by Donya Dunlap | Sep 6, 2016 | The Spiritual Life
The question mark in the quotation
Have you ever come across a confusing passage of Scripture? I have. In fact, two verses in Hebrews have always bothered me a little.
Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. -Hebrews 13:5-6
The middle phrase, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee” is quoted often, and almost every time it is used, the reader starts with, “for he hath said.” I understand why they do. Their point is usually something reassuring about how we are never alone. God is always with us. We can be encouraged and emboldened by God’s presence in our lives. While these facts are true and encouraging, the overlooking of the first part of the verse sparks a question mark in my mind.
The colon between contentment and companionship
For a time I thought perhaps the person who came up with the verse divisions for Hebrews just got these verses wrong. Obviously it is two separate thoughts and they just put a colon there instead of a period by mistake. Right? This explanation didn’t really seem right to me. I felt in my heart there was a deeper meaning I wasn’t seeing. The colon connects the dots between two seemingly disconnected thoughts. We will never be content with the things we have until we realize Jesus is all we need.
When we look to a boyfriend or spouse to meet our every need we will be disappointed. Only Jesus can be everything we need. When we look to shopping to make us feel pretty or chocolate to feel calm we are putting a band-aid over the hurt only Jesus can heal. Nothing in this world can provide contentment except for Jesus. Only when we accept Him fully into every area of our lives will we begin to walk through life in power. He is our Help. He is our Protector. And He is all we need.
The cravings of our hearts are simply guideposts pointing to Jesus. Our healing and sufficiency is in Him alone. The temptations of this world bring pleasure for a moment then, leave a greater void than we had to start. The only path we can take to wholeness this side of Heaven is contentment with Jesus alone. All other paths lead to greater grief and unquenchable desire.
by Donya Dunlap | Jun 3, 2013 | The Spiritual Life
In How Do I Love Thee? – Part 1, I asked the question, “Do you love Jesus for what He has done for you, or for who He is?” I have found that at times, according to my actions, I am treating Jesus more like a genie in a bottle to answer my prayers than the Savior of my soul that desires an intimate relationship with me. I think part of that thinking is because I’m selfish and self-centered and I don’t always take time to meditate on the gloriousness of the Trinity as I ought, and therefore the Majesty of who I am supposed to be worshipping is lost in my focus on myself.
At the end of Part 1 and in Part 2 I talked about how at times I catch myself thinking that God’s love is based on my performance when really, “Jesus is encouraging us, to live our lives in the abundance of His love.” His love for us is based on the fact that He is love, not on how we respond to His love. And yet, how we respond to His love dramatically effects our lives. I’d like to continue those thoughts today.
Jesus wants the very best for your life.
And the very best thing you can have in your life is Jesus.
Some time ago I came across a brief video on YouTube of a several statements within a message by Louie Giglio on the Glory of God. This video impacted my heart in a huge way. Listen carefully and really think about what he says. (Louie Giglio – Full sermon series called “History: God’s Passion for God’s Glory”. I highly encourage you to watch the full video.)
God’s highest priority in the world isn’t you. God’s world doesn’t revolve around you, God’s world revolves around God. God’s highest value is God. He knows who he is. He’s full of himself. And in being such he’s not being selfish or egotistical. He’s actually being as loving as he could possibly be to you by being full of himself. And everything he’s ever done, he’s done motivated by one thing and that’s his own glory. He wants the very best for you and for me. He wants to give us the very best. And what is the very best? He’s the very best. And he knows he’s the very best-so if God gives us anything less than himself he’s not giving us the best. So he’s not being selfish, he’s being loving when he says, “I demand that you place me at the center of your life. I want you to place me at the center of all of your thoughts and all of your energy and all of your worship and all of your affection, all of your glory. I want it to be centered in me.” And when he does that he’s not doing it for him. He’s doing it for you. John 12, Jesus speaking, “Now my heart is troubled, what shall I say? Shall I say Father, save me from this hour? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” That’s what Jesus said a breath away from the cross. Glorify your name. The cross wasn’t to make a lot of you. The cross was about making a whole lot of God.
This is what Romans 8:28 is talking about. A lot of people quote Romans 8:28 as if it was a magic pill that is going to make everything going wrongly in their life right. “We know that all things work together for good.” What many people don’t understand is what the definition of “good” is. The verse goes on to say that “all things work together for good” but only for a select group of people. Who are those people? Those that love God. But go further than that and you’ll find that it’s not just those that say they love God, but those who are called according to his purpose. Those who are saved. Verse 29 says that those who have been saved have been chosen by God to be conformed to the image of his Son. That is the real definition of “good” in verse 28. But it also tells us why all things work together for good. It is so that he (meaning Jesus) might be the firstborn among many brethren. Or in other words, for the spread of the gospel that God might be glorified among many. God didn’t promise that all things would work together to make you happy. God promised that all things would work together to bring Him glory!
When we bring glory to God we are fulfilling our purpose and that makes God very happy. But the only way to do that is to be 100% totally committed to Christ. Think of a marriage ceremony. When you stand before God and a room full of your family and closest friends to commit your body and soul to your husband, you are doing that to the exclusion of everyone else. Traditional vows usually say something along the lines of:
“Will you have this man to be your lawfully wedded husband; to live together in the covenant of marriage, to love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health and forsaking all others, be faithful to him as long as you both shall live?”
