Like Clay

Last weekend, I heard an incredible message that really struck a chord with me. The speaker, Pastor Pierre Du Plessis, talked about how we are like clay and God is the Master Potter.

Growing up in the church, I heard a number of messages along these lines — i.e. being soft and mold-able in the hands of God. But I’m telling you, this message was pretty earth-shaking. You can listen to it here if you would also like the ground beneath you to shake.

One part in particular that really got to me was this statement: Just when you think you’re a finished product, the Potter destroys the clay and sends it back to the starting point.

Just when you think you’re some “perfect Christian”  — serving God, being a pretty decent human being — He’s likely to shake things up. Because the truth is, until we die, we are never a finished product. Every day of life is a day on the spinning wheel of God, the Master Potter.

In pottery terms, a pot may look perfect, but the potter is able to see imperfections and air bubbles in the clay that keep it from being finished. So the potter destroys the seemingly completed product and starts from scratch.

The statement about going back to the “starting point” shook me up because I have experienced that in my own life over the last few years. Three years ago, I was a relatively successful young professional living in a huge city, Houston. I was also been used in a big way in ministry, writing, coaching, and performing in dramas for kids at the biggest church in America. I even got to preach the messages in kids’ church sometimes, and I am far cry from being a pastor!

I didn’t think at the time, “Wow, I’ve arrived! I’m doing so much for God. Yay, me!” But probably, in the back of my head, I was pretty impressed with myself. And yet there were still so many weaknesses and insecurities in my life that still needed to be worked out, even as I was ministering to all of these kids (and I am still a work in progress).

When Devon and I got married, God basically decided to send me back to Square 1. And, ironically enough, He decided to send me back to the place where my walk with Him began as a child — Tulsa. Starting about high school, I resolutely decided that I would move away from Tulsa after college and never move back. And that’s what I did — for about five years. But God decided He wanted this to be the place where He would start our marriage — where He would take me back to a place of repentance and trust. Basically, it felt like He played a board game with my life and I was sent back to the Start.

“It is the loving kindness of the potter that says, ‘Let’s start again,’” Du Plessis says in his message.

It is beyond our feeble human minds to understand why God seemingly makes us start over in life sometimes. Why He takes careers that were thriving in the world’s eyes and gives us careers that are laughable in the world’s eyes. Why He takes us from a place where we are swarming with friends to a place where we have no one to talk to. Why He makes us return to places that we thought we would never have to go back to and see people we never thought we would ever have to face again.

Ultimately, it is because He cares about the finished product of our lives. “By the time the potter touches the clay, He already has a full concept of the finished product,” Du Plessis said.

Sometimes, God brings us back to Square 1. But He’s not up in heaven laughing at our suffering and frustration; He is trying to teach us valuable lessons, and make sure we come out complete this spin around. As long as we stay soft and mold-able in His hands, the Potter will shape our lives into exactly what they were meant to be.

 

The Lady at Chick-fil-A Who Puts Me to Shame

There is a lady named Glenda who works as a cashier at my nearby establishment of chicken scrum-didily-umptiousness (a.k.a. Chick-fil-A). I have seen Glenda at least a few times, and every single time, she puts me to shame. Why?! Because Glenda, the lady in her 40s or 50s working at Chick-fil-A, is way better at her job than I am at mine.

Here is how my conversation with Glenda typically goes.

Me: “Hi there. Could I please have a Number 1 with a sweet tea?”

Glenda: “Oh, good choice. How are you doing today, sweetie?”

Me: “Oh, I’m good.”

Glenda: “And what’s your name?”

Me: “Lindsay.”

Glenda: “That’s right! You’ve probably told me a hundred times! (cue cheerful singing) ”It’s a great day at Chick-fil-A!”

Me: “Wow, you have a great voice!”

Glenda: “Oh, you’re just saying that!”

(Actually, she really does have a great voice.)

(Order comes)

Glenda: (singing) Lindsay, Lindsay, Miss Lindsay: Here is your order! You have a wonderful afternoon, Miss Lindsay!”

Glenda. She loves her job. Her nametag reads “Proud Service for 11 years.” That lady has been working at Chick-fil-A for 11 years. And it obvious to all that she LOVES her job.

Herein lies the reason that Glenda puts me to shame: She has a far better attitude about her work than I do. You may say, “Whatever! It’s easy to have a good attitude about your work when you’re serving scrum-diddily-umptious chicken!”

