Category Archives: Taste and See

Hands and Feet – and Knees-

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This place has been quiet, but not my heart, and not my mind.

Lately I have been thinking about how owning a sound, historical, and biblical theology matters -and it matters a lot!- but also, how we flesh out that theology, that set of beliefs that drive our motives and actions, our responses to the good things and hard things that come our way matters a big deal too.

Studying big books about the Bible like commentaries, systematic theology, and other very important titles like The Institutes of Calvin, etc. is absolutely important; but we should never forget that the ultimate goal of knowing more is to love more. Love God more, love our neighbor more, love our family more, love the Word more, love to meditate on the Word more.

The more we know, the more responsibility we have to apply that knowledge in the life God has given us with the people God has given us. We need hands and feet to flesh out what we have studied in the Word -and in the big books we love to read. If we don’t do that, if the people around us cannot see that the more we study the more compassionate and understanding, and loving and helpful we are, then we are not truly growing in the Lord. We are just deceiving ourselves. People around us will know us because of the fruits we bear, not because of the many books we read- if you know what I mean. Fruits cannot be faked.

And this same principle applies to prayer. If we read a lot of big books, and know every point of our theology and can argue for this or that side of the debate, but we are not praying more, then something is terribly missing. Our study of the big Theology books can never substitute our time with God in prayer. Never.

Becoming women of the Word is not only about reading more and studying more, but about becoming more like Christ and longing to be with Him more.

I want to be known not by what I say I believe, but by what I do with what I say I believe.

Sound theology needs hands and feet and knees to be fleshed out.

Under His Sun and by His grace,

Becky

Oh, How Wonderful it is to Come to His Table!

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Sometimes the days are too long,
the nights don’t bring rest to our mortal bodies.
The minutes pass by slowly,
while our heartbeats run faster.

Some weeks the thorns and thistles
pierce our skin and hearts deeper.
But the Word does it work daily in us:
Dew in the morning,
Medicine in the midday,
Hope at night.

A Bible verse tucked in the back pocket of a pair
of old jeans day after day. Ready to be read.
One more phone call.
A prayer.
The Promise Giver won’t let us go.
His Promise is holding us.

It’s true, we are still standing,
Only because He sustains us.
The Word we have eaten,
The living Water we have drank
Runs through our veins even in the darkest of days.

And then Sunday comes.
Oh, how we love your day, Lord!
And we sing to our Maker.
And we all read the Scriptures together.
A Communal Table to feed the souls of many.

We confess our sins.
We confess what we believe.
We pray the Lord’s Prayer.
We sing Psalms and Hymns.
We bless our Maker and
Bless each other.

We listen to the Word proclaimed,
A fountain of life.
And we soak in all of it.
We, hungry pilgrims,
Are gathered together
Because we love Him,
Because He loves us.
Because we exist for this.

And then, a mystery before us unfolds again,
We look around, and we are together,
A body of believers, as one.
Ready to eat.
To remember.

The Bread is broken in front of us,
and we remember.
We pass it, we eat it.
Slowly.
My children -all of them- eat.
We smile.
We have longed for this all week,

The Wine is poured,
and we remember.
His blood for us.
We believe.
We drink.
My children -all of them- drink.
We smile.
We have been baptized,
and we remember who we are:
The sheep of His pasture.

We are at the Father’s Table again.
And we know that because of Jesus,
We are welcomed.

He has prepared this table for us
In the presence of our enemies.
We are ready to feast,
To remember His victory,
His love for His people,
The hope of Eternal Life.

Isn’t this what we needed this week so much?
This sacrament of communion,
To remind us that all will be well?
That we are His?
That He is ours?

Oh, how wonderful it is
To come to His table!
To remember how He saved us!
To have communion with Him
In the company of our brothers and sisters.
To eat and drink,
To remember all of His benefits.

Oh, how wonderful it is
To come to your table, Oh, Lord!

Becky

Throw Yourself Under the Wings of Your Redeemer and Into His Promises

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Ruth is a woman who came boldly, and importunate before her redeemer, and she was not rejected but welcomed with steadfast love by him. Ruth is a woman who found safety under the wings of Boaz, because she knew he was a merciful and kind redeemer. There is so much we can learn from her, throwing ourselves under the wings of our Redeemer is one of the most important ones.

This is an excerpt from pastor Ben Merkle’s series on Ruth*. I pray you will find in these words encouragement and that you will fear not come under God’s wings and aim to be, by God’s grace a woman of faith, a Proverbs 31 woman.

