Just One Thing

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

Luke 10:38-42

Just one thing is necessary.

In all of creation from beginning to end, to the heights of our atmosphere to the depths of the seas. To all that is scattered by the four winds. The darkest night, the brightest day.

Just one thing is necessary.

In all of your life from beginning to end, from the day your first child is born to the most mundane. To all the nooks and crannies of this earth that life may take you. Your darkest night or your brightest day.

Just one thing is necessary.

In your greatest accomplishments and your most daring feats to your moments of utter failure and your shame of shrinking cowardice.

Just one thing is necessary.

In all that you love, your spouse, your child, your job, your cup of coffee. 

Just one thing is necessary.

From autumn and its changing leaves to winter with tree branches delicately encapsulated in ice. Spring, with blossoms that remind us hey, there is life after all. To summer and a rainstorm that smells like earth and moss and childhood.

Just one thing is necessary.

Friend, whatever you love, whatever loves you, wherever you go or don't go, whatever you do or don't do. It's all well and good. We are hearers and we are doers of His Word.

But just one thing is necessary. Indeed, only one thing is needful.

You may find yourself praying, Lord! I need something! Anything! I need peace, I need hope, I need love! 

I need a husband! I need more time! I need a new job! I need rest!

Only one thing is necessary, beloved.

Him.

The Alpha, The Omega. Beginning and End. Bright Morning Star. Master. Savior. Love. Refuge. Fortress. Lover of your soul. Prince of Peace. 

One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: 

that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, 

to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple. 

Psalm 27:4

Is He the only thing that is necessary to you? If not, ask Him to be. Shake off all that holds you from giving yourself fully to Christ.

"As God is exalted to the right place in our lives, a thousand problems are solved all at once." A.W. Tozer.

Instead of worry, sit at His feet. Put your focus on Him and all else will be supplied to you. 

I want love and joy and peace and prosperity. I want rights and ambitions and good things.

But I only need one thing. Jesus.

Just one thing. The Holiest, Best, and the Most Perfect Gift that heaven has to offer.

Only He is necessary.

Life and Peace? Yes, please.

Quick! It's a quiz. Give me two words to describe the activity in your brain.

Organized? Stressed? Full (or empty...)? Worried? Distracted?

Fill in your answers. My mind is ____________ and ____________. (For those of you who have tired or confused minds, please do not write directly on your screen.)

My own brain is busy and thinks a lot more highly of itself than it should.

But God is so good and faithful to forgive and in His mercy still deigns to communicate with me. He shared the following verse with me four times within 36 hours. I'm thinking in my busy brain that He wants me to stop and listen.

Will you listen with me?

The mind set on the Spirit

is life and peace.

Romans 8:6

(Did any of us fill in our blanks with these descriptions?) 

So friends, I tried. I spent a whole hour focusing on life and peace. Life - joy that I have been freed from my death in sin. And peace - that all is well because of my Jesus.

For the first few minutes I was doing great. Man, I am so happy in joy and peace! Yay! Jesus! Who hoo! I'm joyful! I'm so peaceful!

But then, like, real life started happening. Stressful things started happening at work while I was focusing on being peaceful. My children wanted stuff from me like food and clean clothes while I was reading my Bible. My husband dared to not eat the dinner I had joyfully prepared because he was tired. 

GEEZ! Didn't people know we were LIVING IN JOYFUL LIFE AND PEACE?!

Something tells me I'm doing this wrong, Lord. My day is most definitely not full of life and peace. 

And then came the light bulb moment. 

Child, I didn't tell your mind to focus on life and peace. I told your mind to focus on My Spirit. 

See, I'm not in charge of supplying my mind with life and peace. The Spirit is. "The Spirit gives life," says John 6:63.

This isn't about training my brain to think about rainbows and zen and fuzzy bunnies. This is about training my brain to turn in prayer and thought, in both big and small moments, to Him.

We, as believers, do not embrace the power of the Holy Spirit. This awesome and otherworldly gift that has been given to us. This very Spirit, yes even the one that lives in you: 

put Jesus in Mary's womb (Matthew 1:8), cast out demons (Matthew 12:28), came down like a dove and sat with Jesus after His baptism (Mark 1:10), filled a pregnant Elizabeth with joy (Luke 1:41), lit atop the disciples' heads at Pentecost (Acts 2:3).

The Spirit whom Jesus left with you (John 14:25). The same Spirit who enabled Him to fulfill the prophecies concerning Him in Isaiah: 

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free.

