For When You're Ready to Give Up

I felt like I was gripping a cobwebby tightrope above a vast and murky chasm.

And even as my toes curled around the lifeline, my arms flailed as I was pelted with lie after lie:

You're a failure if you can't even get it together here!

God is far away from you.  You'll never be close to Him.

You're only a big fat pretender to say you're a Christian with this lurking sin.

And there I could have fallen into the bottomless death of discouragement had not the sunlight of truth dawned, and I looked down.  In that instance, I saw that it was all a farce.

While my arms had flailed weakly against the onslaught of lies, my feet had been walking along the lie all along.  For the rays of sunlight revealed that there was no chasm beneath the path on which God was leading me.  Instead, I was quiveringly walking a tightrope only an inch above firm and solid ground.  The chasm, then, was only between the facade of the precarious tightrope and the reality of that protected path.  It was a great chasm--but great in deception, not in depth.

The enemy wanted me to imagine that I needed to claw for sure footing when God had already given it.

The enemy wanted me to fear an imminent fall when I would only be falling into my Shepherd's arms.

Most crucially, the enemy wanted me to believe I was already defeated when in fact the victory had already been won.

The roughness of the path, the sorrow, the pain--that was all too real.  But the yawning chasm was but a rickety backdrop no better than a middle school drama set, designed to drive me to cling to cobwebs of comfort rather than to the firm foundation of Jesus Christ.  

How trustworthy is Jesus' path and Jesus' love for me? Remember, He is the one who will even go to the extent of stopping the sun from setting to protect His people: 

"And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the LORD heeded the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel." {Joshua 10:14}

This is the greatest chasm-destroyer I know: He has fought for you...He has fought for me, and He has already won the victory on the cross.  So let's live in this beautiful reality:

"‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ ‘O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’  It is sin which gives death its power, and it is the Law which gives sin its strength. All thanks to God, then, who gives us the victory over these things through our Lord Jesus Christ! And so brothers of mine, stand firm! Let nothing move you as you busy yourselves in the Lord’s work. Be sure that nothing you do for him is ever lost or ever wasted." {I Corinthians 15:55-58, PHILLIPS} 

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“The Chasm,” © 2007 Eric, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

Joshua 10:14 taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
I Corinthians 15:55-58 taken from J. B. Phillips, "The New Testament in Modern English", 1962 edition by HarperCollins

Why Joseph?

As Joel and I approach four months of marriage, I am more grateful than ever to be married to this man. God's design of marriage is a beautiful thing. So I'm not sure why it surprised me--but it did--to think about Joseph and Mary's marriage and to wonder, "Why did they get married in the first place?"

God didn't use the normal setting of marriage to produce a baby--instead, He miraculously caused a virgin to conceive a child. So Mary was pregnant with the Son of God and Joseph was betrothed to Mary, but he was neither her husband nor her baby's father. In fact, if Joseph was never born in some It's-a-Wonderful-Life alternate universe, Jesus would still have been born as the long-awaited Messiah. If Joseph was never born, God's salvation plan for the world would have continued. If Joseph was never born, Mary would have still been required to travel to Bethlehem, since this was also her ancestral town. If Joseph was never born, Mary very well could have raised Jesus as a single mother in her father's house.

But Joseph was born--and God did include him in the Christmas story for crucial reasons.

From the very beginning of time, God created family. He designed marriage and defined it as the union of one man and one woman; He designed children to be born from that union and raised by a mother and a father. This beautiful unit of the family--the "building block of society"--provides a haven of love, stability, and growth, but it also brings glory to God as it pictures the marriage of Christ and the Church and the Father-child relationship between God and us. 

So yes, Jesus very well could have been born into a single-parent home. After all, God is His Father. But Jesus was miraculously born into a two-parent home, through a series of events so perfectly orchestrated and timed, that only God could have brought them to pass. Far be it from me to sum up the magnitude of God's purposes for Joseph, but I marvel at the importance of his role as simply husband and father. Far from being an add-on to the Christmas story, Joseph is a wondrous emphasis on the importance of the family--the man God chose to complete Jesus' earthly family and to illustrate a picture of marriage and fatherhood to the world for the glory of God.

Merry Christmas!

Photo Credit. Used by permission.

