Tag: spiritual growth

Posted in Thoughts from Scripture

No Big Picture – Part 2

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Chewing on thoughts from Scripture never fails to produce results. Maybe that’s why we are reminded so often to meditate on God’s Word.

That was definitely the case as I continued to meditate on John 5:19-20 after the verses literally jumped off the page at me. I shared my immediate thoughts last week, but the concept continued to deepen. Continued to form. Continued to work on my heart.

Here are the verses again, just as a reminder:

Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does these things. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing, and he will show him greater works than these so that you will be amazed. John 5:19-20 CSB

The initial realization was that Jesus didn’t have the big picture. By choice. He surrendered it when He took on flesh.

That is mind-boggling enough. But, the more I contemplated it all, the more the enormity of the situation began to sink into my slow brain. Before taking on flesh, the Son didn’t have to be shown anything. He was part of it. He automatically knew it. John 1 tells us that He was there in the beginning. He already existed with God. He knew it all because He ordained it all.

But He surrendered that full knowledge when He took on flesh, putting Himself in a place where He had to rely on the Father to show Him what was going on. He had to trust that the Father would show Him what was relevant when it was relevant. And He never doubted that it would happen, because He trusted the Father’s love and wisdom explicitly.

Here’s where this all hits me. I crave the big picture in life as much as I crave it in my job. I want to see it all so I can then break it down and tackle each step as needed. In my work, that’s necessary. The issues I’ve had in recent years have come down to the reality that I haven’t had enough information, and those who’ve had the information have neglected to give it to me. There was a breakdown. I work for good people. But they miss things. Because of that, I can’t automatically trust them to give me what I need when I need it.

In a way, that’s an understandable frustration with the small reality of work. But, when I crave it in life as a whole, the life that is supposed to be 100% surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ and, by extension, God the Father, it reveals a problem. A sinful lack of trust kind of problem.

God the Father knows what I need. He knows when I need it. If it comes from Him, I can trust that it’s enough to take the next step, as long as I’m listening faithfully. He never gives too little. If I mess up, it’s because I responded poorly to what He gave me; it’s never because He didn’t give me enough information or the right information.

And yet, I often treat Him like my boss and coworkers. I fuss that I need more. More information. More guidance. More clarity. More…something. That I need to see the big picture. I need to see where He’s taking me so I can figure out my next steps.

That’s faithlessness, pure and simple. Sinful faithlessness.

Ouch.

I have tried to orchestrate life. Break down the big picture. Make things fit just so. And I’ve hit brick walls of frustration on so many things. But the Lord spoke into my striving, whispering truth into my spirit. He showed me the answers He’s already given me. He pointed me to prayers I’ve been praying and how my current uncertainty is actually an answer to some of those prayers. He showed me the action I need to take right now. Today. This week. It doesn’t solve next week or next month. It doesn’t make all of the pieces come together. In fact, it tempts me to ask more questions.

But God isn’t calling me to solve those things. He’s calling me to trust Him today. To see what He has put right in front of me and to do that. Only that. To leave the rest — the big picture — in His hands. Because He knows what to do with it. For all the ways He’s gifted me to break down dreams and visions and ideas into tangible actions, He has not gifted me to solve life’s big issues. That’s His job, not mine.

So today I confess my lack of trust. I repent of my whiny refusal to act simply because I don’t have all the information I think I need. I surrender my need for the big picture. And I make a commitment to do follow along with what I see the Father doing today.

In work. In life. In everything. That’s more than enough.

Posted in Meditations & Meanderings, Thoughts from Scripture

No Big Picture – Part 1

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I love the way different brains work. I love seeing how we process tasks set before us in very different ways. And I love how we need each other to tackle a task.

For instance, some people can envision projects. They can see what doesn’t exist and create ideas. To be honest, those people blow my mind! If it doesn’t already exist in my awareness, I’m very unlikely to come up with it.

But, the people who come up with those ideas often struggle to know how to implement their dreams and visions. That’s where I often shine. As long as I have the tools and knowledge at my disposal to make it happen, I can break down a dream or vision into practical, viable action steps.

Here’s where things break down for me, though. I can take a big picture and break it down for a whole team, then see exactly where I can complete tasks within my strengths that work well with the strengths of other people on the team. Or, if someone else has already broken it all down, I can so very easily coordinate with the rest of the team as long as I have the big picture.