“Ruth shows us what it looks like to embody the attributes that are in Proverbs 31. What is the most striking thing about Ruth?

Ruth’s loving-kindness, her faithfulness, her steadfast deep devotion and commitment to the promises of God. She throws herself with complete faith, headlong into the promises of God and in particular, she throws herself into the promises of God with respect to the relationships and trials that God has put her in. So she has this deep confidence in Yahweh. And it is so funny because why would this woman from Moab have this confidence? Why would she have that?

But God gives her this deep faith that she is able to take God’s promises and utterly commit herself to them and live out that commitment through her relationships, through her marriage, through her relationships as a wife, as a daughter in law, ultimately as a mother as well as she has children. She is somebody who looks at her relationships and her covenant commitments around her and sees what faith will look like in those relationships, and she does it after trial after trial gets thrown at her. She does it in the context of those sorts of trials that will make every one around you say, “Why are you still here? Why are you still committed to this? Clearly this is a dead end, just quit and go home. Or as Job’s friend would say “Just curse God and die because this is ridiculous.”  And yet Ruth will continue to throw herself at that.

And if you think about that all of the descriptions in Proverbs 31 start to make sense. This is a woman who is devoted to her husband, to her family, to everybody who is around her and she is spending herself on their behalf because of her deep faith. Ruth shows us what that would look like. Ruth shows you how to do this even when heavy trials come on you and every one is saying quit… Ruth hangs on because of her deep hessed, this loving-kindness that just keeps getting better and better the more the trials come at her. That is the virtuous woman. That is the one who that is described in Proverbs 31. That is a woman of valor who is a fitting wife for a man like Boaz, for this mighty warrior. And then when you see that, when you start seeing it that way, you start seeing that the virtues of the virtuous woman are all the natural implications, the natural result of being a woman of faith. If you are a woman of faith, if you have a deep commitment of God then these are the works that are going to flow from that. Faith without works is dead; if you have a living faith you have living works.”

Maybe today would be a perfect day for us to read Proverbs 31 and the book of Ruth all in one sitting.

Let’s pray that we will learn to throw ourselves under God’s wings, into His promises with deep faith. A faith that will be manifested in living works toward those around us even in the midst of trials.

Blessings,

Becky

*You can listen to the whole series on Ruth entitled, The Lovingkindness of God, by Pastor Merkle here. This particular excerpt comes from part three which you can listen here.

 

An Advent Lesson on Gratitude

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Some words from John Calvin to meditate on this season, which for us should be a season marked primarily with thanksgiving:

“For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.” Luke 1:49-50

“If our hearts and minds were truly stirred by the thought of God’s particular gifts and mercies to us, we would most certainly be led further, to the point where we would praise him overall for his power and goodness.” “When, however, we are dealing with God, thee is nothing about Him which does not humble us in the presence of his transcendent majesty, and which does not testify in some way to his glory. His power, wisdom, infinite kindness, and righteousness are brilliantly displayed both in heaven and on earth. God’s name will always be holy. Only our ingratitude stops us giving the honour he deserves, and our ingratitude will not go unpunished.”

“All of us, I repeat, must not only praise God for the good things he has given us and for the blessings he has poured out on us; we must also take a longer view, and observe the evidence of his kindness on every hand, so that our mouth may always be open to glorify him. This should also be the mark of our common unity. We prove that we are true members of the church when we rejoice in our neighbor’s prosperity, just as we ought to show sympathy when they suffer trouble. For whoever rejoices in another’s prosperity is at the same time led to glorify God. This is the proper way to apply Paul’s injunction in the first chapter of 2 Corinthians: ‘Let thanks from many lips be given to God when good is done to any of his servants.’ “

 

“We can thus be sure that God’s goodness is always open to us, and that He will not cease to guide us both in life and death, until he has accomplished our salvation. This is because God cannot be defeated. his purpose is constant: always he continues to do good for us, for his generosity knows no bounds, and his gifts and graces are without repentance, as Paul assures us in the eleventh chapter of Romans.

In order to share in God’s gifts, we must first begin with the promise he holds out to us. We must lay hold of it by faith, and allow it to take firm root within us. For only through faith can we remain obedient to God and walk in his fear… The fear of God which Mary speaks about here is the fear that keeps covenant with God.”