When you say “I DO” that doesn’t mean except for the weekends. It doesn’t mean I take you and occasionally I’m going to go out with Johnny and maybe once in a while Bob and I might go see a movie or something. NO! When you commit yourself to your husband you are eliminating all others from being a part of your life. God wants the same kind of commitment. He doesn’t want to share you. He wants you all to Himself. And as Louie said earlier, He doesn’t do that for Himself, He does that for you.
You were created to be fulfilled in Christ alone.
To try to fill your life with any other thing, even a husband or children, is going to leave you empty.
A lot of young women think that if they can just get a boyfriend, or just get married they will be happy. That isn’t true. You will never have true joy until God is the center of your universe. God instituted marriage as a picture of his relationship with us. We are to be One flesh with God. We are His bride. He chose us, He loves us and He wants us to love Him in return.
Hopefully you are beginning to understand how important our response to God’s love is to Him. He wants to be everything to us, which will in turn make us complete, content and happier than we could ever imagine, but this kind of a relationship doesn’t happen automatically, or even because we want it to.
Continued in the final installment in this series: How Do I Love Thee? – Part 4
Photo credit: jlwo / Foter.com / CC BY-NC | Quote added to the photo by me.
by Donya Dunlap | May 11, 2013 | How Great is Our God, The Spiritual Life
While Jesus never changes, my view of Him has dramatically changed over the last several years. I talk of this shift in our relationship in Forgetting the Fairy Tale, but in essence, it boils down to two words.
Wonder. Glory.
My wonder at His glory.
The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof. Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round about. His lightnings enlightened the world: the earth saw, and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory. – Psalm 97:1-6
When I stopped everything long enough to meditate in the wonder of Jesus as Creator and the vastness of His creation it changed me. I haven’t been the same since that moment and I don’t care to go back. My life is so much richer and fuller today than ever before. I explain more here…
https://vimeo.com/64947405
Curious about the videos that changed my life?
Click the links below to watch them on YouTube:
How Great is Our God
Indescribable (Part 1 of 5)
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI Click here to view the above image and other breathtaking sights in our universe on NASA.gov
by Donya Dunlap | Oct 25, 2012 | Art and Design, How Great is Our God, The Spiritual Life
As a beginning designer I knew very little about what artists call The Creative Process. When working on a logo, I might sketch out a few ideas, but then I would jump right into my design software and work on flushing out a solution. I skipped several important steps.
Before you can adequately summarize an organization, a person, a product or group into a symbolic representation, research must be done. You need to learn all the various aspects of the its goals, its personality, its people, its mission and more before you will know how to begin a design.
From there you need to brainstorm. Taking into account all the various things you learned in your research, you then begin to consider images that symbolize those concepts and how they relate to each other. You have to consider color and the color meaning, single shapes, complex shapes, and styles. You have to try out a multitude of ideas and from there refine and refine and refine until you arrive at a completed image that adequately represents everything your client is trying to communicate to their audience.
There is a similar creative process that happens in our relationship with God.
Often we are saved and become comfortable at a church then jump right into super-Christian mode and try to serve the Savior without really knowing Him. We skip the learning and meditating parts of getting to know God and try to make Him happy with us based on our performance.
This kind of mentality hurts us and our “audience” in several ways.
- We never know what it is like to have a true, deep, meaningful relationship with God
- We lack an understanding of who God is and how He views us as His children
- We are continually frustrated with our shortcomings, and translate that into a belief that God must not be pleased with us either
- We misrepresent God to others by not walking in the Spirit and therefore causing unsaved people to think that Christians aren’t any better than the world which also effects their view of God
I wrote of this in my soon to be released book, Forgetting the Fairy Tale:
We blissfully enjoy all of God’s blessing until He takes away a relationship, or allows us to have a terminal illness, or doesn’t allow us to get married, or anything else contrary to our picture perfect Christian lives, and then we turn our backs on Him. Why? Not because He doesn’t love us anymore, but because we really never loved Him. We never got to know Him. So when He does something that doesn’t match our image of Him we get angry… We become bitter.
God is so far above us and His ways are so much higher than our ways. We will never be able to truly know Him in all of His complexity because we are human and He is divine. But we can continually grown in knowledge of His person and His grace if we “do our homework” so to speak. If we stop the continual motion of our lives and simply sit at His feet, read His Word and listen for His voice, He will reveal Himself to us.
James 4:8 tells us to “draw night to God, and He will draw nigh to you.”
The reason that we struggle so much with what God does is that we don’t know who God is. We need to pause, rewind, and court our Savior. Just like any human relationship, understanding and love takes time.
I encourage you to pull out some paper and colored pens and hang out with Him for a while. Write out His characteristics and what they mean to you. Look up verses that talk about His majesty. Read through the Gospels and write down observations of Jesus’ character and personality that stand out to you. Draw picture graphs outlining truths of who God says He is and who He says we are in Him. Get creative!
What can you do today to get creative with your relationship with God? I’d love for you to share your ideas in the comments below.
