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The Journey from People-pleasing to God-pleasing (a review of UNSEEN: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World that Loves to Be Noticed, by Sara Hagerty)

My whole life I’ve cared more about what people think of me than is healthy or helpful. Image management has been my mode as long as I can remember, and I have a pattern of caring more about reputation than I do about reality. In my first days learning to follow Jesus I began to realize how this focus on externals and others’ opinions can infect my faith just as it infects every other relationship and activity.

I write about Jesus, I teach people about Jesus, it is my job to talk to college women about Jesus, weekly and even daily. In these things, I have to keep vigilant watch over my tendency to care more about the outside than the inside. I am called to live my faith out in the open where people can see and invite others to join me, but I need to be very careful that I’m actually living my life with Jesus rather than just talking about Him.

If my first priority is what I can see, what others can see and comment on and measure, I easily lose sight of the things that last, the things that matter, the things God cares about most. I easily lose sight of my heart, which only God truly sees and knows. Matthew 6 teaches me that if my audience is the world, then the praise of the world is the most I’ll ever get. But if God is my first audience, then I get His reward, His notice, His praise.

“Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding… Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. Matthew 6:1, 6 (The Message)

I have grown hungry to protect out part of my relationship with Jesus for just me and Him. And I’ve prayed and thought and worked to focus and prioritize and value the things I can’t see over what I can see, touch and measure (hence the name of my blog.)

Over the last year in particular I’ve been seeking hidden places, asking God to meet me in ways I don’t share, that aren’t for public consumption.

Imagine my joy when I learned that one of my favorite writers, a fellow blogger and adoptive parent who has consistently pointed me to Jesus, had a new book coming out called, UNSEEN: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World That Loves to Be Noticed. Read more

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What I’m Reading Right Now: August Book Review

August Book Reviews

August was NUTS with returning from India, getting the kids ready for school, and starting up all of our fall activities. Plus late August/ early September is the busiest time of year for my job, when I’m supposed to be working 20 hours, but have to work hard to keep it under 40.

I used reading as self-care this month, abandoning a couple of books* I was struggling with, and stocking up on easy reads for the weekends when I had a free moment.

Easy to pick a non-fiction favorite this month, since I only finished one: But Sara Hagerty’s Unseen would have been my favorite even if I’d read 20 nonfiction books.

I loved all of the fiction I read this month, but The Almost Sisters was probably at the top of the list, it felt like a just-for-me book, and was just what I needed in the midst of the busiest week of my year.

Read on for more specifics about 5 really great reads (I think these might have all been 5 star books for me – that’s a great month!) Read more

Posted on by Renee Meyer

A Prayer of Thanksgiving for India

I traveled home from India by myself, needing a few extra days before the boys started school.

I have always loved traveling by myself, finding that I hear from the Lord and am able to process in a deeper way while traveling. Also, I love airports. And as any parent knows, after traveling with kids flying solo feels like a dang vacation.

My flight was at 3:30 AM on a Friday morning. I spent Thursday saying goodbye to dear friends in India, giving and receiving gifts, and having last sweet moments with our group of college students. I thought when they left our hotel room at 11 that I was seeing them for the last time. But as I arrived downstairs, I saw big grins on the faces of all the hotel staff and found our whole team waiting to sing me a song and say one last goodbye.

Matt and our friend Abhik dropped me off at the airport at 1AM. I breezed through check in and security, since hardly anyone else was there besides a sweet family who were also traveling through Qatar to Chicago (on their way to Seattle, so they had a longer trip ahead of them: small children.)

That left me with a couple of hours to kill in the Kolkata airport. Knowing I needed to stay awake, and wanting to take the time to think and process over the past 3 weeks, I opened my journal and thought through all that I’d learned and seen in the 3 cities I’d visited. The universities, slums, gardens, rock quarries, malls, the wide variety of places we visited. I wrote about the friends I made, the welcome I received, the things I’d learned. I wrote about the weather and the food and the beautiful people of Kolkata, where we spent the bulk of our time.

Then I thought back to our first days, with the Hope Venture. I thought about what it meant to me, returning to a place of privilege and comfort, after seeing such sorrow and hardship, but also hope and help. I thought about the precious Indian friends I made who do not turn their eyes away from the hurting and broken in their neighborhoods and city. And I asked myself what I could do in my own neighborhood and city for the hurting and broken.

