How many times have I raced through that same scenario allowing fear to boil up? The enemy had already begun plaguing his innocence with worry; I had to respond. I did the only thing that came to mind. Scooping him up in my arms, I said, “Micah, bad things happen, but Jesus holds us through it all, just like I am holding you now.” Then I prayed as fervently as I knew how, using words that I hoped Micah could understand.

As much as I wanted to say that we wouldn’t be killed anytime soon, I couldn’t’ because I didn’t know what could happen tomorrow. One of the biggest lies out there is that God is going to shield us from tragedy and heartache after we become a Christian. No. If you have been following Christ for any amount of time, you know this not to be true. Christians suffer often times more than the nonbeliever for we become a target to the enemy as soon as Christ begins to work in our lives.

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

1 Peter 1:6-7

The Bible is clear in saying that we will endure hardships. It is definitely in God’s power to save us from anything he chooses to, but that does not mean that we will not face grief. God refines us through these trials. He burns away all of the impurities in those times. Like Paul, we should embrace these difficulties resting in the knowledge and peace that God is drawing us nearer to himself.

I won’t ever understand why my little boy insists on heaping life’s anxieties on his small shoulders, but God will have to take that worry away as Micah grows, just like he takes away my own worry for I know that God will hold me dearly when the things I fear most do happen. Considering this, I hope and pray that, when the time comes, we will have the faith to dance with Jesus in our spirits as the fire surrounds us resting in the joy that he is drawing us near.

What had started out as a pretty picture of winter on the way there had quickly turned into a monster of a snowstorm. My mind raced through our current situation. The road had not been plowed like we had expected.  We did not have chains or snow tires. Visibility was limited. The back windows refused to stay clear enough for Britton to see out of. We had just very narrowly escaped a collision…and we hadn’t even ascended Parley’s Summit, which was sure to be a slippery mess. This was bad, very bad. I sat in silence. Britton clutched the steering wheel and continued on. All I could think was “I’m so glad I’m not the one driving,” and then I prayed mightily.

Four hours later we finally did make it back to the safety of our home. I truly thank God for that, and will count that adventure as novice mistake of a few Texans. Nonetheless, God painted a beautiful picture for me that afternoon, a picture that weighs on my heart even as I write.

Ephesians 5:23-27 says, “For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior…Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”

This chapter in Ephesians beautifully describes the roles laid out by God for the husband and wife in the family unit. I readily admit that parts of this chapter left me confused and even angry earlier in my life because of my own lack of understanding. But God has revealed this wonderful truth to me, and now I treasure what I used to resent.

What particularly weighs on me today is how God describes the role of the husband. It is a difficult, practically impossible command. Essentially, God has told the husband to lead his wife in a way that will draw her nearer to Christ edifying her even in the dark nights of the soul. Not only must he love her in this way, but also God has placed him as the head of the home. This doesn’t mean that women are any less important or any less valued by God. What it simply means is that God holds the man responsible for the family. The pressure is on our husbands to lead our households towards the cross. That is a heavy burden to bear. As Britton drove us through the storm that day, he felt the weight of our lives in his hands at the wheel. The comforting thing is that God was guiding him; He had his hand on us the entire way.

I want to open this up for a bit of dialogue by having you comment about these questions.

-What might the role of wives look like in our 20^th century culture? Does this scripture still apply?

- How does the weight of a husband’s leadership relate with the weight and burden of a pastor’s leadership? How can we as a church body be encouraging to our leaders in light of this?

I’m so sleepy. My eyes began to droop, and my mind wonder. What happens when we die? I’m scared to find out. It will be so scary. Will I be forever drifting in darkness? Wait, do I hear something? Footsteps in the hallway? Mom?

With my heart thudding and my mind racing, I finally fell asleep. This was a normal routine for me at the age of 8 years old.

This past Sunday, Pastor Matt talked about fear. That sermon struck a chord with me because it was such a huge part of my past. There is not much I remember about my life before I became a Christian because I was a small child, but the one thing that I do remember is the fear. It was so irrational, but my imagination allowed for the most improbable things to happen to me. It didn’t help that I had nightmare and night terrors of three-headed dragons breaking through the floor in my room, ready to eat me, and of evil men trying to chop my limbs off with a chainsaws. That fear incapacitated me as a child. The thing that it all boiled down to was the fear of death and dying. I didn’t know what would happen. Then, Christ reached His hand down into my young life and gave me the greatest gift I could have ever wanted, peace. Once I accepted Christ, and trusted in His grace and love, I stopped fearing death. With a child-like faith, I was able to trust in His goodness and anticipate heaven. I didn’t fully understand everything because I was just a child, but that was the beauty of it.

