Hello world! It’s almost springtime in Seattle! Can you see it? This will be my seventh spring in this lovely city, and I’m starting to learn some things. First, I’ve learned what a rhododendron bush actually looks like. I saw them when I visited Seattle in May 2010 before moving here, and fell in love with the “exotic-looking” bush, but I had no idea what it was called. Now I can identify one on sight and anticipate what time of year it will bloom.

I’m also learning seasons. Seasons of growth, pruning, death, re-growth. In our yard in particular. For example, March is rose-bush-pruning season. I cut them down to basically nothing, and I usually fear I have killed the poor bushes for certain. April-May is usually full of nice patches of sunny weather with a good amount of rainy patches, leading to a season of great growth. By May, everything gets greener & bigger. Our blackberry bushes exploded, and those rosebushes are four times bigger than they were two months ago.

As the plants thrive, so do the weeds. Everything with roots in the ground has been taking off lately. As I’ve spent time in our yard (which some day I would like to call a garden), God has been teaching me parallels about my heart. I think this is a beautiful thing he does with his creation: teach us about himself and myself through what he’s made.

What’s the parallel between my heart and a garden, you ask? We both have weeds.

Here’s the deal with weeds. When small and new, they are easy to pull out, and there usually aren’t very many of them. A few tugs and they’re out, root and all. When those weeds aren’t uprooted, they grow. When I attempt to uproot the weeds after ignoring them for months, I need some serious equipment and effort & time to get them out. It’s hard work. Roots are deep and widespread, and the weeds have multiplied.

And so it is with my heart. Weeds are like sin. I am a redeemed, blood-bought daughter of Christ, who, while waiting for the appearing of my Savior, still struggles with sin on a daily basis. Because of what Christ has done for me, and because of the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit living in me, I am able to live a holy life filled with good works, as is fitting for God’s family. However, I am in process of putting my sin to death, and will be until Jesus’ return. For the sake of this analogy, let’s call this “putting sin to death” process “weeding”.

Colossians 3 tells Christians to “put to death what is earthly in you”, and to “put on” compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, and above all, love. Ephesians 4 tells Christians to put off the old self and put on the new self. I could keep going, as the New Testament is FULL of exhortation & reminder for Christians on how they are to act now that they are made new in Christ.

It is clear in Scripture what the standard of behavior is for me. Perfection. Complete, utter perfection in my behavior and my heart. Thanks be to Jesus, he won utter and complete perfection for me by his life, death and resurrection over 2000 years ago. Since I now have a perfect record that can never be tarnished, I am free to pursue perfection without condemnation when I fail in this current life while I wait for Jesus’ return.

Pursuing perfection means attacking sin when I see it in my heart and behavior. It doesn’t mean obsessively looking for it, spending the majority of my energy on sin-hunting and killing. Jesus Christ won freedom for me, and I firmly believe part of it is freedom from focusing too much on my sin. It means when the Holy Spirit highlights sin in my life, I confess and repent. Quickly. I do not ignore his promptings. I do not quench his voice by refusing to listen & holding onto the sin. I thank him for being kind to show it to me, for making a way through the cross to be free from sin, for the precious truth that I am not defined by what I do but by what Jesus has done, and I turn from my sin.

Just a note on his promptings. I’ve learned that as I listen to Jesus and seek his face, his voice becomes easy to hear. I learn it, and I know it. It’s gentle, and consistent with Scripture. When I hear his voice and refuse to go where he leads or do what he tells me to do, I am automatically listening to someone else. Myself, or the world, or the enemy. When I do this, it becomes harder to hear his voice. I experience a lot of confusion and no clear direction. God, as a loving Father, begins to yell at his daughter who is straying into danger, just as I yell at my daughter who is disobeying her mother and walking into the road.  I experience consequences from not listening to my Father, who knows best. It’s painful. It’s hard. Don’t ignore the quiet promptings just because they’re quiet. That’s the voice of your Father beside you. Listen to him. Go where he says to go. Do what he says to do. If it’s uncomfortable, do it. It may be uncomfortable because your flesh is complaining. You’re killing your flesh as you turn from your sin and obey Jesus. Do it. It’s life for you.

