All the small things

I have rheumatoid arthritis.  It's in my hands, feet, and it is especially annoyingly painful in my lower back.  Many people don't know this about me, although I don't really try to hide it.  In part, it's because I don't want to be known by my disease.  It's also because I am fairly tough and most of the time I just power through.  But none of that is what I want to tell y'all today.

I have several friends, and even family members, who have chronic ailments.  I've prayed for healing for them, I've seen healing take place in some of them, and I do believe that God can and will heal (whether it's on this side of heaven or not is all in His will).  But I don't pray for healing for myself.  I don't even think about it.  I realized that this morning as we stood in church and pastor Lynn asked people who needed healing to come forward.  I don't think of myself as a chronic sufferer and I don't think of myself as needing healing.  And then my husband grabbed my hand and pulled me forward and asked the elders to pray over me.  As a friend anointed me with oil and said, "I had no idea you had RA," it occurred to me exactly why it is that I don't pray for healing for myself.  I'm not important enough to matter.

"But wait," the spirit I've asked to live in me said, "I made you the most important thing in the world to me."  That whisper in my soul resounded in my head and heart with a shout, telling me that if I am not important, then what was Jesus' sacrifice for?!  If I'm not important, then I'm trampling on His love for me and His value in me.  How dare I think I'm not important enough and not worth considering for healing?!  If Jesus died for me, for my sins, for my healing (albeit spiritual or physical) then who am I to reject his sacrifice because of my own feelings of unworthiness?  And so, as I stood there with friends and loved ones praying over me, I felt something else; spiritual healing.

Y'all, I can't be the only person who thinks this way.  Do you feel like your issues are too small or too unimportant for God to deal with?  I mean, He has bigger issues to deal with, right?  Like world peace, starving children, etc., etc.  Here's something that God has been trying to prove to me for a while now in other ways- He cares about the small stuff.  This past Friday I was shopping for clothing for my teenagers who are growing just way too quickly.  I've been thinking about getting a new pair of a specific kind of shoe and just kind of waiting to find that "right" pair.  I walked into the re-sale shop and I'll be darned if the exact same pair of shoes I already owned wasn't sitting all shiny and brand-new looking on the shelf (as opposed to the busted up and falling apart ones currently on my feet).  It's not like I was praying for new flip-flops.  But God knows our thoughts and the desires of our hearts (small and large).  And here these flip-flops were.  As if that wasn't enough, the next morning I was driving past a certain house with a #BTR sign in the front yard (a specific slogan from our church which stands for Bring The Rain) and wondering who lived there, also thinking about how we haven't had any service calls on that specific street yet.  Guess who called me that same day needing my awesome appliance-repairing guru husband?  Yep, the sweet woman who lives in that exact house.  It was like God was saying to me, "Do you get it yet?"  So obviously, (and these are just a couple of examples out of quite a number of them) God has been trying to point out to me that he cares and that the things I think about, feel, do, say, etc., are important to Him, no matter how small.  So why on earth would the fact that I am suffering from a debilitating and chronic disease not be important to Him?  Ok, God, point taken.  I am finally hearing you. 

I may never be healed of rheumatoid arthritis while I live on this earth.  I may suffer with it and struggle some days.  But I'm still going to ask and seek that healing.  Jesus said I was worth it.   I choose to believe Him because I know His word to be true.

In Loving Service

God recently revealed something to me and I want to share it with y'all.  Maybe it's something you already know, but maybe it will hit you the way it hit me.  I'll never look at serving the same way.

I have a servant's heart- I love to serve people in any capacity; especially my husband because I have such a big love for him.  A servant's heart does not come naturally to everyone.  It isn't necessarily that those of us who aren't naturally servant-hearted are just inherently selfish (although humans as a species are all inherently selfish to varying degrees).  We were all created with different gifts and talents and a servant's heart is just one of those things.  No better, no worse, just different.  And yet, it's a gift we all need to have.  We're supposed to love one another as Jesus loves us, and he is a servant king.  Matthew 25:40 says that whatever we do for the least, we also do for Jesus.  We are his hands and feet in this world and so we all need to have a servant's heart occasionally.