Since then, God has continued to arm me with scriptures to battle fear. “For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Tim 1:7.

Throughout my life I have had to continually battle fears, mostly irrational fears. Those fears, I know are simply a tool from the enemy to make me useless. Once, when Micah was a year and a half old, I had a horrible vision of him dying in a car accident on a field trip with his daycare. At that moment God spoke truth to me. He said, “Brittany, you just had the best time with your son where you were overflowing with gratitude to me, and now here you are on the verge of tears thinking about something that has definitely not happened. Do not let Satan rob you of your joy. Let me give you joy, child.”

Let’s breathe in that joy as a church this week and refuse to let the enemy rob Lakeside.

The crowd stood watching with indifference. Religious leaders mocked him saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, the Chosen One” (Luke 23:35).  The thief jeered, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” (Luke 23:39).  And, at the foot of the cross, where blood flowed down sat the soldiers, coveting the garments, casting lots for a shred of cloth, greed filling their eyes and their smiles.

Raised high above that scene hung our brutally beaten Savior, arms stretched wide, praying for the forgiveness of the mockers, the brutes, the thieves, and the covetous. The cross mirrored the scene on the ground, for the cross was the judgment set aside for all of the sinners surrounding Christ, but Christ willingly took each sinner’s penalty so they wouldn’t have to.

With that, Jesus Christ gave up his spirit. No one else could have taken it from him, but he relinquished it as a sacrifice, pure and holy.

We serve an amazing Lord, don’t we? He bore the cross, the weight of God’s judgment and wrath so that we could relish is God’s grace and love. Thank you, Jesus, for Good Friday.

“You will all fall way,” Jesus said, sorrow filling his voice. “Even if all fall away, I will not,” Peter insisted (Mark 14:27,31). He remembered the pain filling Jesus’ features, the depth of emotion in his voice, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers…I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me,” (Luke 31-34).

Understanding flooded Peter’s mind as Christ’s gaze was interrupted by a backhanded slap from the high priest, Caiaphas. Spit followed, oozing down Jesus’ face. Peter slowly looked down at the palms of his hands that he had been warming by the fire among Jesus’ enemies. His fingers clinched inward, muscles tightening in his arms as he glared at them in disgust. “I am no better than Caiaphas.” He backed away from the warmth of the fire into the cold night air as a bitter remorseful groan escaped from his lips.

Today, as I read, I was able to experience Peter. I was able to feel the sorrow and loneliness of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane as Peter, James, and John, his closest disciples, continually fell asleep during the moment of Jesus’ greatest agony.  Then, Peter brandished a sword upon Judas’ betrayal, cutting off the ear of a servant. In this moment, I remembered how Christ had just petitioned to the Lord to take the cup of wrath from him but had submitted to the will of the Lord, and then we find that it is Peter who wants to fight to prevent God’s will from happening. Then Jesus commanded Peter to put his sword away saying, “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”(John 18:11). Peter, along with the rest of the disciples fled as fear for their lives overpowered their earlier resolve to remain by their Rabbi’s side. And finally, I saw the full impact of Peter’s denial of Christ who had to endure the beatings utterly alone. I felt the shame Peter must have been overcome with as he realized what had occurred.

Peter, who had walked along the side of Jesus for three years, witnessed the miracles first-hand, and had sat under the canopy of Jesus’ teaching hearing the words spoken directly from the Savior’s voice, had denied Christ. God’s message came subtly to me as I pondered this. Christ continually told his disciples in the week of his crucifixion that it was better that he die so that the Counselor could come to them (John 16). Christ had not died yet, and Peter, though he had known Jesus in such a personal way, had not experienced the Holy Spirit’s power. This was to happen after Christ’s death and resurrection, after Christ’s spirit was released to the believers’ to dwell in their hearts and strengthen them. Sure enough, just as the Christ predicted, Peter was utterly changed by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the blood of Christ, as he became the person whom the early church budded, spreading like wild vines through the nations.