Well, my first job, at the tender age of 15, was at Chick-fil-A, and I can tell you, it is not always easy to have a good attitude when mothers are complaining that the size of their kids’ nuggets are too small, or some guy thinks you put too much ice in his sweet tea. And don’t even get me started on people’s hatred toward the ”two pickles” on every sandwich. Oh, and it’s not always fun to go home smelling like chicken and fries, either.

Since my days of employment at Chick-fil-A, life has taken me to many different jobs, and alas, I now work in an air-conditioned environment around pretty nice people, actually getting to use my hard-earned college degree. Yet, I often have a downright crummy attitude. I am not always singing with glee like Glenda that I get to be at work, that I get to make money, that I get to use my God-given abilities to do something useful with my time.

So thank you, Glenda, for putting me to shame. Thank you for showing me what a good work attitude looks like. Thank you for reminding me of Ephesians 6:7: “Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than people.”

And thank You, God, for my job.

 

The Adult Pity Party

We all remember pity parties we threw as children. One of my personal most shameful pity parties occurred during my kindergarten class Christmas party, where naturally, an exhilarating Secret Santa gift exchange took place. I was so excited about the gift exchange that I’d been looking forward to it the entire month of December. I had purchased a gorgeous pink brush and mirror set for the girl I was giving my gift to. The truth was, the gift I was giving was the ideal sub-$5 gift that I would have loved to receive.

But sadly, when I opened the gift that was given to me – which now I can’t even recall – it was sorely lacking in comparison to that gorgeous pink beauty set I gave away. So what did I do? Like any 5-year-old girl who doesn’t get what she wants, I threw a pity party. Much crying was involved, followed by scolding by my mom, who was attending the party.

Over the years, I learned that crying and whining about not getting the ideal gift was not exactly the cool thing to do, so I stopped the whole pity party thing. Or so I thought. The truth is, many of us still throw pity parties as adults. They are just masked and hidden – usually in the privacy of our own homes – but still just as pitiful (okay, probably more so) than the pity parties of childhood.

The root of every pity party is selfishness. We want something and if we don’t get it, we act out. We want a situation or a relationship to turn out the way we want it to. Our way or the highway, and everyone else is going to have to deal with our whining afterwards.

Everyone demonstrates self-pity differently. Some of us lock ourselves in our room and cry for hours. Another may call all of her friends and unload the details of her “difficult life” on others. While still others may drown their sorrows in a pint-sized Ben and Jerry’s and a chic flic.

While the healthy processing of emotions is important, self-pity is neither mature nor reflective of a life surrendered to Christ.

Consider Christ. Two of his best friends betrayed or denied Him. People in His hometown wanted to murder Him. But did He ever wallow in self-pity? No; His reaction was prayer. The Garden of Gethsemane was not a demonstration of self-pity; it was an earnest petition to His Father to help Him summon the strength He would need on the Cross.

A friend of mine, Beth, recently shared with me her response when self-pity tries to creep in. Beth is married to a new Army Lieutenant who has been in training for several months at a time over the last year. During one of the trainings, their only form of communication was hand-written notes because the officers were not permitted to make phone calls or use the Internet.

During these times, Beth was sometimes tempted to throw a pity party. Instead, she would do something totally different and surprising. She would crank up some music and start dancing around her house. Instead of permitting an atmosphere of sadness and depression to enter her home, she chose joy. She chose her emotional state, and that changed the path of her day.

I’m not suggesting that we ignore our emotions; simply that we don’t put emotions on the throne of our lives. When we give into self-pity, we are making our emotions more important than God. If you’re going through a rough time, by all means, cry and get it all out there! But sorrow is only meant to last for a night, and joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

 

Friendships of the Divine Kind

It seems many of the solid friendships in our lives have formed in such a unique way that we can only trace their conception back to the fingertips of God. Seriously, somebody’s got to be stirring the pot to make things happen the way they have been lately.

I’m convinced that if we’ve placed our lives in God’s hands, then we’ve given Him free reign to interrupt our grandiose plans and make with our lives something better than we could have ever made on our own. And the great thing is, if we are patient and remain obedient, He will move in a big way in our lives and in our relationships.

Other than the incredible story of how God brought Devon and I together from two different states, He’s brought some awesome friendships into/back into our lives in recent months and years. I wanted to take a moment to share a few of those stories.