There are weeds I have let grow for the last two months in our yard. Today I spent over an hour digging & yanking, and I cleared about 1/20 of what needs to be cleared. There’s some serious work to do! If you have serious work to do in your heart, and you’re a child of God, there’s good news for you. Your heart is actually not your own anymore. Jesus has your heart. He is your Gardener. You belong to him. He is with you. He will help you. He has promised to do so, and he cannot break a promise. If you are serious about following Jesus and putting your sin to death, I highly recommend regularly praying David’s prayer in Psalm 139:23-24, and expecting Him to answer. “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”

 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³ Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”

John 15:1-4

No, I’m not writing about a fashion trend, or home decor. I was reading Numbers 15, and the Holy Spirit highlighted verses 37-41 for me. God is speaking to Moses and giving the Israelites some beautiful instruction on how to remember his laws. This comes just after the spies give a fearful report of the Promised Land, and the people choose to fear what the spies reported rather than fearing the LORD. God is justly angry, says he will wipe them out and start anew through Moses. Moses intercedes for them, and God listens and relents. Instead of killing them, he tells them they will wander for 40 years in the wilderness before they enter the promised land, and that none who saw his miracles since Egypt would make it there, except for Caleb & Joshua. Such a heart-breaking story. Then the LORD begins to give laws about sacrifices & unintentional sins for the generation who will enter the land. This one is so beautiful:

Vs. 37-41: The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after. So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the LORD your God.”

What jumped out to me was verse 39: “And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.”

He is such a loving God. I see that as such loving instruction. I’ve never noticed this part of Numbers before, and I love how the Holy Spirit highlights something for me no matter how many times I’ve read it. He knows his people are sheep. He knows they’re stupid. He knows they whore after their own desires instead of him. He knows they’ll continue in their whoring. He knows that our own heart and eyes do not lead us in His ways. He knows we can’t remember his commandments perfectly, let alone do them perfectly. He lays down the impossible command in verse 40, “So shall you remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God.”

I can’t do that. I can’t remember and do all his commandments. I can’t be holy. But he tells me to. He told the Israelites to, and I’m pretty sure they struggled with sin just as much as we do. So now what?

Well, at that point in history, Jesus hadn’t come yet. He hadn’t fulfilled the law perfectly for them or us. But this step is crucial: we need to understand God’s law and understand the perfection to which he is calling us. If not, we’ll think we’re good enough in our own eyes. But we don’t determine what’s right or wrong: God does. We don’t decide if we’ve obeyed or not: God does. It is CRUCIAL that we come face to face with the impossible perfection God asks of us, the Law that is written & defined solely by Him. We need to understand that we don’t measure up, and that we never could. We need to know the hopelessness of our sin.

If you know Jesus, you know the story doesn’t end there. Years and years later, Jesus comes, God become man, as a baby, lives perfectly, fulfills that Law perfectly, and dies as the worst of sinners in our place. He became our sin and gave us his righteousness. Did you catch that? 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake he made him to BE sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus became our sin. Jesus became the sin of the world. That means God the Father saw God the Son, Jesus, as if he had committed the sins of the world. He became in God’s eyes the worst pedophile, the worst murderer, the most unfaithful, the most hateful, the most revengeful, the worst abusive father, the worst wandering husband. He became the one who hated God and wanted to do things his own way. He became one who wanted to be righteous on his own. He became one who wanted to please people more than he wanted to please God. He became the worst idolater. He did this so that everyone, no matter what you have done, would have no more barriers between them and God. He did this so everyone could experience saving grace in himself, Jesus Christ. He did this because we had no way of saving ourselves. He did this, and not everyone will receive it. But to those who receive it, who know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, it is now as if you have never sinned in God’s eyes. You have Jesus’ perfection, because he took your filth and gave you his perfection. That is the good news of the gospel!