Gullible

Did you know that Shakespeare didn't actually write Shakespeare? That, in fact, he isn't the author of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and every other piece of writing attributed to him? The first time I realized this was when I was taking my SAT years ago. The essay question was on this very subject, and I found it fascinating, but never got around to researching it further. I saw, a few years later, that a movie had come out about the same topic (but never bothered to watch the film). And so a seed of doubt was planted. Based upon two very small pieces of information, I believed that there was definitely reasonable doubt as to Shakespeare's authorship.

It wasn't until last week, as Joel and I looked through the decade-old pictures of a trip he took to Great Britain with his family that I voiced aloud my doubt when we reached the photos commemorating his visit to Shakespeare's house. He looked at me with great amusement, and I realized to my consternation that I didn't know anything for certain. Research was definitely in order.

What did I find? Well, there is indeed loud controversy surrounding who wrote Shakespeare's creations. There's been many books on the subject, organizations formed, movies made, Wikipedia articles created, and more. And yet, the first suggestion of such a trick being played upon the whole world did not occur until 1857--241 years after Shakespeare's death! No contemporary of Shakespeare ever suggested such a masquerade; no written evidence has been uncovered corroborating the controversy; and the leaps of logic required to reach such a conclusion (certain bits of the plays match events in Francis Bacon's life, or Walter Raleigh's life, or--most recently popular--Edward de Vere's life) are hotly contested by academia. Indeed, award-winning scholar William Hunt said, "No, absolutely no competent student of the period, historical or literary, has ever taken this theory seriously. First of all, the founding premise is false -- there is nothing especially mysterious about William Shakespeare, who is as well documented as one could expect of a man of his time. None of his contemporaries or associates expressed any doubt about the authorship of his poems and plays. Nothing about De Vere (Oxford) suggests he had any great talent, and there is no reason to suppose he would have suppressed any talents he possessed [1]."

I had to laugh at myself for so glibly assuming such a conspiracy to be true, and to wonder at the people who are so avidly attempting to rewrite history while blindly ignoring facts, evidence, and truth.

And yet, I shouldn't be so surprised. A very many people do the exact same thing with God and His Word. 

"For since the creation of the world His invisible [attributes] are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify [Him] as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." {Romans 1:20-21 NKJV}

There are those who--like I did with Shakespeare--need only a few suggestions about evolution and the impotence of a god to believe the alternate theory that the world created itself or that Scripture is a literary gem, but not authored by God. They may not realize that "I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and they claim to be divine rather than human in origin [2]," as Dr. Voddie Baucham so brilliantly put it.

The good news is that many of these people are no more truly educated in the matter of spiritual things than I was about Shakespeare. It may take only a look--only a question put in love, to cause them to reconsider the lie they have so unconsciously believed. It may take only a statement to cause a lifetime of assumptions to vaporize.

New King James Version, © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

[1] Blakemore, Bill. "'Anonymous': Was Shakespeare a Fraud?" ABC News. ABC News Network, 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

[2] Baucham, Voddie. "Why I Choose to Believe the Bible." The Ever Loving Truth. 30 June 2005. Sermon Audio. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

Quixotic

The Miniature Schnauzer tramps along with head held high and nose quivering with stimulation. He spies a Great Dane approaching and without a moment's consideration, he strains at his leash, barking and jumping wildly to announce his jurisdiction in the presence of this imposter. The respective Masters exchange amused glances to see such a small, precocious dog challenge an animal three times his size. The Schnauzer doesn't see their condescension, nor is he aware of the size difference. He has never looked in a mirror, stepped on a scale, or realized that his name is Miniature Schnauzer. In his mind, he is every bit the Great Dane's equal--and more--and so he barks with all the bravado of a German Shepherd.

 

People may see miniature before your name; they may laugh at your naivete; they may hand you a mirror and remind you of what you look like; they may pull out a calendar and recall your past. Our God does not do this, for He has chosen the weak and the foolish to confound the strong and the wise. Submit to Him wholly and then throw away your mirror and your measuring stick, for He may very well replace the practical with the quixotic, calling you to defeat a giant with a sling-shot, or to witness to a gruff man, or to raise 17 children.

"Therefore [it is] of faith that [it might be] according to grace, so that the promise might be sure to all the seed, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all (as it is written, "I have made you a father of many nations") in the presence of Him whom he believed--God, who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did; who, contrary to hope, in hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations, according to what was spoken, "So shall your descendants be." And not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore "it was accounted to him for righteousness."" {Romans 4:16-22 NKJV}

God has called you—isn’t that enough? 