 

“The fact that God takes and chooses instruments at will does not undermine our claim that it is he who does all things. We humans, however, are so wicked, that whenever we see lesser means operating we assume that God is idle in heaven! And we are so mindless that when our hunger is fully satisfied by the bread that comes from the earth, we do not have the wit or wisdom to look up and give God thanks!”

May we be drawn to walk this Advent season with wide-open eyes and grateful hearts. This is the only response for all of those who have seen Him, the Son of God, in the Garden of Eden, in the Wilderness, in Bethlehem, on the Cross and in our daily lives reigning with glory.

Peace, 

Becky

How Do You Serve Warm Bread?

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You might be familiar with the setting: four moms waiting for their girls’ dancing class to be over while chatting about many trivial things. So, yes, I was there, except that the conversation was not trivial this time; the Lord had answered my prayer and He had opened a door for me to start sharing the gospel with them (one of them, a very nice hardcore atheist).

After many questions and many answers, I told them how the Gospel, the Kingdom of God, is like bread coming out of the oven and served with butter and honey on top, that for me that was an excellent way to describe it. They smiled, and one of them, the one who knew many “Christians” already looked at me and said, “I have never heard the Christian life, the gospel, described that way, with such an excitement, with such joy. But now I am thinking that many do not want to take that warm slice of bread with butter and honey because the hand that is offering it is so dirty, so filthy that you don’t dare to touch it, no matter how good and delicious the bread might be.”

I pray that as we have these ladies and their families over in our home in the weeks to come, as we open our lives before them, as we serve them, as we converse, as we extend our hands with the Gospel towards them, they will see clean hands reaching out to them. I pray they will have eyes to see how our hands and hearts have been cleansed by the Gospel, and then they too will take the Bread and eat, and have Life.

“Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” John 6:35

 

“Scripture teaches us that the gospel must be preached to creation, and declared to every nation. From this, some have falsely assumed that in between our sermons and declarations the gospel must be absent. But the gospel is always present because the Spirit is present around our tables, in our homes, and the Spirit is present because Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father. The Spirit fills the room with fumes, and gospel preaching flicks the lighter.” Grace Agenda Conference: Gospel Presence

Under His and by His grace,

Becky

How Do You Tell His Story to Your Children?

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As I read Psalm 145 this morning I kept thinking of the amazing privilege that we have as parents to tell God’s story to our children. We know that it is our responsibility before God to do so, but how are we doing that?

Go to Psalm 145 and meditate on it. Isn’t it a great psalm that teaches us how are we to tell our children about God’s wondrous works? This Psalm is a song of joy, of victory, of praise. I cannot imagine the Psalmist telling his children about the kingdom of God with a monotonous tone and making of that time the most boring of the day.

Consider for example, how would we speak to our children about “the might of God’s awesome deeds” (v.6)? Do we get excited when we “pour forth the fame of His abundant goodness”  (v.7)? Do we sing aloud in the car, in the kitchen, at church of his righteousness (v.7)?

When we tell them the good news that “the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” when we tell them that “He is good to all, and his mercy is over all He has made” (v.8-9), do we get excited? Or do we repeat those amazing truths as something that is already known by all Christians?

I get so excited (and so very grateful!) when I read that God wants me to “speak of the glory of his kingdom and of His power to my children” (v.10-12). Oh, what an amazing privilege! I don’t want to miss that opportunity! God has appointed us, parents, to make known to our children His mighty deeds (v. 11-12), all of them, those in the Bible, those in our lives, those in Church history, those in the community where He has placed us.

I want to tell my children over and over again that God’s Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom. That the gift of growing up in the Covenant is a treasure, a privilege, a gift like no other. That throughout all generations His dominion endures. Oh, to tell them a thousand times “how faithful our God is in all his words and how kind He is in all his works! (v.13).

When the trials come I want to encourage them with God’s word, I want to be ready to tell them how “the Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.” When times of hunger come, I want to encourage them with the Scriptures and remind them that He “gives food in due season,” and that He is extremely generous and opens His hand and delights in satisfying the desires of those who fear him (v.15-16, 19).

What a privilege it is to be able to tell them that “the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth!”  To share the gospel with the children that God gave me over the family table, in the car, in the porch is a delightful command from God. Isn’t it amazing that God has purposed that from this mouth that many times speaks ungraceful words shall come the most amazing news! Oh,  to be the one that tells them that “the Lord preserves all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy.” I want to be ready. I don’t want to miss any of the opportunities that I have been given every day to do so.

“My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD,
and let all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever.” (v.21)

Under His Sun and by Grace,

Becky