For most of my adult life, I’ve been in roles where I had the big picture, primarily because that is where I function best. I either had the big picture because I was part of making the vision practical, or I’ve had it because I’ve been one of the people on the team always “in the know.” Only occasionally have I operated with merely a slice of the information. Only rarely have I been the one working task to task, having to wait for the next assignment because I had no concept of the big picture that would automatically give me context for how my current assignment fit or what I might be called on to do next.

Those times have not gone well for me.

Unfortunately, that’s where I have found myself for quite some time in one of my roles. Working task to task with no real context for how it fit in the big picture. Just the task ahead of me. It has worked…technically. But there have also been many times when I’ve wasted time doing something that fit the letter of the task at hand but didn’t fit with the big picture. Times when I’ve done things the old way, not knowing that the “way” had changed. Even times when I’ve messed up completely and caused something to break and have to be fixed. All because I didn’t know the big picture.

It has been frustrating. Where in the past I’ve been either responsible or at least “in the know,” in recent years I’ve been on the outside. Given just enough information for what’s right in front of me, with no context or big picture. My work has felt stagnant. No learning. No growing. No problem-solving. Just completing tasks that I can’t even see the purpose for — especially in those times when the tasks have ultimately been dumped because they weren’t needed after all. (And those are usually the tasks that, in the past, I would have recognized early on in my “big picture breakdown” and would eliminate. But without the big picture, I couldn’t eliminate them.) In short, I’ve struggled a lot and have questioned so many times if I needed to just walk away.

And yet, even though that work is mindless and doesn’t allow me to grow, this life situation has caused growth. I just didn’t realize it until I was smacked upside the head while reading John 5.

Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does these things. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing, and he will show him greater works than these so that you will be amazed. John 5:19-20 CSB

When I read this, I immediately was convicted of my need for the big picture, not just in work, but in life. In following Christ.

Jesus surrendered the big picture and chose to simply follow the Father. I’m supposed to be like Jesus.

Maybe, just maybe, I can practice this with the “small” thing of work, trusting Him to guide me to be the best employee I can be. And then maybe that practice will expand to the bigger scope of life.

Hmmm. Maybe that’s worth chewing on a bit.

Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts, Thoughts from Life

Total Rest

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

It’s not quite the new year yet, but this wrap-up of the rest series felt like a good reminder even now, while we remain in the busy season. 

A new year has arrived, bringing with it a slower pace of life. But to get here, I had to survive a typical fall in the Hibbard household. Every year the stretch between the end of October through the end of December is a very busy time for us. This year was no exception.

But right in the middle of the busyness, God reinforced His lesson on rest. Oh, He had already given me the idea. I had even journaled it months before. But, it wasn’t until I had come to the end of a very rough week that He reminded me of one more truth He had taught me about rest.

Rest is not just relational, expected, and sacrificial. Rest is also total trust.

In all honesty, I had been trying to rest in the midst of the chaos. But, I did it my way. I allotted time to attend Christmas parties and enjoy the fellowship. I sacrificially set aside my to-do list on multiple occasions, supposedly in the name of rest. But I forgot that all of these things must be bound together by a conscious focus on total obedience.

You see, rest is not just about coming up with ways to interact with others, to meet an expectation, or to sacrifice when an opportunity seems to arise. Rest is about walking in complete trust and obedience, allowing God to handle every single detail, every single time.

When I tried to do life, whether work or rest, my way, I fell apart. I failed. My to-do list backed up and my relationships became strained. I neglected to fulfill obligations, and no amount of time set aside for rest seemed to rejuvenate me.

I did not find real rest again until I stepped back to see how I had failed to trust and obey the Lord. Rest returned only when I actively and consciously began to walk once again in total surrender.

Now we face a new year. If it moves even half as quickly as last year did, many of us will once again come to the end of it feeling harried and tired. But God offers the rest we need to make this a year of complete abandon to Him. Complete obedience. Complete trust. And complete rest.

I am not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I do hunger to make a new commitment this year. I hunger to live this year centered in the total rest of Christ.

Will you join me?

Here is the final post in my four-part Rest series, originally published in Arkansas Baptist News.

Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts, Thoughts from Others, Thoughts from Scripture

Sacrificial Rest

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

 Such a timely reminder, as we are, once again, deep into the holiday season and all of the interactions it can bring!

The holiday season is upon us! As an introverted homebody, sometimes the busyness of this season throws me for a loop. I do love it. I love the decorations and the celebrations. I enjoy the parties and the events, even if I sometimes have to pry myself out of the warm house to attend them.