Photo Credit: Reuben Yau
Photo Credit: dailyinvention
Photo Credit: Renee
New King James Version, © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Birth Announcement

He may have already stopped hoping by the time Hope was born.

Over 400 years of silence from God overshadowed this man’s ancestors.  It was a silence that rivaled the 430 years of Jewish slavery in Egypt.  And this Jew, born in the Egypt that had enslaved his ancestors, thought he may as well have been hoping for a resurrected Moses liberator as for a Messiah after all that silence. 

The way this man Philo saw it, it was time for God to step out from behind His curtain and once again declare “I AM.”  But Philo Judaeus wasn’t seeing even a rustling of the curtain, so he decided to yank it aside himself.  Moses was lost up on Mt. Sinai, and Philo took his cue from an impatient Aaron, building his own Messiah in one Greek word: logos.  

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This is just the beginning of a guest post I had the honor of writing for my friend Sarah's blog anniversary.  It goes up on Friday, but in the meantime, check out the other guest posters who will challenge your mindset and inspire your thinking.  The post today on Peter Pan is unmissable, and Sarah's even giving away two books that I've been longing to read!  

So what are you waiting for?  Sarah's door is just down the street from this corner, and if I know her, she's waiting with open arms and tea! 

Photo Credit: Chimpr

The Worst Timing

 

“Truly You are the Son of God.”  Only moments before the disciples had declared Jesus a ghost, yet now Peter was the ghost.  Dripping wet and panting from his near-drowning, Peter lay in the bottom of the boat like a landed fish, and Jesus stood within the boat as solidly as He had on the frothing waves.  In that moment of seeing Peter breathing in the boat instead of sinking in the sea, at last the disciples really saw: “Truly You are the Son of God.” {Matthew 14:33}

At the moment when Jesus’ hand gripped Peter’s and saved him from a watery grave, the disciples knew He was God.  They had completed careful observations, cautious conclusions, and candid discussions, and they were finally ready to declare it after He rescued one of their own: “Yep, you’re the Son of God!” 

I’m in the same boat with the disciples.  What my eyes can see I will trust, but I will scrutinize high claims that make no logical sense.  Therefore, although I’ve been with Jesus for weeks, when I see such a laws-of-nature-bursting spectacle as walking on water and witness Jesus lithely pluck a fisherman from death, I am inclined to take that evidence and conclude, “Yes, you’re the Son of God!”  It’s a timely declaration, one must admit.

 

But what if Peter had cried, “Lord, save me!” that night, and Jesus hadn’t.  What if Peter had drowned while all the disciples watched, and Jesus chose to promote the fisherman to Heaven instead of rescuing him for a future martyrdom?   I think silence would have sheeted the Sea of Galilee.  Their own eyes would have closed their mouths, and there would have been no declaration.
 

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“Truly this was the Son of God.” Only moments before he had seen Jesus alive and breathing, yet now He was gone.  Gone.  And the centurion who had never met Fear in his life was swallowed by it as boulders split open as if to swallow him as well.  He was thrown to the dirt by a ground that rocked like the high seas and his ears were split with screaming and wails.  Yet through his confusion, at last he saw it: “Truly this was the Son of God.” {Matthew 27:54} 

 

Could he have had worse timing?  It must have felt like the globe was being torn apart at its axis, and he was declaring a corpse to be God.  Jesus had just breathed his last, which he had seen with his own eyes.  I could understand if the centurion were outside the empty tomb on Sunday saying, “Truly this was the Son of God”, but I am humbled by the centurion standing by the dead body of Christ on Friday uttering that declaration. 
 

Jesus is God when He rescues me from the sea, but He is just as God when He doesn’t.  He does not prove Himself God by saving me; He saves me because He is God.  And the very best timing for a declaration is when all seems lost: “Truly You are the Son of God.”  There is nothing more freeing.

Photo Credit: Photo 1 Kuanying Fu
                      Photo 2 Bev Goodwin

What Your Schedule Says About You

If you’re anything like me, then the celebration of Thanksgiving Day last week signaled the start of a season in which eight days’ worth of activities and to-do lists are crammed into seven days of time.  The season in which my head still peels off my pillow at 6:21 in the morning, but doesn't find the pillow again until too late each night.  The season in which all the usual responsibilites fill the hours in between, but all the extra doings overflow the cup. 