It comes so naturally to me to serve my husband.  I spoil him, but I love to.  I put his shoes on in the morning and take them off at night.  Not because he can't and not even because he asked me to (he didn't).  In fact, it took him quite a while to get used to the fact that I wanted to do that for him.  It's just a small act of loving service that I can perform for him to show him how much I love him.  I'm sure we all do something like that for our spouses because we want to show our love for them.  Well, guess what?  Everything we do for God is done in the same way, with the same purpose; to show God how much we love him!  I have generally looked at serving God as something of a requirement; a duty.  It is those things, but I never have looked at serving God as a way to show him how very much I love him!  I looked at it as obedience, as a duty, as a privilege and an honor, but never as a way to show God that I love him.  Maybe y'all are thinking, "well, duh, Catherine.  Took you long enough."  I totally agree.  It seems so obvious now, but wow, it sure has given me a new outlook.  Now, when I do things like driving for Feed the Flock (a program at our church which provides a hot meal for families in need, twice a week) or singing on praise team at church, or even just helping out a friend in need, I think about how we are supposed to do everything as though we were working for the Lord rather than people (Colossians 3:23) and I realize that the act of being obedient and doing whatever I am doing is showing God that I care about what he wants from me and that I love him enough to be obedient to his word.

Before this revelation, it isn't that I wasn't trying to show my love for Jesus.  I just thought that the only way I was doing it was through worship.  I suppose I was a little caught up in the thought that my obedience was just trying to be good enough for Jesus.  Worthy, somehow, of his immense sacrifice.  My friends, that just ain't ever gon' happen.  I am a sinner and I don't know how to be anything else.  Thank you Jesus that it doesn't matter that I can't live a sin-free life
.  My obedience does not make him love me more or less.  My worship is not the only way I have to show him how grateful I am and how much I love him.  And HE is the one who showed that to me!  What an incredible God we love.  Amen.

Praise the Lord, O My Soul!

It has been a really fantastic day.  I love to go to church and worship in the company of other believers!  God indwells our praise, and I feel him the most when I am worshiping him in song.  There are few things I love more than singing praises to God.  It is so important for us to come together as believers and worship.

I hear people say that they can worship God anywhere and that they don't need a building set aside specifically for worship.  While it is true that God isn't contained by a building, we do still need to come together to worship.  We need other believers to pray with us, and we need to pray for other believers.  Having a church family gives us somewhere to go when we need help or guidance.  One purpose for having other believers in our lives is so that God has vessels through which he can work in our lives.  For example, my husband and I are building an addition to our house and doing the work ourselves.  We needed help in order to close it in and weatherproof it before some rain came, and our church family was there to help when we needed it.  If we didn't attend church and make our needs known to our church family, I sure don't know where we would have gotten help.  I am so incredibly grateful for them!

Another thing I hear people say about church is "I know so-and-so goes to that church so I won't go there" or "Church is nothing but a bunch of hypocrites anyway."  Really??  Those are nothing but excuses.  We are all sinners and we all fall short on a daily basis.  We aren't going to church for so-and-so and we aren't going to show others how righteous we are.  We're going to worship an Almighty God who, despite our failings and shortcomings and total inability to do anything worthy, saved us by His Grace.  El Roi, the God Who Sees, knows all of our own shortcomings and failures and loves us anyway, so who cares what so-and-so thinks or does or how many people say one thing on Sunday and live a totally different life during the week?  We go to church for God alone!  We go because HE is worthy of worship no matter what!

Going to church and corporately worshiping God is refreshing to our souls.  It really keeps me going from Sunday to Wednesday and then to Sunday again.  I learn so much that is helpful to my daily walk with the Lord; things I couldn't pick up just reading my Bible and not discussing it with other believers.  Ultimately, by giving my time, my praise and my worship to the Lord, it blesses me in so many ways.  Amen and amen!