But I also need rest. And I am not quite sure I like the next lesson God has been teaching me about rest. You see, in addition to learning that rest is relational and expected, I am also learning that rest is sacrificial.

I have always been pretty selfish about rest. My opinion has always been that I need it, and I need it my way or it doesn’t count. But when my husband and I had a conversation about a couple of passages of Scripture, I found my selfishness challenged.

In Acts 16:13, we see Paul heading down to the riverside in hopes of meeting people gathered there to pray. I have never though much about that action until Doug made a thought-provoking observation. He pointed out that Paul’s trip outside the city on the Sabbath was a sacrificial act. It was outside his norm. It was outside the parameters of rest he had been taught during his formative years.

Paul made a sacrifice.

So, where was he when he made this sacrifice? He was in Philippi. He was making the contacts that would eventually result in the Philippian church. The same Philippian church that brought him incredible joy, according to verses like Philippians 1:3. In fact, it could be argued from Scripture that this particular church provided Paul’s greatest source of strength and encouragement.

But it all started with a sacrifice.

One of my favorite verses is Hebrews 3:13.

But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. (CSB)

I have always loved the idea of encouragement among believers. But, as I look at Paul’s sacrificial investment in the Philippian church – and the return it brought – I see Hebrews 3:13 in a new light. I see that we receive our greatest encouragement, strength, and support when we are willing to sacrifice for one another, even in rest.

Now, sacrificial rest does require care because it still must be rest. It cannot become just another source of busyness. But, what would happen if we were willing to put aside our selfish conceptions of rest and determine instead to rest in fellowship with our fellow believers?

As the busy schedule presses in, I pray God will show me exactly how to rest sacrificially – and that He will allow even my rest to bear the fruit of joy and encouragement for others.

This is part three of the Rest series, originally published in Arkansas Baptist News.

Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts from Scripture

Weary to Renewed: Driven to the Word

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Oh how much I needed to reread this today! It speaks to exactly where I am…weary. But when it comes to keeping my heart prepared for the Holy Spirit to continually speak through the Word, whether my Bible is physically before me or not, I’ve been falling flat. I’ve been going through motions of reading. If you’re in a similar spot, I pray these thoughts from years ago will encourage you like they are encouraging me today. 

I’ve been weary lately. And in my weariness, I’ve been crying out to the Lord for strength. One morning this week, a thought passed through my mind before I was even fully awake.

The Lord will renew your strength.

As I awakened fully, I realized that the thought was just a inaccurate version of Isaiah 40:31. I’ve transitioned most of my Scripture memory to NASB, but even if I memorize this particular verse in other translations, I believe my mind will always go first to the beautiful KJV:

But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength…

Do you see the difference between my early morning thought and the actually verse? “They that wait…shall renew” versus “The Lord will renew…”

Because of the differences, I was driven back to Isaiah for context. I knew the idea of the context, but what were the exact words? Why would I think, even in my dreaming state, the words “The Lord will renew your strength” instead of just drawing comfort from a familiar and well-loved memory verse?

As I read backwards a bit, I saw this:

Why do you say, O Jacob, and assert, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and the justice due me escapes the notice of my God”? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired. His understanding is inscrutable. He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power. Isaiah 40:27-29

Oh, how much I could say about the whole process that took me from full-fledged weariness through an early morning sub-conscious thought to renewal. But, the truth is that such a process is intimate and personal. It comes from relationship, and there is nothing I can share that will draw you into that renewal. That’s between you and the Lord.

But, two other powerful realities struck me through all of this.

God takes what we have and builds on it.

I cannot remember when I memorized Isaiah 40:30-31. But I know that I’ve returned to it so many times that it is an ingrained part of me. This week, God took it, His Word, the seedling of His very Spirit within me, and used it to renew my strength.

Oh, my dear friend, if you are not hiding God’s Word in your heart, making it a part of you, then you are missing the most powerful avenue by which our Father connects with us. I’m not talking memorization, although that is the most direct avenue by which God’s Word is hidden in our hearts. I’m talking immersion. Digging deep. Not just reading to read, but learning, growing, and interacting with the Word of God, making it an integral part of your being.

Always go back to the Word.

The thought that came to my mind was not just intended to help me remember a beloved verse. It was intended to drive me back to the Bible. To study. To evaluate context. To explore more deeply. Not to simply rely on what I remembered, but to discover more.

