Examine yourself...

This is from a recent teaching at youth group in response to chapter 4 of Francis Chan's book Crazy Love.

In Matthew 13, Jesus teaches the parable of the sower.  This parable gives us a picture of the differing responses people have to the gospel.  In chapter 4 of Crazy Love, Francis challenges his readers by saying "Don't assume you're the good soil."  Check out Jesus' words from Matthew 13.

 

1That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. 2And great crowds gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat down. And the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. 4And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9He who has ears,^a let him hear.”

18“Hear then the parable of the sower: 19When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. 20As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, 21yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away.^b 22As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. 23As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”

In 2 Corinthians 13:5 believers are challenged to examine themselves, "Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!"  Honestly, I think we (Christians) test ourselves all the time.  We are constantly looking at others in the church or our peers in the world and comparing ourselves to them.  When we do this, we inevitably find people on either side of us.  Some that make us feel really lousy about ourselves and some that in turn make us feel down right awesome about ourselves.  This is not the kind of test that will leave us with an accurate understanding of our personal salvation.  If we truly want to examine and test ourselves to see if we are in the faith we must use scripture to do so.

Jesus said "If you love me you will obey my commands." (John 14:15).  Notice how the love comes first.  Obedience is simply a response to that love.  It is not how we earn or attain it.  Its just what you do if you truly love Him.  Its the natural response to His love.  At youth group this last week, we took a tour of 1 John and examined our own hearts.  I encourage you to do the same.  Here are some of the key verses we looked at.


1 John 1:5-9
5This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

1 John  2:4-6
4Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

1 John 2:15-17
15Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

1 John 3:4-5
 4Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.

1John 3:16-18
16By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

1 John 4:19-21
19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Those verses are incredibly convicting and can be even more incredibly defeating without a proper understanding of the gospel.  Jesus lived the perfect life that we cannot live and died the death that our sins deserve allowing us the opportunity to accept God's gift of grace and mercy where we get to exchange our sinfulness for his righteousness.  So what is this test to see if we are in the faith?  Its an examination of your heart.  When you read these verses do you find that you have calloused yourself to seeing your own sinfulness?  or that you have plenty of great excuses why you don't love your brother, walk in the light, or keep his commands?  or are you willing to confess your failure to live up to God's standard and repent in order to receive not only his forgiveness but the power to overcome the sin in your life through him for his glory?

Valentine's Day

Many of our friends have tried to come up with a good spin on Valentine's Day for their whole families to celebrate.  This year we are trying one of our own!

We decided to think of Valentine's Day this year as an opportunity to encourage the ones we love by thanking God and them for the example of Godly character that they live out each day.  We thank God and Pops for his example of service and leadership.  He is very committed to his job because he knows that it is a way that God has called him to serve our family by providing financially for us.  He is equally committed to spending time reading the Bible with us and practicing Bible memory verses with us.  We thank God and Meme for her generosity.  She loves to give us special treats and take us out to eat.  We thank God and Nana and Poppy for investing time in us.  They love to read to us and play with us at their house.  We thank God and Abby for her hospitality because she lets us play with her in her room.  We are thankful for many other special people in our lives.  God has really and truly blessed us.

Happy Valentine's day to all our loved ones!

Lesson: Learned

Our verse for last week's challenge is from Romans chapter 5.  It says, "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."  Although our temporary experience of mild hunger fails in comparison to what much of the world experiences as suffering, we prayed throughout the week that the Lord would use our experience this week to produce in us endurance, Godly character, and hope.

Energy levels ran low all week and irritability ran high across the board in the Carroll family.

We struggled to remember to ration certain items, especially milk.  Lily got close to the bottom of her soy milk after 3 and half days which is when I realized I needed to be giving her more water to make the soy milk last the whole week.  Somehow it still didn't connect that I should be doing the same with the cow's milk that the rest of us drink and I had to start cutting back on the use of that after 4 days.  We did make it through the week without running out of any particular item.  In fact we had a few items that we didn't even touch from our shopping trip!  Our adjusted total for the week came to $45.31.  We ate oatmeal or eggs for breakfast, grilled cheese and apple slices for lunch, and soup for dinner that was made of chicken, rice, and some frozen veggies.  We gave up snacks and desserts (which in our house is usually some kind of fruit) and stuck to smaller portions sizes so that we would have enough.  On our last day we got to eat pasta and tomato sauce which was a nice change of pace after eating the same things all week.

So much of the weekly ministry that we do has some kind of food component.  Sean had lunch with our pastor one day.  There was food at our small group bible study and Friday night youth group.  We do breakfast with an elderly women who has become family to us each week.  We also usually have a big family dinner with extended family members weekly.  I was impressed that on a normal week all the extra bits of food is just part of the routine and normally goes unnoticed.  I'm still not entirely sure to make of it.  Shouldn't we be more conscience to not waste things that are such precious comedies in other places?  What can we really do to help people who don't get three meals a day, let alone snacks and dessert?  These are just a few of the questions that are getting bounced around here at the Carroll house after accepting this $33 grocery bill challenge.