Here is the prayer I wrote that morning. Read more

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A Story of India: Finding Jesus at the Home of Hope

We spent our first week in India with a team from an amazing organization called The Hope Venture. After praying for and supporting The Hope Venture’s humanitarian work for years, it was amazing to be able to see several projects up close and personal.

We got to meet kids who are able to go to school because of the supplies they receive through the Back Pack Program: It is AMAZING to see what a difference this program makes, especially knowing it is entirely funded by $10 dollar donations!

We visited a vocational training center, where precious women come daily for courses teaching them to sew. This allows them to sew for their children (fabric is much more affordable than finished clothing), as well as eventually sewing for others and helping to provide for and support their families.

Rock Quarry outside of Bangalore, India. People live and work here for next to nothing.

A highlight of our time was visiting a feeding center at a rock quarry. This was one of the bleakest places I have ever been, I can not imagine having a quarry be my workplace and home.

When the Hope Venture partners who run the feeding center arrived, we saw children, faces lit with joy, streaming in from every direction. We participated in the program for the evening (character-based stories and singing), helped to feed the children, and every one of us left a large chunk of our hearts.

2017-07-20 17.47.54 HDR

But the memory I’ll carry with me from my time in India until I die was at the Home of Hope. Here’s how The Hope Venture describes this beautiful, heart wrenching place:

Imagine walking or driving through the streets of your neighborhood and seeing hundreds of destitute people abandoned on the streets left to die. Raja, a rickshaw driver, decided that he could no longer sit by and watch these people suffer. He had to do something to help them. He began bringing them into his home. He started to mend their wounds, clean their forsaken bodies, and give them their dignity and hope back.

But he needed a place for those he was rescuing and so he began the Home of Hope in Bangaluru, India. The Hope Venture is proud to partner with this trusted man in any way we can. We want to help those that are suffering reclaim dignity and honor. (www.thehopeventure.org/project/home-of-hope)

Of all the things we expected to do and see in India, the Home of Hope made me the most nervous. I am not afraid of much, I can talk to anyone, and I have seen darkness and poverty, but y’all? There is a reason I am not a doctor or nurse. Just being a mom comes with more physical wounds and body fluids than I can handle sometimes. And I have a front row seat to lots of mental health issues, but I have no experience at all with the kind of mental illness that lands people vulnerable and alone on the streets. I’d been asking God to really let me see people, to not turn away, to break my heart for what breaks His. But I was SCARED. Read more

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6 Things I Learned from India

Last month I had the privilege and blessing to spend 3 weeks in India with Matt and 8 college students. We visited 3 cities, met hundreds of beautiful people, ate some of the best (and spiciest) food I have ever tasted, and experienced more life in 3 weeks than I could have dreamed. I loved the portions of India I got to see and experience (there is SO MUCH MORE.)

I love India’s beautiful people, especially their smiles, eyes full of joy.

I love the unity in diversity: everything is recognizably Indian, yet each person you meet has vastly different beliefs, thoughts, and stories.

I love that everything in India is turned up a notch: You like people? 1000s of people! You like bright colors? Everyone you meet is swathed in colorful array! You like spicy food? Here it is so hot you will breath fire!

I loved the hospitality we experienced: Welcomed and warmly greeted everywhere we went. We had tea in the home of the director of a company we toured, and when we were finished we tried to take our cups into the kitchen. This CEO literally RAN at us to gather up all the cups he could carry, insisting we sit down and make ourselves comfortable.

I loved meeting people of many different faiths. And I loved seeing my own faith beautifully lived out so far from where I have experienced it, in such a different context but the SAME Jesus.

Often when people travel, they say they were changed, and India for sure changed each of us. But what does that really mean? HOW did India change me? Read more

Posted on by Renee Meyer

Sometimes Loving Your Neighbor Means Speaking Up & Doing Something {The Call of Jesus}

On Tuesday I shared a devotional on what it means to love your neighbor. I wrote many of those thoughts nearly a year ago, and it was my plan all summer to be posting about this particular topic this particular week.

I had no idea I’d spend this particular week seeing Jesus’ call to love our neighbor misquoted and misused so frequently. My social media feeds have seen quite a lot of push back this week to the outpouring of condemnation of the white supremacy and racism expressed in Charlottesville, NC over the weekend.

Listen, white pride rallies in 2017 are a lot to process. I get that. It was shocking and surprising to a lot of people (not many people of color, I’m guessing?) I was dismayed at the outbreak of violence, I was glad to see so many Christian friends calling the rally what it is (racism and a travesty of the Biblical understanding of each person made in God’s image), I was sad that Charlottesville was not mentioned or prayed about in my church on Sunday morning.