That is the power of the resurrection. That is the strength that we in the year 2012 can still draw from, for Christ died to set us free from our sin, the same sin that caused Peter’s denial. In that freedom, he gave us a gift, the Holy Spirit, to guide us and empower us to accomplish his will as a church body. I encourage you to tap into that power through prayer today.

Continue reading the gospels with me tomorrow, and see what God will reveal to you as we remember the death of our Lord the King on Good Friday.

A little later, as I was washing the mess, I started thinking about my hair. My oldest son, Micah, is quite obsessive about it. He becomes very upset with me if I talk about cutting it, and then to top it off, if I pull it back in a pony tail on a hot day, he gets angry with me exclaiming with downturned eyebrows, “I don’t want you to turn your hair into a ponytail!” Undoubtedly strange behavior, but in 1 Corinthians the Bible says that hair is a woman’s glory. Maybe that explains my son’s reaction.

That incident this morning was brought full circle, by God’s purpose I’m sure, upon reading again this afternoon in the book of John. The Spirit of God stirred within me as the story before me came to life in my mind:

Sounds of jubilee clamored in the air, leaking through the windows into the small town of Bethany as people celebrated Jesus of Nazareth who had brought a beloved man, Lazarus, back from the dead. Disciples gathered near while Martha prepared the meal to honor Jesus. Just then, the sweet fragrance of worship flooded the house, overpowering the aroma of freshly baked bread, tickling the greed of Judas Iscariot. Judas glared at the floor where an entire pint expensive alabaster perfume had just been poured. There kneeling as her hair flowed down was Mary of Bethany gently washing the Savior’s feet in the humblest way possible.

Judas sneered in disapproval, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.” But, in this man’s heart, greed flourished and he couldn’t see the real worth of the Savior. Jesus spoke firmly at first, “Leave her alone…It was intended that she should save this perfume for the day of my burial…She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me…I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her,” (Matthew 26, John 12).

This all occurred a week before Christ’s body was bruised and bloodied on the cross. Mary, though chastised by those around her who were concerned with matters of this world, lowered herself by cleaning the most humble part of the body, the feet, with the most glorified part of herself, her hair. As she scrubbed away the muck with her hair, Mary laid down her own glory to anoint Christ and glorify him. She brought honor to Christ in this way. Even now as I write, just as Christ foretold, what she did to honor him is being shared because, although it seemed like waste to everyone else, she gave Christ the honor he deserved.

What glory of ours might we lie down at the Savior’s feet?

This is day two of our challenge before Easter. I pray that you keep searching the scriptures in preparation for Good Friday. I can’t wait to hear and see what God has shown you!

Jesus himself rested in the town of Bethany, close to Jerusalem for the night (Mark 11:11), knowing all the while, that in the short days ahead he would walk down a treacherous path.

The next day, Jesus traveled back to Jerusalem, and upon entering the temple area, he drove out merchants, overturned their tables, ringing out truth into the hearts of the corrupted. This did not sit well with the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, and so they began to plot how to get rid of this man named Jesus.

This is the scene set from reading the scriptures in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  It seems like very rarely do we read the scriptures as a whole where we can get the big picture.  Today, I was compelled to do just that, and as I poured over the scriptures, I heard something that I’d never heard before. I heard desperation in the writings of Matthew as he records events and the parables spoken from his Savior during the last week of Christ’s life before the crucifixion. Jesus has his own sort of desperation as he imparts his knowledge to his disciples about the days ahead while he puts the Pharisees in their place as they continually attempt to trap him. It was such a truly desperate time in the history of humanity.

As our days unfold before this Good Friday, I want you, Lakesiders, to open up the gospels and see what you find there. These words divinely echo the past, this past that is our future. Read the disciples’ accounts of what our Lord endured and what he conquered for us and see if God imparts another dynamic that you have never understood before.

In the few days ahead, I will do this along with you and let you know what I find. It’s an exciting adventure that I pray will prepare our hearts for a sincere remembrance of Christ’s death and joyful celebration of his victory!

It was a treasure to be able to see all of our family after such a long time without them. Micah and Judah got to fatten up on grandparent time, and were undoubtedly stuffed with tons of love. This visit became difficult towards the end though. Saying goodbye is never easy for myself, but now Micah had begun to experience it too. So, when the car door closed, and he had given Brit’s parents kisses, he said to me, “I’m going to miss Nanna and Papa here in Texas when we go to the airport.” When I looked back at him, my heart broke. Big crocodile tears streaked down his exhausted face. These goodbyes weren’t just my burden anymore; he shared them too.