But Thanksgiving is a day set aside for giving thanks, not giving gripes, and on that day the quiet conviction of the Holy Spirit was beckoning me to hold off on the chaos and join Jesus for time together. 

It was a wondrous morning hour, with blue sky in my window, and beautiful silence stilling my heart, and Jesus and His Word and me.  However, I soon discovered that I wasn’t spending that morning with Him just to experience wonder and beauty, but also to be cloaked in conviction, to taste humility, and to embrace repentance. 

For as I moaned about how strong fleshly habits are in my life, little did I know that He had foreordained 1 Peter 4:1, and that He had foreordained that I should read it on Thanksgiving morning with a heart ready to listen.

“Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.”  {I Peter 4:1}

Arm yourselves also. 

Here I have been struggling against the current without a life preserver. 

I have been carrying water without a bucket.

I have been running the car without an engine.

Most days I do read my Bible, but that’s often all that it is.  A cursory reading rather than a timely reveling.  And the Thanksgiving revelation of I Peter 4:1 is that I can struggle against sin and the flesh all I want, but unless I am armed with the same mind as Christ, my struggle is as useless as carrying water in my fingers to a raging fire.

Not spending that time with Jesus in the morning is the ultimate act of pride.  It is the supreme choice to love sin. 

It says, “I am powerful enough to live today with food and water, but without Jesus.”

It says, “I already know what needs to get done today, and it doesn’t matter if my ideas matter for eternity.” 

 

Conversely, even five minutes of quiet with Jesus is the ultimate expression of humility.  It is the greatest step towards victory over sin. 

It says, “I need you, Jesus my Savior.  I can’t make it through this day on my own.”

It says, “Teach me, Lord, what You want this day to be about for eternity.” 

 

Don't twist this humility.  There is no glory in the act of taking this step of quiet time, no bonus crowns stored up in Heaven as points for every extra chapter you read in Scripture.  No, the step itself is not glorious, but Jesus Himself is all glorious, and He knows whether I am dismissing Him on my to-do list, or listening to Him as my Lord. 

 

And the next time I find myself stickily bound in the quagmire of sin or boarding the train of chaos headed to despair, I know the Holy Spirit will again remind me: “Did you arm yourself with the same mind of Christ today?"  If so, the exit sign for the quagmire and the chaos train is that-a-way!

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: martinak15

Doing Friendships Wrong

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A precious little boy I know hazarded playing with a new group of kids.  Spurning and teasing shut him out like a slammed door on a smiling face, and those were just the responses of the Christian children. 

 

You might say that’s terrible.  And it is. 

You might say that’s rare.  It is not. 

 

Indeed, I suggest to you that the majority of Christian young women have friendship just as radically wrong as those kids did. 

 

We speak of “having” a friend as we speak of “having” a charm bracelet. 

We see our friends as means of entertainment with whom to while away boredom.  (Are we talking about a television or a human being, here?)

We share with our friends all the things that eternity will erase and leave unsaid the crux of our souls. 

We sob and suffer through loneliness while surrounded by over 7 billion people.

Our happiness and comfort is the Lens through which friends will be viewed, the Ruler by which friends will be measured, the Law by which friends will be judged, the Password by which friends will be permitted.

 

And that list hardly cracks the door on the room of lies with which Satan has bewildered our friendships.  The Bible is our standard for everything in life, yet why have we lived as though it does not define the purpose of friendship? Jesus said, 

“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” {John 15:13}

Greater love. 

 

No one speaks like that anymore.  We don’t contemplate laying down our lives for someone before we “friend” them on facebook.  We no longer say we love a friend with great love or that she is a “friend who is as your own soul” {Deuteronomy 13:6}.  Instead we put our happiness first and use trite phrases like “BFF” and speak of “having” a friend.  We are satisfied with the mediocre, when Jesus called us to the greater.

 

Jesus said being a friend meant having a love so great you would step up to a murderer.  You would tell him, “Take me instead," giving up your life and with it your hope of holding the hand of your grandchild, your dream of journies across the world, and your daily chance for a morning sunrise. You would throw your own body across your friend’s to take the bullet and feel, not fear and bitterness burning in your throat, but deep forgiveness and overwhelming peace along with the scorching pain of death and the joy of eternity. 

 

Why? Because you love that person more than yourself or your happiness. 

