My Dad as a Tool for My Sactification

More than anyone in the world, I love my dad. I am most grateful to him for three things: for his protection, for helping me develop in my role as a woman, and for calling me to be faithful. I know that through him my heavenly Father’s loving hands are molding me.

My dad has protected me by making and enforcing rules. I was angry for a long time about having a curfew. It was embarrassing to be the first among my friends to leave, especially if I wasn’t even the youngest in the crowd. It felt unfair.

But his enforcement of a curfew served to protect me when, during a period of backsliding, I was spending more time than was prudent with unbelievers from college. I know that in at least one instance, his enforcement of my curfew protected me from what could have escalated into a scary and sinful incident. I am grateful for my dad’s protection. Only in heaven will we know the extent to which I was spared from many falls and dangers thanks to him.

My dad helps me develop in my role as a woman by requiring me to submit to him and to prioritize the home.

By requiring me to submit to his authority with the curfew and other everyday things, my dad is teaching me to submit to a future husband, if it should please the Lord for me to marry. To submit to my dad means dying to self in that instant. It means honoring him when I would much rather do what I want to do. It means aligning my agenda with his, to pursue the good of the family rather than self-interest.

Dying to self, showing honor, and pursuing the good of the family are crucial if we want to build a family that is God-honoring and useful to the Kingdom. Absence of these things in a family means we will waste time struggling for headship and fighting to get our way. I am so grateful to be learning to submit in preparation for family life. And more than that, I learn to submit to the Lord by submitting to my dad.

He also calls me to prioritize the home. When I spend too much time (and money) hanging out with friends to the neglect of my duties at home, Dad calls me to set my priorities straight. He requires of me that I fulfill my duty to my family wholeheartedly. He challenges me to sacrifice my self-interest in order to be diligent where the Lord has me. He calls me to invest in the present and future good of my family.

My dad also calls me to be faithful. He himself is an example of faithfulness, committing to finish what he has begun in life, even when things do not turn out as he would like. When I graduated from high school my dad advised me to seek work that I could do just until I marry and have children. But I insisted on going to college. When, more than halfway through, I wanted to quit and adopt his original plan for me, he told me that I must face the consequences of my actions and follow through with what I've started. Graciously, he lessened my burden by allowing me to switch majors. Now I am finishing my final semester at Sac State and am grateful to him because I love marketing and because I am learning to be faithful.

I am so grateful to the Lord for His kindness in giving me a dad who shepherds my soul in this way. I fail often. But the Lord is gracious. He is faithful to complete the work that He has started in me.

The Importance of Family

Why are there young people who go to Ivy League schools and become CEOs, scientists, and senators? For many, it is because their family taught them the value of hard work and education, and sponsored the opportunity for them to be educated.

Why are there young people in prisons, entangled in addictions, and prostituting themselves? For many, it is because they did not have a family that taught them positive values and gave them positive opportunities. For many, it is because they had no family. 

Both groups of young people are accountable for their actions and the path that they choose, but family plays an important role in setting the course.

I was born in Uzbekistan and moved to America with my family when I was three. Uzbekistan is a country with extractive political institutions. If we had stayed there, I would have grown up picking cotton every September instead of starting school, like the children do there even now. 

So why am I where I am today? Why am I graduating college and applying for a fellowship program? 

Because, as the youngest in my family, I reap the blessings of having parents who worked hard to establish our family in this country and older siblings who continue to work hard and provide for me. Circumstances in their lives caused them to sacrifice an education. Their sacrifices have made it possible for me to graduate from college and pursue better opportunities. 

I am humbled by the grace of God towards me through my family.
 

Oh the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

 

 Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. John 4:13,14



I do not pretend to know how to interpret the Bible but I had a thought on this passage that convicted me.

Solomon uses the imagery of a well in Proverbs 5 to refer to an intimate relationship with one's spouse. Perhaps we can apply this symbolism to the woman at the well. 

She had five husbands. She knew about drinking from the well. Each successive man brings less satisfaction, because men cannot satisfy a latent thirst for God.

I have not had five husbands. I have not even been in an official relationship but in my heart I have drunk from the dissatisfying well of human love.

I have lusted after good-looking guys. I have made idols out of guys I liked, thinking ceaselessly of them. I have tried subtle seduction. I have often traded in the love of the Lord for the desire of the lesser love of men.

But the Lord is gracious, holding me back from lawlessness and perversion, bringing me back to His love and mercy, sanctifying me through disappointment and waiting. How deep is His love for me, to keep me for Himself until the last day.

Jesus reminded me tenderly that I cannot find satisfaction drinking from this well. Yes, He may be pleased at some point to allow me to love a man. But I can only quench my thirst for love and approval in Christ.

O Lord, may You help me love You more. May I be a spring of love welling over onto those around me. May I rest in Your love.


 

Grace in Relationships

 

Relationships can be difficult. Essentially, a relationship is about approval.

We are hungry for approval. We are looking for someone to proclaim that we are worthy of being loved. In a new relationship, we may fear that who we really are will not meet our newly-significant other's standard, so we often protect our inner vulnerability by playing a part, by being who we think they want us to be. 

