes Mack with these words, “when I hear language abused in favor of rules over sharing life with us, it is difficult for me to remain silent.” The abuse was the word ‘expectations.’ Mack was being admonished because he was looking for rules to live by ( God’s expectations) and not reveling in the freedom of living in Christ. God continues…

“Those who are afraid of freedom are those who cannot trust us to live in them. Trying to keep the law is actually a declaration of independence, a way of keeping control.”

Trust. There it was again. My trust issues (even with God) were being exposed as issues of false expectations and the desire to follow rules. In the margin of the book I wrote, “kind of like social expectations and my need for an orderly house.”

The conversation continued. “Enforcing rules, especially in its more subtle expression like responsibility and expectation, are a vain attempt to create certainty out of uncertainty….I will take a verb over a noun anytime.”

Huh? What do verbs and nouns have to do with all of this? Well, if you look at the word expectation (a noun) and turn it into a verb it becomes expectancy. If you look at responsibility (a noun) and turn it into a verb, it becomes to respond. God is a verb. He is, He was, and He always will be. God is the great I AM. Nouns, on the other hand, “exist because there is a created universe and physical reality, but if the universe is only a mass of nouns, it is dead. Unless I AM [really is], there are no verbs, and verbs are what makes the universe alive” (p204).

God is asking me to live by expectancy (the verb) and not live by striving to meet expectations (the noun). He is asking me to respond to His love; to live in freedom (to live under grace). He is not asking me to live under the yoke of responsibility (the law…which sometimes I even expand upon and create new laws in my own house!). Can I live in that kind of freedom? Can I trust Him to go before me, and to guide me in expectancy and response? Can I trust Him to go before me and guide me in removing this protective ‘steel door’ mask that I’ve been hiding under for so many years? I have to. For “the degree that [I] resort to expectations and responsibilities, to that degree [I] neither know [God] or trust [Him]. And to that degree…[I] live in fear.” (p206). I don’t want to live in fear. I want to trust. Lord help me trust.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. – Proverbs 3:5-6