Yeah, all those prisoners and oppressed people? That's us.

Friends, this is the greatest gift your Savior could have left you. His very presence, his wisdom, his love, his guidance goes with you.

Because when we set our minds on this Spirit at work within us the adjectives in our fill-in-the-blanks change drastically. 

Busy becomes strong.

Tired becomes diligent.

Stressed becomes confident.

Anger becomes grace.

Death and worry become life and peace.

You cannot put life and peace into your own brain. That's like putting vision into your own eyes. Just like sight, life and peace are gifts from above. 

Claim your gift today, friends. Turn your minds to Him. Turn away from what this world tells you you're supposed to be and turn to what heaven and its angels know is rightfully yours. 

Go now, friend. Set your mind on Him.

Holy Spirit, you are welcome here with me. 

A Man After My Own Heart

I have a painting in my living room, black lettering embossed on a golden background with the words to an old hymn written as a reminder to my family:

Be thou my vision

O Lord of my heart.

It sounds like a psalm sung sweetly to the Lord. A prayer of praise and adoration, a prayer of supplication to the Lord who lives inside us.

King David would have loved this song. I'm sure of it. David's heart belonged to God, David even being called "a man after God's own heart" by God Himself:

After removing Saul, he made David their king. 

God testified concerning him: 'I have found David son of Jesse, 

a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.'

Acts 13:22

I think of the checklist that David must have completed to gain this lofty title. 

Merciful. Humble. Generous. Brave. Faithful. Loyal. Warrior both in battle and in prayer. Spiritual. A student of scripture. Bold in God's Name. Obedient. Kind. 

Wow, David certainly deserved the accolades given him. I could only dream of having this title connected to my name. 

That David sure did live a perfect life. Deserving he most certainly is.

Do you sense the sarcasm? Because there are some things about David that tend to get overlooked. There are some other words we can associate with our hero:

Impulsive. Cheater. Disobedient. Coward. Irresponsible Father. Murderer. Adulterer. Egotistical. Heartbreaker. 

Once David had to leave his new bride Michal. He was running for his life and she risked hers to save him. She loved him so. But he never came back for Michal. For whatever reasons, he left her behind. She was married off to another man. Years later David heard of this and demanded her return as she rightfully belonged to him. Her second husband dutifully brought her back to David, weeping as he lost her. 

That's not cool, David.

And then there was this other time that David impregnated a married woman and had her husband (who was also his best friend) murdered.

Yeah, that's not okay, David.

Oh, and then there was this time when one of David's sons raped his daughter and David did nothing about it. 

Wow, "how the mighty have fallen" is right, David.

A man after God's own heart? Well now I'm super confused. David was obviously an incredibly flawed man. A sinner. 

But yes, still a man after God's own heart.

David made many mistakes and believe me when I say he suffered the consequences of them. He felt the physical ill that true repentance brought with each and every one of these mistakes.

Michal hated him for the rest of her life. The child conceived with Bathsheba died and David walked in crippling humility for the rest of his life. His family fell apart due to his inability to discipline his son.

See, David earned this title not because of filling the boxes on a checklist of good deeds, but because of the state of his heart.  

David got how much he mattered to God. He understood that even through terrible sinful choices that God still loved him. David got that his very existence delighted God. 

David knew he was made for God's joy. And his joyful love for God reflected that. David was a man after God's own heart because he loved God with all of his.

Friend, God doesn't want us to complete a goodness checklist. He just wants us to love Him. While David suffered long term, crippling, and severe consequences for his disobedience he never stopped loving the Lord. His mind and body strayed, but his heart never did.

Want to know what a heart that is after God's looks like? Go peruse 2 Samuel 22. Some familiar snippets:

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

He rescued me because He delighted in me.

As for God, His way is perfect. 

He makes my feet like the feet of the deer; he enables me to stand on the heights.

Perfection doesn't make us a friend of God. Loving Him does. And David understood this better than anyone.

As we strive for a sinless life you and I will falter. We will sin. It's going to happen. But "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness," says 1 John 1:9.

Do you understand how much you matter to God? Do you know that He takes great delight in you and the life you live? God doesn't expect perfection from you, dear one. Obedience? Yes. A life in which you strive to do right and follow His Word? Absolutely.

But personal perfection doesn't make you his. Your acceptance of His love through Jesus Christ does.

And you and I are even more blessed than David. We live in the fullness of the knowledge of Jesus. David knew nothing of Jesus until he entered eternity.