Devon and Todd on our first trip to the Philippines in 2000.

Most recently, Devon and I were reunited with an old friend Todd and his wonderful wife, Danielle. When we were teenagers, we took a trip to the Philippines (for the first time of many times to come throughout our lives) with our youth group. Todd was one of our team members, and I remember how well he and Devon bonded. Looking back on my pictures from the trip, every picture I have of Devon also has Todd in it. They were both totally sold out to God as teenagers, and they are both now strong, godly men.

Just as Devon and I hadn’t talked for years, Todd and Devon lost touch after high school. This fall, however, Todd started the LPN to RN program at OU, and he just so happened to run into Devon at a registration event. They soon discovered that they would be graduating with their bachelor’s at the same time (last week — woohoo!) and that they were both applying for the Family Nurse Practitioner program at OU. It’s amazing how quickly their friendship reformed, and they both started realizing that the timing of all that was happening was not just coincidental. It wasn’t just random that they both felt called to become Nurse Practitioners and enroll in the same program at the same exact time.

Another friendship story that I know is a “God story” is that of our friends Josh and Leah. When I worked at a Christian bookstore my freshman year of college, I met a goofy redheaded guy named Josh. We became good friends and a couple years later, I had the privilege of meeting his future wife, Leah. I moved around to several places after college, but thanks to Facebook, we were able to keep in touch.

When I was living in Houston and Devon and I started dating, I got a call from Josh one day. “So I am friends with your boyfriend,” he told me. It just so happened the Devon and Josh worked in the same shopping center, and they had become friends without knowing anything about my connection to them. Now Josh and Leah are dear friends of ours, and we can’t wait to see how God uses their family.

All of this to say, don’t put limitations on what God can do in your life. He can bring people back into your life that you haven’t seen for 20 years, or give you a friendship with someone who you totally never would have expected to be friends with. When we live our lives in surrender and anticipation of His will, He will do amazing things!

 

Conducting a Symphony out of Street-Corner Music

A couple weeks ago, Devon and I got fancy — even more so than usual. We got free tickets to the Tulsa Symphony, so for a couple hours, we watched the violinists wield their bows in perfect synchronicity, the saxophonists blow mightily into their horns, and my personal favorite, the percussionists bang and pound on all different sizes of drums at just the right moment with just the right amount of force.

As fascinating as the musicians are and as melodious and perfect the noise is that they concoct, one of my favorite parts of the symphony is watching the conductor. He amazes me. Not only does he know everything that’s about to happen in the entire orchestra at the moment it happens, but he knows what’s going to happen 1 hour into the symphony. He knows every part — whether it be strings or horns or percussion. He knows when to motion the flutes to begin playing and when to tell the trumpets to hush. He knows when to signal the triangle and the xylophone, and when to instruct the entire orchestra to crescendo in a perfect blend so majestic that the audience is sure they’ve just tasted a piece of heaven.

When thinking of the conductor, I can’t help but think of God. He knows every part that each one of us humans is supposed to play in this life. Whereas I am only given the music for my part, He knows how each piece is going to fit together to compliment the other pieces. In this way, He’s not only the conductor; He’s also the composer. Because ultimately, even if I’m a musician in His orchestra, I am not the composer or the conductor of my own part. If I start playing whatever I want to play, I will cause a cacophony instead of blending beautifully with the others around me.

I think a lot of times, we forget that we’re just one piece of a huge plan God has for mankind. As Rick Warren says in his book “The Purpose Driven Life,” the purpose of your life fits into a much bigger, cosmic picture that God has designed for eternity. When we seek out what God’s doing in this world and find our piece in the big picture, we become purposeful. We go from being a struggling street corner musician collecting coins in a hat to a violinist performing in the most majestic symphony on earth. (reminds me of the movie “The Soloist”.)

I don’t have a clear picture of what God’s full purpose for my life is, but I know the Conductor and the Composer of this symphony. So I can be confident that He will give me the sheet music I need at the right time and create beautiful music out of this simple life.

 

Missing Jesus

My heart breaks for my generation – particularly for those who are living so differently from the way they were raised. The Barna Group reports that 60 million adults comprise a group that can be labeled “ex-Christians” – those who were Protestant or Catholic in childhood and currently report being atheist, agnostic or some other faith. In pie chart terms, that’s one-eighth of all American adults.