The good news doesn’t stop there. We’re saved by Jesus, and sanctified by him, and called to good works which were prepared beforehand, that we may walk in them (Ephesians 2). We’re adopted into his family, and yet still struggle with sin. He knows that, and this process of sanctification is making us more into Christ’s image. We’re called to imitate Jesus. In no way are we to become lazy and familiar with our sin, because we have died to our sin (Romans 8). Our old self is dead, and our new self is in Christ, and we’re called to put our sin to death. We’re part of a new family now! We WANT to put our sin to death! We don’t want the flesh, and as a Christian, we war with it! This process will never stop, I believe, until Jesus comes back. So get your boots on, and get comfortable with warring against your flesh!

So back to this idea of tassels. The LORD knows how faithless the Israelites will be. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’d do it differently if you were there. Ecclesiastes says there is nothing new under the sun, and I believe we struggle with the same sin that the Israelites do. We fail to love Jesus as we’re called to love him, and we fail to love our neighbor as we’re called to love them. We, too, crave our Egypt, our sins, our comfort, you name it. How absolutely loving and long-suffering of the LORD to give the Israelites guidance! He tells them they are inclined to whore after what their heart desires and what their eyes see. So he gives them a visual reminder on their clothes, something they will see numerous times a day (let’s say they see it an average of 20x a day). So 20 times a day, God gives them a reminder, which to me implies that they need reminding. They’re going to forget to keep God’s commandments 20x a day, or possibly more. They, too, are leaky vessels, who forget God. He knows we are dust, and he makes a way. He makes a way with tassels, and he makes a way with Jesus.

Modern-day tassels. For us, what are they? We’re living not pre-Jesus, as the Israelites were in Numbers 15, but post-Jesus, after his death and resurrection, after the coming of the Holy Spirit of God into his children who love him and trust in Jesus for their righteousness and salvation. Hallelujah! WE, God’s adopted children, are now the temple of the Holy Spirit! Now his law is no longer simply read to us, but written on our hearts! The perfect sacrifice has been made – once for all! No more need of blood shed to pay for sins! If you are a blood-bought child of God the Father, the law has been fulfilled for you. Rejoice and be glad! Remember any works you now do, you do from the power of the Holy Spirit in you, out of gratefulness to your risen Savior. The commandments Jesus fulfilled for us are indeed still our commandments, but instead of obeying them to become righteous, now we obey them because Jesus has made us righteous. We obey because we’ve been forgiven. We obey because we’ve been cleansed. We obey because it is the way of our Father, who loves us and who we love. There is wisdom for us in the tassel reminder, however. Our eyes and heart still incline us to evil. We still see and yearn for our idols. God, is there anything I can put around myself to remind me to keep His commandments and remember how Jesus kept the law perfectly for me when I fail?

Friends, fellow mothers of young children, business women. Did you know there is a battle going on right now, and if you name yourself a follower of Christ, you are in the midst of it?

Did you know that one of the enemy’s tactics to keep you from growing in Christ and reaching the point of dangerously living each day by the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, who raised Jesus from the dead, is to bring your focus on yourself? Subtly, with great reason and some truth mixed in, he seeks to focus your gaze on you. I know from experience.

In my current calling of life, this call to focus on myself goes as follows. Perhaps you can relate. I’m extremely busy all day long. Cleaning, training, straightening out tangles, feeding, soothing, helping, playing. Throughout the day, quietly, in the background, there’s a voice telling me, “Wow. This is such a challenging day. You really are going above and beyond what others in your situation are doing. Just wait until you get a free moment. That movie on Netflix you’ve been planning on seeing is waiting for you, and when you finally get to sit down and watch it…..well, that’s where you’ll finally get some rest.”