 

Jesus was that friend to us, so it should not surprise us that friendship was God’s idea.  From the description in Genesis we can picture the deepness of Adam and Eve’s relationship with their Creator. Unfortunately, this means we also grieve all the more intensely the depth of their loss in discarding that one perfect friendship.

 

“And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”  {Genesis 3:8}

And so we have been hiding ourselves ever since.  Not just from a friendship with the God of the universe, but from the knitting of our souls to the soul of another human being whom God miraculously placed on the planet at the same time and in the same place as us.  From giving without reserve of the treasures of our minds to strengthen.  From depleting our depth of emotions to encourage.  From loving face to face and soul to soul. 

 

And so, instead of laying down our lives for our friends, we find ourselves in the position of laying down our friends for our lives, our way.  Of doing coffee and going out to a movie and never really getting to know the soul of the girl who sat next to us through it all.  Of loving the comfortable mediocre more than the demanding greater.  Of loving our happiness with the status quo more than the little boy with love to give.

 

But “greater love has no one than this…” 

It’s time to get this one right, girls. 

 

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Photo Credit: Daniele Zanni

The Future Begins in the Present

 

 

The day I gaze into the eyes of God, fully and utterly satiated, shaped into a manifestation of Him, will be the best day of my life.  I explored the crevices of this verse in my mind, lying on my bed enveloped in utter darkness.  But as I dwelt upon this future glory, I realized that the promise of the future begins in the present.

 

As for me...

I may not be able to gaze into the eyes of God on this earth, but I can gaze with sheer wonderment when I get a glimpse of His hand or an echo of His voice.

 

As for me...

I will not be perfected in righteousness while this sinful flesh lives, but I need not gaze on wickedness--the hand of the devil--while wishing I could behold God's face before my eyes are closed to this life.

 

As for me...

I may not be able to digest the fullness of God before I come to the richness of eternity, but I will gorge on His Word during this short life until I find an end to my soul's famine.

 

As for me...

I believe without a doubt that one day I will start up from sleep and find myself in the presence of my Redeemer, shaped into a manifestation of Him. 

 

But I also believe that this future resurrection stands on the foundation of a past creation and rebirth and a present sanctification. 

I was made in the very image of God already. 

I am now a new, beautiful creature in Christ. 

One day, I will awake in the likeness of Christ. 

Therefore, I abide in the present under the cool, sheltering shadow of that future promise, but I rest upon the Rock after Whom God has already fashioned me.

  

Background Photo Credit:seyed mostafa zamani

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Behind the Scenes of My Last Blog Post!

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Tuesday mornings mean two things for me: prepping for a full day of teaching music lessons and publishing a blog post.  And two weeks ago, my Tuesday morning was a tangled one indeed.

 

As I was doing the preparing part, I was also doing the praying part, about what God would have me publish that day.  I had several ideas to which I was quite partial, but God suddenly prompted me: Why not post on pride?  I thought of several reasons why not to write an article on pride, but since most of them were based in pride, they fell somewhat short.  So the topic was decided (how turning my God-given light on myself in pride leaves the world in darkness: read the post here!), and I just had to find the time to write it! 

 

This particular teaching day, I had several cancellations which left me with a free morning.  There was the time to write my article, but where could I write it?

 

You see, Mikaela and I use a local church to teach our lessons on Tuesdays, so even though I didn’t have lessons to teach, I was still stuck at the church with no internet with which to publish a post.  As I began to think through the problem, I remembered that furthermore, the church had no three-prong plug-ins to even plug in my laptop cord, and our local library to which I normally would have resorted didn’t open for another hour. 

 

These all seemed like tiny hairs of an everyday tangle, but unbeknownst to me, none of them were actually a tangle: they were part of an intricately tatted thread of lace that God was weaving for my day. 



Melanie sitting in the same tea shop I was enjoying. Photo Credit

I was left with no choice but to go to my favorite tea shop, order a steaming hot Lavender Milk Tea with Mango Popping Boba (delicious!), and settle down with my laptop and Bible to write the post God had laid on my heart for the day.  That was my mission.  And yet, even as I was typing away about being a light in a dark world, I couldn’t have guessed that God was preparing another mission for me. 

 

She was a sweet looking older woman who approached me, and I instantly realized had observed her earlier, chatting with two older men in suits. 