We have the amazing privilege of having Scripture readily available to us. Not only do we have it in print, but most of us can pull up our phones and computers and snag any translation at the press of a button. There are hundreds of thousands of people lacking that privilege. But, we have it.

And our heavenly Father wants us to use it.

No matter how many great snippets of Scripture you’ve memorized, how many wonderful sermons or devotionals you’ve heard, how many solid interpretations you’ve heeded, always go back to the Word itself. It is alive. It is breathing. It is active. It is fresh. And when we return to it with open hearts and minds, the Holy Spirit will reveal living truths that speak to our immediate standing with Christ, even from the most familiar of passages.

Perhaps today your struggle is not weariness. Perhaps it’s something else entirely. Whatever it is, I guarantee your heavenly Father is ready to speak life and strength and power and truth into your need. Will you immerse yourself in His Word and allow His Spirit to bring renewal to your heart?

Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts from Scripture

Able To Aid

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

In full disclosure, I’ve been in a dry season when it comes to drawing from Scripture right now. I read faithfully. I process as best I can. But I’m struggling to draw out and engage with truths. In times like this, I find that going back and reviewing past journaling and writing is a huge help. It reminds me that this is just a phase and that sometimes I need to revisit old lessons and remember what I’ve forgotten. This just “happened” to be the old post I clicked on yesterday, and it was a reminder I so greatly needed in that moment. God is so faithful that He directs even my random clicks. I am thankful.

Some mornings as I sit down to process through my readings, I get sidetracked. This form of sidetracking isn’t by glancing at e-mails or Facebook, texting with a friend, or anything like that (although I confess that does happen far too often). In this particular instance, I’m referring to getting sidetracked by a verse that isn’t really part of the “point” for the day.

Then again, maybe it is. God has a funny way of doing that.

This week, the distraction was a passing devotional reference to a verse in Hebrews. It’s easy for me to get lazy and just ignore passing references like that, so years ago I determined to be intentional about looking up those references every time. Here’s what I read when I looked up this particular verse:

For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Hebrews 2:18 NASB (emphasis mine)

As I read these verses, I realized that I’ve always had an incomplete foundation when it comes to temptation. Had I ever stopped to process my understanding of how we are to biblically handle temptation, I would have realized that my foundation lacked something. But, until this week, I never gave it a second thought.

Here’s the foundation I’ve always had:

  • James 1 teaches that temptation is not of God, and I must flee it.
  • 1 Corinthians 10:13 shows me that God will provide a way of escape from temptation.
  • I still fall to temptation, but the blood of Jesus covers me, and I can come before Him in repentance and receive forgiveness even when I do not take the way of escape.

But, looking at Hebrews 2, there’s something else I was missing. Another crucial truth: I don’t have to run away on my own strength. I don’t have to find the escape with my own clouded vision. Jesus is able (and therefore willing) to come to my aid!

That is so logical. It’s so clear. It’s nothing really new. Yet, how often do I act on it?

I confess, often when I’m struggling against temptation, I feel too weak to even look for the way of escape. But my precious Savior has not left me to do it on my own. He is ready and able to help. I just have to call on Him.

He is my way of escape.

We cannot fight temptation on our own. We do not have the strength. (If we did, we wouldn’t need Christ’s salvation.) Only with the Spirit living within us can we walk through the escape provided. But in the ugliness of our temptation, we don’t feel able or worthy or permitted to call upon the purity that is Jesus Christ.

But oh how opposite from truth that is!

No, we’re not worthy, even at our best. But able? It only takes a plea for help! Oh, and the most glorious part is that we’re not only permitted, we’re invited. Welcomed. Encouraged. Admonished. Instructed. Commanded, even, to call upon Jesus.

And how do we remember that in the throes of temptation? How do we fight the darkness enough to convince ourselves that we can call upon Jesus for aid? By memorizing this verse now (and maybe a few around it – the whole context is powerful!), putting it in our arsenal so the Spirit can bring it to our minds in the moment of weakness.

He is able to come to my aid. Oh what a glorious truth!

Posted in Thoughts from Life, Thoughts from Scripture

The Place of Impact

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

If you’ve ever sought out advice about how to read the Bible, you’ve probably received a wide variety of recommendations. Some will suggest that you should read the Bible straight through from cover to cover every single year. Or, if not cover to cover, then in chronological order. But, definitely the whole thing. Every year.