But what surprised me was the stream of friends and commenters, over the course of the week, saying that those who are speaking up against things like Charlottesville are part of the problem. I was surprised to hear that what we really need to do is shut up and love our neighbors.

Y’all, sometimes loving our neighbors means speaking up when someone is propagating hate against them.
Read more

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Love Your Neighbor As Yourself: A Devotional on the Great Commandment {The Call of Jesus}

 

 “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead.  And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.  Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.  But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him.  On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.’  Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers’ hands?”  And he said, “The one who showed mercy toward him.” Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10:30-37)

Which of the characters in this story do you identify with most?

The traveler left for dead, truly in need of a neighbor? The robbers who chose their own well-being at the expense of a fellow human? The priest and Levite, who prioritized their religious obligations and expectations over the needs of another? Or the Samaritan, the political outsider, shunned and avoided, who perhaps needed compassion himself, and so was able to extend it to another? Read more

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HOW Do we “Love the Lord Our God With Our Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength”? {The Call of Jesus}

HOW Do we “Love the Lord Our God With Our Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength”? Jesus. The answer is (always) Jesus.

After rescuing the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, leading them out into the wilderness with Him, Yahweh bound Himself with the nation of Israel. He married Himself to His people. In later generations, when Israel was unfaithful and broke covenant with Yahweh, the prophets warned of coming judgment using the language of “harlotry”, comparing Israel to an unfaithful spouse.

Centuries later, when Jesus was asked by experts in the the Mosaic Law, what is the greatest commandment, the most important, it would not have surprised anyone to hear Him say, “To love God. To marry yourself to Him, to be faithful to Him, body, mind, heart, and soul.”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:30-31)

Loving God – heart, soul, mind, and strength – was the mark of God’s people, it was what set them apart, the way in which they were to make their mark in the world. This, Jesus says, is the primary value in the Kingdom of God: To know that Yahweh is one, and there is no god besides Him, and to love God with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as himself.

Historically, Israel was NOT faithful to their covenant with Yahweh – which was, of course – not a surprise to Yahweh.

In Deuteronomy 30:6 there’s a promise, “Moreover, Yahweh your God will CIRCUMCISE your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.”

In order to love God heart, soul, mind, and strength, Israel would need “circumcised hearts.”

Centuries after Moses, Jeremiah the Prophet would explain this circumcision of heart, crying out

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. 33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jeremiah 31:31-33)

The New Covenant would bring a NEW heart.

Generations after Jeremiah, Jesus would stand before His disciples at the Passover supper and break bread and pour out wine, again using covenant language.

We don’t recognize it, but the disciples at the last supper would have recognized what Jesus was doing from the marriage, covenant ceremony. Read more

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The Call of Jesus: Love the Lord Your God With Your Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:30-31)

In the church, we refer to this as The Great Commandment.

In the Great commandment, Jesus is quoting the foundation of Hebrew Law. When Yahweh came down in the time of Moses and joined Himself to the Hebrew people – binding Himself to them and them to Him in a COVENANT – He said:

Deuteronomy 6:4-5   “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

This is the Shema, and Deuteronomy 6 goes on to instruct God’s people to put these words on their hearts, their hands, foreheads, doorposts & gates. They were to teach the Shema – the Lord is ONE and we are to love God with all we are and have – to their children as they were sitting, walking, lying down, rising up. Jews throughout history have taken these commands seriously.

The Shema was repeated throughout the days, months, and years of a faithful Jew’s life, as a PRAYER, as spiritual formation, and as a reminder.

Because this is the primary mark of God’s people: Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is One. Love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

What does it mean to love God with one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength? Read more

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How On Earth Do We Make Ourselves at Home in God’s Love? {The Call of Jesus}

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.  I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. (John 15:4-5, NASB)

Jesus calls us to abide, to remain in Him. This is the way to LIFE, to fruitfulness, to seeing God’s goodness grow in our own lives, in our husband’s and kids’ and neighbors’ lives, to see His goodness, His Kingdom come in our neighborhoods and churches and cities…

Jesus calls us to abide. To remain. To stay. To live in His love.

And now we get to my BIG QUESTION, which I’ve been asking for years, and veeeerrrrryyyy slowly finding answers to…

HOW? Read more