Sadly, I have listened to that voice many a time. The kids are finally in bed, and I have bought into the lie mixed with truth, and have become convinced that I need some quiet time. I need to be poured into now. I’ve spent the whole day pouring into others. This movie is just what I need. Everyone needs their down time. This is mine. It’s a harmless film. I just get to check out for awhile. Nothing wrong with that. I’m human, after all, and everyone reaches their breaking point sometime. This down time, watching a movie, is where I will get my rest.

Yes, it’s true that I’m human. It’s true I need to be poured into. It’s true that today has been quite the day. It’s true that a movie can be harmless and entertaining and good. But alas, I have swerved into a self-focused victim mindset, where I am the poor tired mother who needs a break, and I have determined where my rest will come from without running first to my Helper and Sustainer, my Counselor, my Friend, my Lord and my God who loves me so deeply and has a five-course refreshing and replenishing meal waiting for me in Himself and His words instead of the popcorn and Skittles I chose for myself.

Then, turning to movies or fill-in-the-blank becomes normal. It’s every night, or most every spare moment you have. It’s where you seek your rest. You begin putting in worldly junk food when your soul and spirit are craving true sustenance. You begin setting your mind on things of this earth. You begin growing dull to the voice of your Lord, because you don’t stop to listen to him. Your priorities start slowly shifting…almost too quietly and subtly for you to notice. Your appetite for rest, by the way, is never really satiated by that one movie. In fact, often you feel more tired or drawn out after watching, or feel as if you need to watch just one more episode of that show before you go to bed.

And there is your enemy, grinning in glee, because he has succeeded in drawing your eyes down from your glorious and awesome Savior, and your main concern has become filling yourself. He has you completely distracted, numbed out to a life lived by the Spirit for God’s purpose, and you are not a threat to him anymore.

Friends, there is so much more for you! There is a better existence for you! One that is more exciting, more fulfilling, more unpredictable and heart-breaking and joyous. One with eternal rewards. One that seeks to bring glory to the only One who is deserving of it. Do not worry about being fed. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He takes most excellent care of his sheep. Do not worry about the load. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light. Do not worry about going at it alone. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not worry about missing out. This life is but a breath, and living for the coming life everlasting begins now. We cannot begin to imagine the glories that are awaiting us who are eager for Jesus’ return and living in anticipation of him. Have I said it clearly enough yet? It is so much BETTER to be about God’s work, God’s mission, God’s purposes than to be about our own!

A word to my fellow mothers of young ones: I have been in the above place for at least 3 years. God has faithfully and consistently been calling me out of the numbed-out existence to live by his purposes and priorities. Praise God for his faithfulness to me, and for bringing me out of it. I will still watch the occasional movie or show, but it is no longer what I look forward to when I’m tired. It is no longer my rest. It’s so beautiful, where he has brought me! I actually don’t want to watch those movies or shows anymore! When I’m bone-weary, I would rather open my Bible, or listen to someone preaching through a portion of the Bible (or nap. Naps are good. Naps are glorious, God-given gifts!). God’s words are true food. He gives living water that satisfies. His presence is where I find the greatest comfort. I’ve lost my taste for popcorn and Skittles, and have grown an appetite for richer foods. He has changed my heart. He gave me eyes to see what I was truly doing, and brought me repentance from my self-focused existence. It is still a current battle, but now it is one I am aware of and fighting by the power of the Holy Spirit.

If you are in a place where your diet has been junk food, and you are aware of it and sick of it, but do not know how to stop, if you are a blood-bought child of God through Jesus Christ, I have good news for you. You serve a God who is more powerful than our enemy, and more powerful than your flesh. He lives in you. You are a temple of his Holy Spirit. He who gave life to Jesus Christ will also give life to you. You can fall on your knees before him and ask for his help. Ask for him to give you repentance. Ask to be broken over what breaks his heart. Ask for his priorities. Ask for faith to believe that what he offers is truly better and more satisfying than where you’ve been going for life, meaning and rest. Ask and believe. Turn back to him in faith that he is who he says he is. Eat and drink – he is altogether satisfying and good! Then watch and see what he begins doing through your life.

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Jesus in John 15:5