That night, I wrestled with my emotions as doubts and fears flooded through me. In a moment of intense longing, longing for my family and friends that I would soon have to leave, God spoke so tenderly to me. Through all of my doubts He whispered truth that is this. Through separation, we learn to love more deeply. I prize moments that before I took for granted. The same is true with the rest of this life. To feel the pains of absence is to know the pleasure of one’s company. To know sorrow is to cherish the ecstasy of joy, and to know death is to understand the preciousness of every living breath in life.

Knowing this doesn’t necessarily make things less painful in the trying times, but it does provide us with peace for God is muddying His hands in our soul’s rough clay, rubbing away the imperfections through life’s trials.

While the distance from here to West Texas is not getting any shorter, I do know one thing. My love for my family grows stronger, and that love bridges the hundreds of miles between us. For that, I am thankful to our God for bringing us here to Lakeside where we are another of family to come home to, where we stand by one another and experience the paradoxes of life together. While pain inevitably will come in our lives and we will continuously ask why during those times, we can rest assured that our Maker has us right where He wants us to be while He smoothes away our rough edges.

We will be advertising in the Syracuse Islander and hopefully even before each movie is shown this month. You can get a glimpse of our newspaper ad in the image below…

Then, after the beautiful madness that is America’s Super Bowl Sunday reached its conclusion, and I was sitting in bed finally looking at my phone, something dawned on me. As I was scrolling through Facebook, I saw my aunt had posted on my mom’s wall “Happy birthday Sis!” It was 11:30 p.m. Utah time, and a whole hour later Texas time meaning that I had completely missed my mother’s birthday. What a blunder. Immediately, I did what any person would and called my mom to wake her up in the middle of her REM cycle to say a very pathetic happy birthday. After I hung up, I cried a good bit and sent her a long text with a sincere apology asking her to forgive me.

I felt awful. Anyone would, right? But, my mother had just spent nearly two weeks by my side at the hospital after my C-section and later at my house taking care of my entire family’s needs. She had selflessly done laundry, cooked dinners, and changed diapers without me every having to ask her to do anything for me because she had already done it. She deserved so much better, but that wasn’t exactly the whole story either. Regretfully, I had done this very same thing before and had promised myself that I would never make that mistake again. I had forgotten her birthday when I was a senior in high school. When she hinted about it the day after, I was too prideful to admit my mistake. I tried to play it off that I just had to get her present to her. She had been pretty upset, but didn’t show it. I don’t know if I ever truly told her sorry, but inwardly, I cringed at my own selfishness.

When I reflected about this whole experience, I couldn’t help but notice how it echoes our relationship with God. So many times in our lives we do something that we truly feel horribly about. We sin. Then, we realize our mistake and pray to God about it. We promise God and ourselves that we will never do that again, but the truth is, we can only hope that we won’t walk blindly into sin again. So, we trudge along, and then sure enough, somewhere down the road we mess up all over again. We seem to be forever conquered by our own flesh, by our own humanity. Yet, scripture speaks against this is Romans 8 when Paul talks about our freedom from, “the law of sin and death.” (I encourage you to sift through this passage to grasp and understand for yourselves). Truly, Christ has set us free. We still continually battle with our flesh in this life, but Christ’s blood through the graciousness of our amazing God covers our sin.

With that said, it seems that God isn’t as concerned about us sinning as He is concerned about how react to our sin. The first time I forgot about my mother’s birthday, I hardly admitted my mistake. Instead, I let guilt seep into the crevices of my heart and thought I had done something completely unforgivable. Then, years later, after I did the exact same thing all over again, I reacted oppositely. I felt the weight of my mistake when I thought about how much love my mother had showed me so recently. I openly admitted my stupidity asking for forgiveness, and my mother forgave me with open arms.

As we walk forward in our faith, we begin to know the heart of God, and this understanding changes our hearts. We will inevitably sin, but, if Christ is in us, we learn to respond to our sin with changed hearts full of thankfulness for God’s grace. Our desire is to please our Father, but He knows we are not perfect, and that is why we rest in freedom of His unending love and grace.