If we fall short of the standards we perceive them to have, we may lash out, exposing their vulnerabilities so that they will be too busy licking their wounds to notice our flaws. Pride often darkens our reactions, moving us to attack when we feel attacked. We turn the tables and point out all the ways in which they fall short of our standards.

We often forget that in a relationship, we are not shopping for a finished product (and trying to get a discount for that person's missing parts and brokenness). 

Being in a relationship is more like starting a brand new business, where we have to invest a significant amount of resources over our lifetime to help them be the person that God is molding them to be.

Guys and girls are not godliest, most mature, most wise, most humble, most prosperous, most confident when they are young. They are just starting out in life. What matters is the end product. How you treat your significant other has a great deal to do with who they will be at their end.

May God give us grace to cover all things with love. May He give us grace to pray for that person, to respect them, to act with deference, to be gracious with their shortcomings. When they aren't measuring up to our standards, may God give us the grace to remember how far short we fall of His standards, and how much grace He has given us to approve us when we deserve hell. May God give us the grace to remember that we are a work in progress too. 

Go Forth and Be Fearless

James 1: 5-8, 22-25
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I know for sure the following things:

• I lack wisdom.

I do not know what to do in life. Those things that I want to do, I do not know how to do, or how to do them well. So I tend not to do anything at all.

• My doubts toss me around like a rag doll.

I fear that the things I want to do may end up being the wrong thing to pursue. What if I put in all that time and energy only to find that I have been investing in an unprofitable venture? 

• I am slow to act. 

If I act, I act very cautiously, taking teeny tiny baby steps in my chosen direction. I take every single in-between step, evolving rather than transforming my life. 

This is what needs to be done:

• Determine my theology.

What I believe about God impacts what I do and how. I believe in His sovereignty. I believe that He has given me a new heart. Everything else I still need to learn.

• Determine my course of action.

I can trust the Lord to guide my heart. I can seek His face and His blessing upon what I will do, and then I must stick with it. 

• Go forth.

I must be courageous and not waste my life away scuttling around in fear. I must act. I must invest and bring a return upon the resources the Lord has given me. I must pursue ways to maximize the return. 

Help me be a faithful, fearless steward of the time You have lent me, Lord.

The Now and Not Yet of Commitment to Church Life

We are saved to serve. Indeed, serving the church is pleasant and edifying. I am in the church now but have not yet committed to serving and being active in church life because of my past, present, and future.

I hesitate to serve now because I want to hold onto people from my past. My transition in membership to Immanuel is recent and I miss my old friends with whom I grew and served for ten plus years. I struggle to grow relationships in Immanuel because I am trying to hold on to relationships from the past. However, perhaps God has drawn me away from the people I knew in the way that He drew Joseph out of his family or Moses out of Pharaoh's house so that they could accomplish the Lord's specific purpose for them. 

I hesitate to serve now because of my present season of serving my family and being in college. 

Whenever I think of serving the church, I always check mentally whether I am sufficiently serving my family, since one who does not provide for her family has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Also, my family tends to schedule an event for the same time that a church event is scheduled so I am forced to make a decision about in whom to invest my time. Truly, I am more edified from the instruction and fellowship provided at Immanuel than I do from interaction with my family, and must bring a return on IBC's investment, but I have been acting upon loyalty to my family.

The necessity of diligence in my studies at college makes me step back from serving as well, though this is a sorry excuse because I do not actually care for my studies. In the spirit of efficiency, I work hard not for an A but for the best grade possible for the least amount of effort, which, by the God's grace, has often been an A or B anyway.

I hesitate to serve now because of an uncertain future, my own "now and not yet." Lord willing, I will graduate this semester and have applied for a fellowship program which, if I am accepted, will require me to live in San Francisco for nine months. After that, I must consider my profession and invest accordingly. I do not want to start work in a ministry only to uproot a few months later. If I put my hand to the plow, I want to finish the job. So I just haven't committed.

For now, I suppose I must weigh my options and make a decision about what I will pursue. Finalizing a decision will bring peace to my anxious mind.

Your Love is a Song

More than anything except my dad, I love to sing. I long to sing. My heart thirsts for singing. To sing beautifully with someone is like a sweet kiss.

 

I love to sing freely, without the constraint on creativity that comes with singing written music in a choir, though these pieces are in themselves highly artistic and are beneficial for improvement. I prefer to let my ear and heart and voice join together to create their own harmony. It is deeply satisfying to add my element of experience to the song rather than singing simply what another has experienced in his spirit and written for the world to sing.

I love to sing with people. There are two kinds of people with whom I love to sing: those who love to sing and those who can sing well. 

When I sing with others who love to sing, I do not feel pressured to please those who do not like to sing, which would mean not singing. 

When I sing with people who can sing well, I feel free to pursue a harmony of my own, to meander, to ebb and flow in response to what they sing, rather than dutifully singing the melody as the lead because others lack confidence or ability. When I sing with people who sing well, the synergy of spirit between us is exhilarating. It is overwhelming.

I dream that some day I will find people who love to sing like I do. I think I shall live in complete bliss forever once I find them.