Others suggest that if you read that quickly, you’ll miss details. So, you should focus in on individual books of the Bible and take as long as you need to explore them from year to year. It might be three, five, or more years before you get through the whole Bible, but the close focus is more important than getting all the way through.

As with much advice passed around in life, advice about how to approach Bible reading is frequently presented as one or the other with no in-between. There’s a right way and a wrong way. Which one are you going to pick?

If I’ve learned anything about advice over the years, it’s that the real solution is rarely black and white. It almost never falls to one extreme or the other. The best spot is somewhere in the middle. With Scripture reading, it’s a both-and approach. Get the big picture and get the details. We need both.

Recently, though, I realized that even that is not complete advice simply because it’s not a one-time thing. It’s not a situation of reading the Bible through one year to get the big picture, then slowing down from then on to get the details. It’s important to go back and forth. Get the big picture, get the details, then apply the details back onto the big picture again. And repeat. Again and again and again.

This reality was highlighted for me when preparing to teach a lesson from Philippians 3. All of it. Crammed into one short lesson.

Now, I love Philippians. It’s such a practical epistle, giving solid instruction. It’s also so…cheerful. It makes me smile and reminds me that healthy community is possible. But, let me tell you, there is a lot packed into that short epistle. And as I studied, I was overwhelmed by it all. I know Philippians well, having studied it deeply on multiple occasions. I have explored the big picture. I’ve focused on the details. I’ve studied and explored and learned so very much.

In this particular instance, though, that knowledge was working against me. I spent the entire week trying to figure out how to summarize the details of a whole chapter and do it in a way that was coherent and meaningful for a youth Sunday school lesson. I never could quite get it. It wasn’t until Sunday morning, day of the lesson, that I finally had my “aha” moment. I finally remembered to step back again. To take in the context of the whole epistle. To see where chapter 3 fit into the overall flow.

(To be completely transparent, I’m pretty sure the Spirit had been whispering that to me all week, but I’m pretty hard-headed sometimes and don’t listen well.)

As soon as I stepped back, the patterns showed up. I began to see how the various parts of chapter three all intertwined. No, we didn’t have time for the details. But we had time for a meaningful lesson.

I don’t say all of this to give my own brand of advice. I share this to remind us to wash all advice, especially advice on walking with Christ, through the lens of experience. Activity. Actually doing the walking while following the leadership of the Holy Spirit. A novel concept, I know.

We often don’t know what we’re missing in our studies of Scripture until we are pressed to share what we’ve learned with other people. Likewise, we don’t really see what’s missing in a lot of our pat spiritual answers until we’ve had to drag our methods, beliefs, and preconceived ideas through the realities of life. And sometimes those realities are a little messy — muddy, even.

My one-week experience of studying Philippians 3 for a Sunday school lesson was a small drop in the bucket of my overall life. But, that experience very much exemplifies how I need to pattern my life as a follower of Christ. The big picture view of Christian experience, idealistic though it may be, is very critical to our growth. The nitty gritty details — represented by our focus on how the Word and our faith speaks into today’s challenges, needs, and struggles — are also critical. Both grow us. They hone our listening skills and help us see Christ at work all around us, at every turn. In all honesty, though, they tend to limit us to a combination of idealism and very specific, personal application.

If we’re going to impact the world around us and give our neighbors a vision of Christ’s love for them, we have to move beyond both idealism and personal application. Fortunately, when we allow the Holy Spirit to be active and alive within us, He has the ability to merge the two and communicate the powerful love of God to those around us in a way that speaks to their own idealism and personal needs. He can handle using our growth to speak into the messy realities of the lives around us.

That’s where I want to live. In the place where both my big picture idealism and detailed experiences can truly be used by the Spirit to impact the life of another.

Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts, Thoughts from Life, Thoughts from Scripture

Purpose Enough

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I’ve done it all my life. When I hit a bump in the road, a struggle, a discouragement, or a time of suffering, I ask why. I think knowing the reason will help me cope. Make it worthwhile. Help me truly reach for joy in the suffering.

More than that, doesn’t seeing a reason help with my testimony to others? “Look what God is doing!” I could say — if I only knew what God actually was doing.

But what happens when a reason is not given?

I’ve been there. Instead of, “Look what God is doing,” I have to fall back on, “God is in control and He does love me, even if I don’t feel it right now.” That’s harder. So much harder. Especially when the pain goes on and on and on or when I hear the questions of why God would allow suffering in the first place.