We will never obtain perfection. We will not lead a sinless life. In this we are already exactly like David. But let his deep love for the Lord inspire us to see God differently.

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;

Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art;

Thou my best thought, by day or by night,

Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

God of David, create in us a heart that loves you just as much as he did.

You Make Me Brave

My two-year-old son has absolutely no sense of danger, no fear of risk.

And this makes me nervous.

I've literally lost him more times than I can remember. I lost him on Halloween. Panicked, I ran from booth to booth at the Halloween carnival. Finally a cowboy came up to me carrying my Yoda-clad son.

Brave, I think he is. (That was a Yoda impression.)

But he's not brave. Brave means making a move while knowing the risk. And my precious son knows no risk. Strangers, forests, animals. He does not calculate the danger in his actions.

He's not brave. He's just a terrible decision maker.

Now, Rahab? She was brave. She knew danger and risk and she made her move anyway. If you're not familiar with her story, here it is in a nutshell taken from Joshua 2:

Rahab operated an inn in the wall of the city of Jericho. Jericho was the home of the Canaanite people. These people knew God had promised their city to the Israelites, led by Joshua. The people of the city were "melting" in fear because they had heard of the amazing victories won by the Israelite army. Joshua sent two spies into the city to scout it out. The spies, being good spies, went to the local inn which could also serve as a tavern. (What better place to get information than a bar full of drunk people with loose lips?) Here they are discovered, but before Jericho soldiers arrive Rahab has hidden them on her roof.

An important fact about our heroine, Rahab: she was a prostitute. And we're not talking glamorous Julia Roberts-Pretty Woman prostitute. She practiced her profession in a Godless city where morals and kindness did not exist. It was gritty and dirty and she was in the thick of it. No stories of escargot and hotel suites here.

Once the soldiers arrive at her inn she tells them that the Israelite spies have gone, that they have fled from the city and if you hurry you can catch them! They went thataway!

Rahab returns to the roof and the hidden spies, telling them how to avoid capture. She boldly professes to them faith in their God, knowing that if God sees fit to give Jericho over to them it will happen.

See, Rahab lived in harsh conditions. She was unmarried, a prostitute, and possibly providing for her parents and younger siblings. She had no hope for her future. No man would ever have her and she would never be a mother. She was low on the totem pole of society. She hid these spies knowing if she was found out by Jericho officials she, and most likely, all she loved would be killed.

So why did she risk it?

Beloved, she risked her safety for something better.

In exchange for their safety, the spies promised her family would be spared destruction once the Israelite army attacked. They would pass over her house if she tied a scarlet cord in her window. They would welcome her and her family into the house of Israel.

I want to be brave like Rahab. I want to risk discomfort of the known for a chance at the peace of the unknown.

Her bravery served her well. Not only did the Israelites attack, but they were true to their word and spared Rahab and her family. She left the slums of prostitution. And her bravery was honored by Joshua. She married one of the spies, Salmon. Salmon, who was most likely Hebrew royalty.

Her story does not end there. She becomes the mother of Boaz. And if you know the story of Ruth, you're familiar with his name. If not go and read this short book of the Bible and see the amazing man that is her son. Amazing men come from amazing mothers.

Her story does not end there, either. Boaz becomes the father of Obed. Obed becomes the father of Jesse. And Jesse becomes the father of ....King David, the man after God's own heart.

Oh and beloved, her story doesn't end here, either. If you follow the lineage listed in the first chapter of Matthew you'll read some really lovely, skin-tingling words: "and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab." Who's genealogy is is being listed?

None other than Jesus Christ, Himself.

Rahab is listed in the Heroes of Faith in Hebrews and is counted as "right with God" for her bravery in James 2:25.

Rahab risked her less than perfect present for a better than perfect future.

Am I brave enough to do that, too? Do I have the courage to step out in the faith of God? To allow Him to create a future for me than is only found in my wildest dreams?

Because there will be no Richard Gere coming to change my life. I've got something better. Way better. I have the sovereign God of the Universe who wants to bless my life and my path.

If, through God, a prostitute can become:

the wife of a prince,

the mother of a kind and generous man,

the great great grandmother of a king,

and the ancestor of the Messiah,

then what can He do with me?

Beloved, let's be like Rahab. Let's trust in the God of the Israelites, too.

Let's do something brave for the chance at something better.

Lord Jesus, Descendant of brave Rahab, create in us a heart that is brave like hers.