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Wise Woman Wednesday Don’t Complicate It

/ Gina Haney / 3 Comments

I’m humbled, honored and right down giddy that scasefamily.com from Into the Foolishness of God agreed to guest post on A Relentless Surrender for the first Wise Woman Wednesday. While I haven’t been following her long; it’s clear she oozes gospel. It’s a great honor that she agreed to share her gift with us. I hope she ministers to your heart as she has mine.

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Don’t Complicate It

“There’s nothing hard about the Word of God. It’s so simple, you have to have somebody help you misunderstand it.” Andrew Wommack

I love this quote so much. We really do make it hard sometimes don’t we? The Bible tells us that the Word is near to us (Romans 10:8) and that it gives understanding to the simple (Psalm 119:130). God’s truth was never meant to be obscure, confusing or difficult. Of course we grow into it in different ways over time and don’t always understand everything. But His words to us are meant to be pressed into, tested, tried and proven. To those who don’t believe and who haven’t surrendered their life to Christ, they are foolishness. For believers, the Word is our weapon, our compass and our comfort.

But a true experience of the Word comes from a true study of the Word. So many Christians say they believe the Bible to be true, but never spend any real time in it. We are open and love to hear what others have to say about it. Walk into the Christian bookstore or visit one of the popular blogs of our day and prepare to be overwhelmed. Why is it easier to read someone else’s thoughts about God than go to God’s Word? We like to be entertained. We like bullet point lists. We like new and fresh ideas. All of those have their place, but they cannot take the place of the one true Word. If it isn’t pointing you back to Biblical truth and what God says, you’re just going in circles.

There was a time in history when people were told they couldn’t understand the Bible and they needed it interpreted for them. Martin Luther came along and we all know how that turned out, thankfully. But today we struggle with some of the same problems. We have the Word available to us in every form and language. We just live in a world that tells us it’s not enough. Surely there must be some new revelation or new ideas we can read about. Everything that was once non-negociable has become muddy and unclear. New versions of the truth are thought up and promoted to keep things ‘relevant’.

But God’s word doesn’t need revamping. The last thing we should be doing is dumbing-down God’s word to suit anyone. It never became irrelevant in the first place. Our enemy loves to make us question what God said and twist it around to suit his purposes. He loves to deceive us into creating our own version of truth. And he has succeeded in some ways, pulling us away from the Bible and convincing us it isn’t all that powerful. We have completely over-complicated the art of simply being alone with God.

The popular, edgy authors and bloggers tell us it’s cool to doubt and question. Uncertainty is the new humility. Whatever works best for you is best. Embrace your doubts. God doesn’t mind our questions and doubts, but He certainly doesn’t want us to bask in them and remain there! That’s why we have His Word! The greatest way to promote victorious living is to promote the Truth. The truth sets us free. When we look less and less to God’s word and more to man’s wisdom, that Biblical truth is obscured into a kind of universal mush. And that’s exactly why we don’t see the power that we should in our lives.

We already have the truth and we already know it:

“But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.” I John 2:20

So I would just say this – for every fancy book, blog or sermon – may we also give ourselves time to soak in the Word. Not what our favorite person says about it, but the actual, living Word of God. It isn’t boring, and it really isn’t complicated. It isn’t obsolete either. No one can say it better than God Himself.

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3:33

/ Gina Haney / Leave a comment

On the way home from a ministry conference in Tulsa, I listened to fidgety kids and Josh telling me about one of his sessions. He said that the minister who was teaching told of how he and his expecting wife spent a week working youth camp. In the middle of the night, 3:33 to be exact, his wife woke him up and told him she was losing the baby. On the way to the hospital the car was silent and they believed that they were about to experience the ugliest of here.

Back at camp they gathered to pray. They didn’t say, “we will pray for them in the morning.” or “everyone remember them in prayer.” They got out of bed; blurry-eyed and held hands as they burst into the presence of God on behalf of ther friends. The speakers question to his pupils was, “who here is at 3:33?”