My heart doesn’t hurt for them because they’re not attending church a week like “they should be,” or because they’re listening to Jay Z instead of Mercy Me. My heart breaks for them because they’ve abandoned a relationship that once was so treasured, so seemingly indestructible.

I’m reading a fabulous book called “The Case for Faith” by journalist Lee Strobel. I love the way the book begins: an interview with Charles Templeton, who became one of the world’s leading agnostics in his later years. In his 30’s, however, he was one of the world’s most famous evangelists, traveling with Billy Graham, preaching the gospel of Christ.

How could a person who had been in such a close relationship with God at one point in his life turn to walk a completely different path?

A picture. Templeton saw a picture that ran in Life Magazine of a North African woman holding her dead baby in her arms after the region had experienced a devastating drought. Like so many, Templeton abandoned his faith because he couldn’t piece together an answer to the puzzling question: “How could a loving God allow evil like this to rule?”

When Strobel brought up the topic of Jesus during the interview, however, Templeton’s countenance changed.

“In my view, he is the most important human being who has ever existed.”

That’s when Templeton uttered the words I never expected to hear from him. “And if I may put it this way,” he said as his voice began to crack, “I … miss … him!”

With that, tears flooded his eyes. He turned his head and turned downward, raising his left hand to shield his face from me. His shoulders bobbed as he wept.

The scene drives me to tears. This man spent so much of his life knowing Jesus. But because of questions that could not be answered logically, he could not return to his once joyous relationship with Christ.

For those of us who have experienced the sweetness of knowing Jesus, let us never turn from it. The answers to, “Why does God allow evil into the world?” can be answered to limited extent, but they ultimately require us to trust that the character of God is ultimately loving and all-wise. I recommend Strobel’s books if you are dealing with this issue, as well as the Bible and other books on apologetics.

If you have turned from your once precious relationship with Jesus, and you miss Him, it’s not too late. It’s never too late. The church may have hurt you and abandoned you, but Jesus is still there. He loves you like never before. Run to Him, and He will accept you. In Him alone is fullness of life.

 

How to not be a nun but still (sort of) pray without ceasing

Recently, phrases like, “Pray without ceasing,” or “pray continually,” or “in all things, give thanks,” keep hunting me down, it seems.

A couple weeks ago, I was watching the recent LifeChurch.tv series called “Better.” In Part 1, Pastor Craig Groeschel talks about how it’s possible to spend an entire day with God. What?! To most of us, a day with God would mean reading your Bible, praying, and singing worship songs an entire day long.

But there are things called family, jobs, and friends that prohibit us from living like that. Quite frankly, it’s just not practical for most of us to live like nuns and monks, though sometimes that sounds quite splendid. (Sorry, I’m still living in the echoes of the glory of Sister Act 1 and 2.)

So what does a “day with God” in the middle of our busy lifestyles look like? It means bringing God into our everyday life by thanking Him, and by telling Him when we face problems. Craig says it so well that you need to listen to the message if you haven’t already done so. Just do it. You’ll be better for having done so. Pun intended!:-)

But as I started thinking about what it means for me to bring God into my everyday life, I started pondering up ways to do that practically. Here are a few things that work for me:

1- Before I turn on my cell phone in the morning, I talk to God. If He is really first in my life, He comes before missed text messages, Facebook, emails, etc. I try to talk to God and read His Word before doing anything else, except for using the facilities, if you must know!

2- I create an atmosphere of worship in my house. If I’m alone in the house – or even if Devon is there and doesn’t mind – I’ll crank up the worship music as I’m doing chores. Is there anyone in the world who really likes chores? Not me. But when worship music is on and I’m doing dishes or laundry or mopping, I find myself getting happy. I find myself giving my worries over to God in the midst of my many responsibilities. And I find myself trying to sound just like the ’90s version of Darlene Zschech.

3- If I’m frustrated about something at work, I try to write out a prayer or go on a short walk and talk to God about it. I find that by doing this instead of venting to coworkers about my problem, I’m more at peace and then able to be more productive the rest of the day. I can’t say I’ve got this one down 100%, but I’m trying!

Those are a few things I’m trying to implement in my life to live as Paul says and “pray without ceasing.” I definitely have a lot of work to do, but this relationship with God is a journey, and small changes one step at a time are how we grow closer.

Please share your ideas of how to spend a day with God, in the midst of a normal day, here!