We do want to praise the Lord for working in us.  We did see our kids grow in endurance this week.  It was a very difficult challenge for them but we are still confident that God will use it to teach us more and more!

Please also check back with our friends the Straleys and here what they learned through their week long challenge experience.

Challenge: Accepted

Our dear friends, the Straleys recently put out a challenge that you can read about on their blog.  They are missionaries living in the Dominican Republic and they have challenged their blog readers, the majority of whom are their family and friends living in the US, to experience a tiny bit of life as a Dominican by spending only $33 for one week on groceries.  Please do take the time to read about the challenge so you can understand their hearts in putting this challenge out there.  Just click on their name in the first sentence of this post!

We eagerly accepted this challenge because we would love to gain some perspective and learn whatever lesson God has intended for us.  Today I attempted to shop on the alloted $33 budget.  I came home with a gallon of milk, a half gallon of soy milk, a box of cherrioes, some rice and beans, oatmeal, apples, bananas, pasta, one can of tomatoe sauce, frozen mixed vegetables, some chicken, and a dozen eggs.  These items seemed like the bear essentials that would get us through a week.  My total bill came to $52.60.  Well over the challenge price.  I'm not disappointed.  I am excited to see what lessons we learn this week, it will still be a challenge.

Sean suggested we try the challenge again next month.  In fact he suggested we try again each month until we really see what its like to live on $33 a week for groceries.  Please join me in praying that we would keep our hearts and minds open to hearing from God on just how blessed we are to live here in the US with such vast resources, with so many family to support us, with so many opportunities to make our lives better.  God is good and he is faithful to answer our prayers so expect to hear back from us soon on what we learned!

h&m

Living in Boston, in my college days, this store became one of my favorite places to shop for fun urban styles.  I love looking back on those days and thinking of lessons I've learned since then.  Lately, I keep learning about a very different h&m.  And its an h&m that I so desperately need.

I'm talking about humility and meekness.  The Lord has been teaching me about these character qualities for many months now.  I have felt o so convicted of my pride and my impertinent ways.  I like to think of humility as understanding God's place and meekness as understanding my own place.  When I think of who God really is and the love and grace that he has shared with me, I am instantly humbled.  I can see and feel how much higher, and greater, and more amazing my God is.  And knowing that about my God is what motivates me to be meek.  Life experience has taught me that there is plenty that I can do on my own, but when I remember who he is, I want to do things with Him and in His way which is always better for me in the end.  I read online somewhere that meekness is great power under perfect control.

I went to woman's conference recently.  It was my first time going to this sort of thing and it really was a lovely time.  I learned many many things that day and one of the things that struck me was the amount of "you're worth it!" and "you deserve so much more!"  and other such self esteem boosting quotes that I heard that day.  Maybe I'm not like most other women, but I knew even then that these weren't the kinds of things that I personally needed to be hearing right then at that moment.  Self esteem hasn't been a big problem in my life really.  If anything, my problem has always been my pride.

Maybe its because I've been raised in a post women's rights world where songs like "Anything you can do, I can do better.  I can do anything better than you!" have been used to promote a woman's equal ability to the things a man can do.  Maybe its because I grew up as the right mix of girly girl and tom boy rolled into one.  I loved playing sports and such as a kid.  I also loved keeping up with the latest trends.  When I thought about what I wanted to be "when I grew up" I was never held back.  There were times when I wanted to be a lawyer, there was even a time when I wanted to join the military and be a soldier.  In all of this, I always still wanted to be a mom.  Of course, I couldn't see how any kind of profession would ever get in the way of that.  It didn't cross my mind once that having both a profession and a family would require an immense amount of juggling and balance.

My pursuit of humility and meekness has led me to think about all these things.  It seems to me that, as a whole, our culture has begun to teach, especially to young girls, that humility and meekness are not qualities to be desired.  Of course we discourage pride, its down right unattractive!  But we do not encourage humility let alone meekness.  Perhaps this is in response to a past and present misunderstanding of these qualities.  Or maybe its a response to many woman feeling these qualities imposed upon them simply because they were born as girls and not boys.  But humility and meekness are characteristics for us all!  Christ Jesus himself is the best example of humility and meekness that I could ever think of!

Philippians 2 says, "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."  Our Lord, Jesus, gave up everything despite being worthy of it all.  He really could do and be anything.  Yet he humbled himself and chose to be one of us.  And he gave God, our Father, absolute control over the outcome of his life.  Lately, I feel challenged to do the same.

Lord, I am willing to be whatever you want me to be no matter how lowly it may seem and I will give you absolute control over the outcome by practicing obedience to you!