I confess, the lack of being able to see God’s hand — an inability to see how He could be glorified through the situation or how the question of pain and suffering even fits with a glorious, loving God — has distracted me from resting in Him many times. I believed I needed evidence. But so many times, He has withheld that evidence from me.

Instead, He’s given Himself, which is actually the exact provision I truly need to process through the struggle.

Therefore, since Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same understanding—because the one who suffers in the flesh is finished with sin—in order to live the remaining time in the flesh no longer for human desires, but for God’s will. 1 Peter 4:1-2 (CSB)

What if, contrary to what we often try to argue, God doesn’t send suffering so that He can turn around and glorify Himself through some grand, magnificent miracle? What if, instead, He takes the suffering that is already here, that this world is utterly steeped in, and uses it? Redeems it by driving us to cease from our sin? To continue to grow in righteousness? To become more like Him?

When we endure suffering faithfully, when we truly push through those times of pain and heartache and choose to trust God even in the middle of them, those fleshly lusts lose their allure, don’t they? We realize what is truly precious, and we cling to it, turning away from the sin that once ensnared us.

Yet how many times do we forget that truth when we are standing in the midst of a struggle? We ask for purpose for our suffering, a lesser gift, instead of seeking His righteousness to grow in us.

I would love to be free from suffering. I would love to completely remove the suffering from everyone around me. It’s bad. It’s not what God intended, and I imagine it grieves His heart. I hunger for the day when He fulfills His promise to make all things new. The day when suffering will be completely gone.

In the meantime, though, I hunger for righteousness. Even while I remain in this world of suffering, I want to become the type of person who thinks with joy of the day when both will be done away with and we will live in perfection with Christ our Savior. With God our Almighty Father and Creator.

No matter what the suffering, may that truth return to my memory and be purpose enough for me.

The Christian Standard Bible. Copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Christian Standard Bible®, and CSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers, all rights reserved.
Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts, Thoughts from Scripture

What He Has Done

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Revisiting another old post…this is a reminder that I needed today.

Every morning, I copy a few verses of Scripture. I love copying. It slows me down and makes me really think about what I am reading. Recently, Psalm 92:4 was the verse that made me pause.

Psalm 92 is a psalm of praise, which is nothing unusual. Psalms such as these abound, not only in the book of Psalms but throughout Scripture. I often seek out these songs when I am struggling to praise. They help me focus and redirect.

But, something about verse four of this particular psalm helped me realize why I do sometimes struggle with praise. Take a look at the verse with me.

For You, O Lord, have made me glad by what You have done, I will sing for joy at the works of Your hands.

The psalmist is focusing on what God has done, again a common theme in psalms of praise. But, truly pondering this truth made me realize something about myself.

I too often focus on what God has not done.

Sadly, focusing on what He hasn’t done comes quite easily. And the more we do it, the more easily it comes. Why? Because we love to focus on prayer requests. And not just prayer requests, but specific prayer requests. Physical healing. Marital healing. Provision. Open doors. Salvation.

When the answers we expect don’t come quickly, we pray harder. And we focus more and more on the reality that the healing is not coming. The marriage still fell apart. We were forced to make alternate decisions because the provision or open doors we expected were not there. And that loved one is still hardened to Christ Jesus.

Yes, it is very easy to notice all of the things He has not done.

It is much harder to stop, step back, and acknowledge what He has done, especially in the midst of disappointment over seemingly unanswered prayer. But that, my friends, is exactly what we must do.

What has God done around you this week? How has He shown His might? His power? His love? His creativity? His sense of humor? His majesty? His grace? His mercy? His protectiveness? His jealousy? His desire for a relationship with you?

How has He sought your attention? How has He reminded you of His Word? How has He used others around you to reveal Himself?

Once you start looking, you will be amazed by the infinite ways He has shown Himself this week. The incredible evidences of His handiwork will be overwhelming.

And, amazingly, the more you notice what He has done, the easier it will become – until one day you wake up and realize there is little, if anything, He hasn’t done.

Posted in Thoughts from Life

Growth is Big

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Over the past few years, I’ve been nurturing a new love for liturgy. I used to avoid anything related to liturgy simple because I assumed it would be stale. Pray someone else’s prayers? That would be impersonal. Do things by rote? That wouldn’t feel alive.

