Category: mental or physical illness

Let Him Take All [Love]

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Matt. 22:37-39

Love is the ultimate response God is looking for from us.  It is the currency of Heaven.  The Kingdom’s economy is ‘the gold standard’ of love.  It’s the way business gets done in eternity.  Love! Without love ruling our lives now, we will arrive there as paupers and beggars. We will disobey Jesus as well.

God is our primary target to love.  And the quality of it can be appreciated from its ‘source point’.  Heart.  Soul.  Mind.  These are the starting places for our affection.  The caliber of our worship is summed up by the word, “all.”  That word has a totality, and a significance to it.  It further intensifies love to the only acceptable place. Love indeed is the perfect “make-up.” We’re never more beautiful then when we love God or another person.

As disciples who are indeed flawed and broken, we can still find a place where we can minister from.  I can’t do a lot anymore, but I can love.  Loving God is something I can do, even with my issues. I can always love. I can always give my all, my heart to someone else. I can always love!

And actually, this disability strips my discipleship to a simpler and basic level.  At the “lowest common denominator”  my faith is still valid and vital.  I love Jesus, even when I can’t be a senior pastor  or teach at my Bible School anymore. I accept this. I can even rejoice in this new “inadequacy.”

Loving Him and following Him can be done, even with a limp.

Fifteen years ago I sat waiting for my bus, at King’s Cross in London, England.  I was all alone, and I felt it. There was also a strong sense of brokenness that encircled me, I was painfully aware of my disability.  I was coming a bit unglued at the enormity of my mental illness. I sat staring at the floor just in front of me.  I could do nothing else. All I could do is stare. Stare some more.

But  suddenly, in my field of vision, just in front of me, hopped a bird with a crippled foot.  Something had damaged him.  The thing that profoundly spoke to me was that bird was not at all devastated, not at all.  And the Lord spoke to me about that bird, and His comfort pumped right through to my veins.  I felt I was right where I was supposed to be.  I had become the ‘broken sparrow,’ and amazingly I could still follow. Maybe, even better now, because of my ‘limp’.

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Release the Perfume!

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“And a woman in the town who was a sinner found out that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house. She brought an alabaster jar of perfume.”

Luke 7:37, ESV

“How delightful your caresses are, my sister, my bride. Your caresses are much better than wine, and the fragrance of your perfume than any balsam.”

Song of Solomon 4:10

We should know that our simple and sincere words bless Jesus.   

We are truly significant in that way.  Sometimes we have no idea the role we can play in His kingdom. What we’re doing when we offer up our true worship really does matter. The Kingdom comes when we really worship Him. Our sincere praise ushers in God’s rule in our hearts.

We touch Jesus, somehow, and in some way, we’ve blessed Him. 

I believe that our sincere words encourage Him. He gladly receives this heartfelt offering of worship.  He often responds and blesses those who sing their genuine praise to Him.  Sometimes it’s hard to grasp that our worship really does matter to Jesus.

I have learned much from Him when I finally lay at His feet.  I really want to pour out every bit of perfumed nard,  and I sincerely desired to hold nothing back; to pour out the entire bottle.

We must make sure our worship stays extravagantly simple and centered on Jesus.

“I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends”

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

 Albert Schweitzer

I believe that true friendship has an incredible value.  Throughout the Bible we read of friends for good.  I’m personally grateful for good friends, and I need to cherish and esteem them more than I do.  A true friend is one who sticks with you no matter what the circumstances–his or her love is not dependent on things going well. (Which I suppose is the point, for they rarely go well.)

Many of us are profoundly handicapped– mentally ill or impaired physically. And quite often we are hungry for help. Case in point– the page that gets the most views on this site is “24/7 Crisis Lines.” We get 90-100 views every single day. This tells me that there is great need. Could it be, that maybe the Holy Spirit provides for us in this way?

“As iron sharpens iron,
    so people can improve each other.” 

Proverbs 27:17, NCV

“A friend loves you all the time,
    and a brother helps in time of trouble.”

Proverbs 17:17

“It is only the great hearted who can be true friends. The mean and cowardly, can never know what true friendship means.” 

Charles Kingsley

 

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Choosing to Walk With the Broken

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It seems the world is divided into two groups.

  1. Those all together, happy, healthy, and reasonably sane.
  2. Those with incredibly significant hang-ups.

We gravitate toward success. Even in a spiritual sense, we do so. No one wants to be associated with a ‘washed-up’ loser.  We expect success (at least in its fundamental form) to ooze out of every preacher, teacher, or ‘wanna-be’ that intends to lead us to ‘the promised land.’ We expect (or demand) it to be so.

But there are those broken ‘on the wheels of life’ who offer nothing at all.

They are busted and broke. They may once have been noble and keen; they might have stared at life as if it were their own already. They were gifted, but breakable. Alas, and they broke. And they have nothing to give. So many things have disintegrated around them, they are left without a clue, and certainly without hope from a ‘fickle’ Church.

What makes a man or woman ‘spiritual’ or holy?

Is it living up to a special standard or calling? Or maybe they look and sound good at what they do? Perhaps it is none of these. Maybe it really comes down to brokenness and humility? Perhaps we’ve looked at it all wrong.

Perhaps the real yardstick is spiritual poverty?

“They are blessed who realize their spiritual poverty, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.”

Matthew 5:4, NCV

Make no mistake, the ‘good’ seems very good. It is easy to ‘receive’ from some preachers. They do it so seamlessly, and so correctly. We often wonder why we haven’t been so receptive before. But ‘polish’ can never replace ‘broken’ prayer.

I will trust my soul to those ‘busted’ by the meanness of life, rather than those who pretend that things are ‘rosy’ all over. Brokenness is not a given. But it really is ‘the coin of the realm’. It is how the Kingdom does ‘business.’

 “But he said to me, “My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, my power is made perfect in you.” So I am very happy to brag about my weaknesses. Then Christ’s power can live in me.”

2 Corinthians 12:4, NCV

I hate to say this, but if being broken is the desperate need of the moment, then hammer me over and over again. I can’t imagine or even explain a better calling. “Bring it Father God”, (but help me if I stumble.) Oh, and one more thing: typically ‘mercy’ is absent for those who seem to live so ‘perfectly.’ (You just don’t see them with any.)

Look for mercy, and you will probably find someone truly authentic.

Take your candle, run to the darkness, and light your world, and love the unlovely while on your way.

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