by Elizabeth | Sep 6, 2011 | Learning Story
Luke 1:5-25 Lk1.16“>http://biblia.com/books/niv/Lk1.16
I’ve been preparing for the upcoming retreat on the gospel call to women, and I came across a story I thought you would enjoy. A priest named Zechariah, a man whose lifework is to serve in the temple, gets his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go inside the temple. Something astonishing and yet really not surprising at all happens when he enters – an angel shows up. Zechariah is terrified – something this spiritual isn’t really supposed to happen.
The angel’s words unnerve him even more – “Don’t fear, Zechariah. Your prayer has been heard. Elizabeth, your wife, will bear a son by you.” It turns out Zechariah’s wife, Elizabeth, is barren, and they have been praying for a baby for years. The angel goes on to describe the child in detail, giving his name, his lifestyle (no wine, beer), his heart (filled with the Holy Spirit), and his mission (call the Israelites to turn back to God).
And Zechariah’s response? He asks, in utter disbelief, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man, and my wife is well along in years?”
I love this story, because I could see myself in Zechariah’s skepticism. I ask for things I don’t really believe are possible. And then when they happen, I don’t even notice, or wonder how they happened. Furthermore, God has already described in detail the wonders of what He plans to do, and I need to live in that story as if it were already real — because it is. (Revelation 21-22).
How about you? Has an “unexpected angel,” a messenger of God’s grace, ever surprised you?
Have you ever had someone tell you your “dream would come true” and still doubted it? What realities about what God has done or will do are hard for you to get your mind around?
by Elizabeth | Sep 5, 2011 | Learning Story
God making our marriage beautiful
4 One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.
5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness.
7 They shall pour forth the fame of your rabundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
Psalm 145
Yesterday, I posted an album on Facebook. I did it for my husband. One of the themes over 29 years of marriage (yes, we were young. No, children, we don’t recommend dating for a few months and getting engaged, married only a year after you met:),)…
As I was saying…the theme, publicly declaring celebration – my husband loves to do this; I feel awkward, not wanting anyone to think we’re bragging or to make anyone feel bad. (Extrovert, introvert…half full, half empty…yes, 29 years of merging two very different fleshes.)
So, as an act of humble repentance, I shared these photos, declaring my gratitude to him, and even more, to the Lord our God, for the marvels of our marriage.
Since we’re at that point that some people ask us, “How have you done it?” and I never know the answer, except God has done it, I realized that there have been two key components to growth in our marriage:
- Celebrating the glorious moments. There are pictures in our album that represent pure, sweet shalom – hikes in the woods – both before children and after; long days spent windsurfing and the conversations of falling and flying afterwards; cold, windy spring vacations when my husband dug a hole on the beach so I could take a little sun home…
- Celebrating the awful moments. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean we’ve pretended disastrous moments were lovely. There are words we both wish we could have back – but we can’t. The days when one or the other of us would have easily traded the other in for an imagined life of ease on the proverbial, greener side of the fence. There are some memories so ugly they will never look pretty, but they may look hopeful – in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even in the worst moments of our marriage, we marvel, knowing that if it weren’t for God’s steadfast love working in and through us, something beautiful, something holy, something created to bring God glory, would have been destroyed.
Sorry folks. I removed the photos from Facebook. I could only stand the glory for so long. I’m going to put them in an album, along with some of the stories, and give them to my husband (one of the things we agree on is that we can celebrate these important occasions on any day that suits us and gifts can be ongoingJ).
I’ll leave you with the story of the one photo I left, captured in New Orleans, the year I was pregnant with our fourth child. I love it – we look young, fresh, happy, and we were. The hidden story, the struggle part of it, that you don’t know, is that I have always struggled to show this kind of affection – hugs, pats, putting my arms around my husband. So while you might see, “happy beautiful couple in perfect harmony,” I see, “God doing something impossible and creating beauty out of pain.” God is making all things new, and we have the marriage to prove it.
by Elizabeth | Sep 1, 2011 | Learning Story
It’s been a week full of more work than I can do in a day, and at the end I must face uncrossed items on my to-do list. Earlier in the week, I noticed the low buzz of anxiety tensing my body and turning my stomach ever-so-slightly. I heard the Holy Spirit say, “You’re much better at working than playing aren’t you?” An invitation, not chastisement.
Realizing I needed to work harder at rest :), I pulled out a book that challenges me to live the radical reversal of Sabbath every day, Dan Allender’s Sabbath. I love this section on the super-abundance of Re-creation, beginning with a rarely-read (for me) verse from Joel 3:18:
“In that day the mountains will drip with sweet wine,
and the hills will flow with milk.