Then I started making a habit of reading the Psalms every day, kind of as a devotional reading alongside whatever other Bible reading plan I was following. I honestly don’t know how many years I’ve been doing this. It started with the idea of reading a psalm a day. Then, I realized I wanted to go deeper. So, I would take one psalm and read it every day for a week. Then I worked through a book that highlighted certain Psalms and I would stay in a psalm for as long as it took me to read the specific chapter related to that particular psalm.

Over time, I began to realize that this was a liturgical practice. I was meditating on and praying the prayers of ancient kings and psalmists.

In the middle of this, I discovered the book Every Moment Holy* and fell in love with the way some of those prayers spoke what I couldn’t come up with on my own, especially in some of the struggles I was facing.

Over time, liturgy became more personal than some of my own efforts to pull my thoughts into the words of a prayer or song. Repeating a psalm or prayer day after day after day made worship feel more alive instead of less.

Today’s real thought, though, isn’t actually about liturgy. It’s instead about my gradual acceptance of liturgy being the groundwork for a new way of processing. In recent years I’ve also been reading more about the seasons of the church and the celebrations of the church year. Baptists don’t really follow any of historical and traditional church calendars all that much, and since I’ve been in a Baptist tradition pretty much my whole life, I don’t have a lot of inherent understanding of the church seasons. But it’s a fascinating concept to me, and it’s been fun to learn about.

Pentecost Sunday is one of those points on the church calendar that we Baptists really don’t talk much about. We don’t mind exploring the original Pentecost Sunday when the Holy Spirit first descended on the disciples, causing them to explode onto Jerusalem with a message spoken in languages that simple Galileans had no business knowing! That’s a cool story. But, we don’t want to take it too much further because the implications are a bit…unnerving. We don’t want to be too Pentecostal, after all.

What I’ve been reading lately, though, includes liturgies that go back centuries, woven throughout the history of Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and various Orthodox traditions. The instructions for worship for the entire fifty days between Easter and Pentecost are filled with opportunities for celebration and invitation. The liturgical prayers burst with longing for the presence of the Holy Spirit and His life-giving work in our hearts. They are grounded in Scripture yet exploding with joy. Solidity and emotion all woven into a beautiful exclamation of praise.

This learning has both thrilled and devastated me. Thrilled me because I’ve been reminded of the amazing access to the Father that we have through the Holy Spirit. Devastated me because it has exposed the many places in my heart that I have closed off to the Spirit. Places that I have built walls and have even defended with black and white declarations of Scripture and theology. Areas where I have decided that the Word of God is static, not living and breathing and sharper than any two-edged sword. Because that’s easier. It’s neater. It’s cleaner than surrendering to the Spirit of the Living God who can challenge my perceptions and expand my horizons and show me where my understanding is not just limited but also show me where I’m just plain wrong. About Him. About His Word. About my own way of living as His subject, servant, and child.

So, what’s my point in all of this? It’s not really about being a Baptist who is learning more about non-Baptisty things like liturgies or the church calendar. I think it’s more about realizing just how big growth is. And how long it takes. And how hard it is. And how much it shakes my world.

I like black and white. I like concrete and understandable things. I don’t like to be on the verge of understanding. I like to understand. Completely. I am an emotional person by nature, but I like to be able to manage those emotions and keep them organized. I like excitement, but I want it to be excitement that I can figure out and share in a structured way.

Growth doesn’t fit any of that. We often think that life is either black and white or has grayed, blurred lines. But that’s not true. Life is colorful, and growth is the explosion of those colors in a way that breaks through our black and white lines and makes us realize that the edges we’ve defined aren’t really the true edges after all.

Growth makes us realize that what we once thought to be concrete and solid and complete is actually one small block in a massive structure we can’t even begin to process yet. Growth shows us that we’re nowhere near full understanding. Growth throws our organization and structure under the bus and keeps stretching and expanding.

Growth is realizing that the very things we once thought hindered us are actually tools to expand us. That things we thought old and stale are actually the very things that breathe life into our hearts. Like liturgies and centuries-old traditions.

Growth is surprising. I like surprises, but only those that I can manage or understand well. Growth is not easily managed. It requires constant adjustment and expansion. Constant change. Constant confession and reassessment. Those are hard surprises for me. Things that are too big for me to grasp often cause me to want to shut down. But that’s what growth is…something that is too hard for me to grasp.

Will I grasp it all anyway?

*That was Every Moment Holy, vol 1. There are now three volumes, and I highly recommend all of them!