 

“I couldn’t help but notice,” she said with a smile as she came up to me.  “But is that a Bible on your lap?”

 

“Yes!” I replied, wonderingly. 

 

“That is the tiniest Bible I have ever seen!”  She exclaimed.  “How do you read out of that?”

 

“Well, it’s my travel Bible,” I explained, and we exchanged a few other pleasantries before she handed me a tract and began talking.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that we were not on the same page and that, in fact, she was a Jehovah’s Witness.  (You can read about another witnessing encounter with a Jehovah’s Witness here.)

 

Finally, she asked me point-blank, “What are you?”

 

The ultimate question, loaded with existential preconceptions.  I gulped a quick prayer before diving in. 

 

“I’m a Christian,” I said, and wasted no time in getting to the “good” stuff.  “I believe that Jesus is the only Son of God, and that He died and rose again to save me from my sins.”

 

She was nodding in agreement with me.  “Oh, yes, and you have it so right that Jesus is the Son of God, because so many people get that wrong!” 

 

I knew she was misunderstanding, although I wasn’t yet quite sure what she was misunderstanding, so I tried a different tack.  “Yes, but I believe in the Trinity, that Jesus is One with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.” 

 

Suddenly, she didn’t quite agree with me anymore, and a new door opened in our conversation as she said, “But you can’t find that in the Bible!” 

 

“No,” I agreed, “That word ‘Trinity’ isn’t in the Bible, but the Bible clearly teaches that God is three in one.”  At this point, my heart pounding with adrenaline, I scraped through my brain to try to remember a verse, any verse, that could help communicate this truth to this lady.  And you know what?  Thinking back, I can’t even remember which verse I took her to at that moment!

 

I do know that the passage I found after thumbing through my Bible, was not “The Perfect Verse for Empirically Proving the Truth of the Trinity.”

 

I know that the words I used did not follow the “Three Step Plan for Converting a Woman in a Tea Shop.” 

 

I know that the conversation that followed was not “The Benchmark Conversation You all Should Replicate with a Jehovah’s Witness.” 

 

But I do know that the Holy Spirit she was discounting as a “force” lives inside me and was guiding me, comforting me, helping me. 

 

I know that for about ten minutes I was able to discuss Jesus with a woman who used His name but missed the entire person of Jesus Christ our Lord! 

 

I was able to share with her from John 1:1-3

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

To a woman who says that God the Father created the world, but Jesus did not, I imagine that verse was worldview-shaking. 

 

I also turned to one of my favorite chapters, John 17, and although the conversation took a different tangent before I could get to these verses, they would have been perfect to share as well:

“That [the believers] all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one.” {John 17:21-22}

As she prepared to leave, I told her I wanted to leave her with this thought, which I know the Holy Spirit impressed on my heart: “If you do not believe that Jesus Christ is one with God, and that while on earth He was fully God yet fully man, then you can’t believe that His redemption on the cross for all mankind was enough.”

 

“But it was enough!”  she insisted.

 

“Yes,” I agreed.  “But you can’t believe that unless you believe that Jesus was one with God.” 

 

With that, she left.  As soon as she did, I wasted no time in googling “verses to share with a Jehovah’s Witness about the Trinity.” 

 

I found all the verses I should have shared.  I found this excellent website, with all the information I should have known. 

 

And I encourage you to study to show yourself approved, and to be prepared.  But I also encourage you to seize those precious missions that God entrusts to you at the moment they occur and do one thing, perfectly prepared or not: talk about Jesus. 

 

Jesus, after all, is the stumbling block for all other religions. 

Jesus, after all, is my first love! 

And Jesus, after all, is the reason we share, not to prove how intellectually brilliant our crippling arguments are.  Thank goodness! 

 

So there I sat, my lavender tea cooling on the table, my Bible opened to John, my cursor blinking in the middle of the last word I had typed in my article on being a light in a dark world. 



Photo Credit

 

And I prayed.  For a nameless woman who seemed so lost.  For my own failings in sharing. 

And I gave thanks.  For a free morning and for three-prong laptop cords and for a library that opened an hour too late.  It was in that giving thanks that I began to realize that perhaps the library opened right on time for God to turn these tangled hairs of my morning into a thread of lace that was beautiful beyond my wildest dreams. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Photo 1: Jonathan Kos-Read

                       Photo 2: Raquel

                       Photo 3: Marlana
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.