Water will fill the streambeds of Judah,
and a fountain will bust forth from the Lord’s Temple,
watering the arid valley of acacias.”
Dan tells a story told by Belden Lane:
A group of French people brought “a handful of Bedouin leaders to Paris to see the glory of their culture. They saw the Eiffel Tower and other architectural delights with polite boredom. But when taken to see a waterfall in the countryside, they stood in utter amazement. They waited for the surging flow to stop. ‘They refused to leave, adamantly declaring to their French guide that honor required waiting…waiting for the end. Knowing the water could not last much longer, they awaited the moment ‘when God would grow weary of his madness,’ when this wild extravagance would suddenly and finally exhaust itself.” (Dan quoting Belden Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality.”
Nothing they had seen in their world paralleled a gushing flow of water that had run endlessly for thousands of years. We are the Bedouins who have learned to live in the desert of God’s absence for thousands of years, who cannot imagine the inexhaustible glory that has already been given us in Jesus, that pours through the cross and will pour forth with utter glory when he gloriously returns. The Sabbath gives us the opportunity to stand before the endless outpouring of superabundance and fill up our thimble of faith with a drop of bounty ahead.” Dan Allender, Sabbath
by Elizabeth | Aug 31, 2011 | Learning Story
“Hello, my name is Elizabeth Turnage, and I’m a performance addict. Performance-based living draws me, and acceptance not based on what I do baffles me.”
Thankfully, for the most part, that was then, this is now. I will probably always struggle to some degree to simply rest in the reality of salvation — that the finished work of Christ is ENOUGH, but at least I know it in my mind and heart, and many days or moments, I live in this hopeful reality. Why not take a moment and rest, whether reading the rest of these words or just closing the computer, closing your eyes, and breathing in the good news of the gospel.
Sing, O Daughter of Zion;
shout aloud, O Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,
O Daughter of Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away your punishment,
he has turned back your enemy.
The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you;
never again will you fear any harm.
On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
“Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands hang limp.
The Lord your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:14-17
“…it is the gospel that continues to remind us that our day-to-day acceptance with the Father is not based on what we do for God but upon what Christ did for us in his sinless life and sin- bearing death. I began to see that we stand before God today as righteous as we ever will be, even in heaven, because he has clothed us with the righteousness of his Son.
Therefore, I don’t have to perform to be accepted by God. Now I am free to obey him and serve him because I am already accepted in Christ (see Rom. 8:1). My driving motivation
now is not guilt but gratitude.”
Jerry Bridges, “Gospel-Driven Sanctification” (Bridges 2003)
by Elizabeth | Aug 30, 2011 | Learning Story
“And whenever the harmful spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand. So Saul was refreshed and was well, and the harmful spirit departed from him.” 1 Samuel 16:23
I had never heard this song before the praise band totally rocked it in Sunday night’s concert, and I wish I could play you a video of that. But whatever you’re doing right now, I challenge you to stop for 5 minutes and let your soul be refreshed and your mind renewed by this soul-fest from NewWorldSon.
by Elizabeth | Aug 22, 2011 | Learning Story
A good question to ask your kids: Who ARE you??:)
Facebook was full of it. Headline News featured it. It must be a hot topic, so why not weigh in? The focus seems to be on parents struggling with kids going back to school. I wrote this a few years ago, and as I reread it, I found that I still agree with it and want to begin this new school year as a parent with the gospel way as my center:
Christian ethics is not a matter of ‘discovering who you truly are’ and then being true to that. It is a matter, as Jesus and Paul insist, of dying to self and coming alive to God, of taking up the cross, of inaugurated eschatology, of becoming in oneself not ‘what one really is’ already but ‘what one is in Christ’, a new creation, a small, walking, breathing anticipation of the promised time when the earth shall be filled with God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.”
N.T. Wright, The Bible and Tomorrow
Wright points out that our culture often tells us to ‘look inside’ to find that ‘inner creativity’ to make an impact in the world. Thank God, a M.O.M.’s core story tells me something different – it’s not from within me but from without that the power for transformation comes and has come. I don’t have to look for the perfect parenting program or school them in the latest educational approach or use the correct disciplinary method to grow children God’s way. It is not entirely up to me to do it right. I can admit that I’m weak, broken, mean and confused. I can do all of this because of the gospel story which tells me that resurrection has changed me and will change me. On dark days, the power for hope comes from remembering resurrection – Christ was raised from the dead, and in that moment, he made me a new creation. And not only that, but it is through Christ’s being raised to life that my kids will be raised – TO LIFE!