And my question to you is: who do you know at 3:33? You? Your mom? Your grandpa? A friend? A stranger you found on social media?

I’ve had to do a lot of growing over the last few years. During my efforts to “Moses out” He met me at every handicap I informed Him I have, and some I didn’t realize I had. He began etching me into a better person for His calling.

One of those handicaps was/is prayer. I have to set alarms or I’m likely to make it through the day without talking personally, one on one with God.

“I’ll pray for you.” Was a line I was accustomed to saying. As you can imagine; God wasn’t ok with that. I threw Him all my excuses. “You know I can’t just kneel here in the middle of the mall and pray right?” “I can’t bow and drive.” “I’m shy.” “It’s uncomfortable.” “What if I make them uncomfortable?”

I learned that during prayer—actually lets make that life; the posture of your heart is a lot more important than the posture of your body.

I learned God don’t care much about our comfort either… Does He Paul?

Seems like the more my prayer life improves the more people God entrusts for me to pray for.

Today skimming Instagram; my heart ached as I read a short comment left on another bloggers post. A request for prayer. Our sister who we’ve never met was asking for prayer for her 10-year-old daughter who received a brain tumor diagnosis.

Just a few hours before that I was talking to a mentor whose sister has advanced pancreatic cancer.

Maybe life’s looking good for you right now, but you’d have to be blind not to see a 3:33 anywhere.

It’s not a resolution it’s a requisition. This isn’t something we purpose to do then get to let our ambitions fade. There’s ugency here. You may fail but you must get. back. up.

I’m noticing two different kinds of friends in the Bible.

Jesus told the man with palsy, whose friends literally tore the roof off the place to get him to Christ, because their faith was through the roof; that because of his friends’ faith, “take up your mat and walk.”

Oh Job’s friends? Sure, they felt sorry for him. They tore their cloths and sat silently for seven days with him. They were even more than happy to help him get to the bottom of the situation by suggesting all the ways he must have blew it, but in the end; Job was the one praying for them. Seems kinda backward doesn’t it.

My timers set for 3:33. My prayer list can feel overwhelmingly long, and that shows me just how big God really is.

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You’ve Just Got to Look

/ Gina Haney / Leave a comment

I heard her say she can’t even look at them because it makes her uncomfortable. I nod, because I get it. “Don’t look and it won’t hurt.” They’ve been feeding us that line since we were knee high in line for vaccinations.

All this came just a few days after I asked Josh why it all hurt so much. How can I be in ministry if I’m the one falling apart?  And how do you stop dying right along with them? How do you stop letting their cancer eat you up too? Why is it so hard to move on after a friend moves past you? I know I can’t be the only one asking these questions. Maybe you aren’t right now but you have or will.

I was reading an old post by Ann Voskamp. She said, “Turns out—those who bear the weight of suffering will bear the weight of glory.”

Who dreams their life will fall apart in Rib Crib? I don’t know what boulder was crushing her. I have no idea what the man sitting across from her saying he didn’t mean to hurt her had done, but you can bet there is ALWAYS a consequence for sin and it’s usually others that take the brunt of that blow.

I tried not to look. Honest I did. I stared down at my magazine. No matter where my eyes were, my mind and heart were on her. “Don’t look and it won’t hurt.” That wasn’t working for anyone that day.

Eve, Did all this flash through your mind as you were chewing on death? The consequences we’d bleed from?

I have no idea what was suffocating that poor woman gasping for air between quivers muffled by her tissue. I am sure of the answer though. He makes the blind to see. And yes, we were all blind. That was the cost of that produce Eve. Blindness. The answer is the only one who ever gave sight.

Seeing hurts. It’s Uncomfortable. It’s human nature to turn away from the gruesome. We cringe at the hard; the ugly. We pull the cover over our heads at the scary. You feel plumb helpless when you can’t lift the crushing boulders of cancer, death, broken hearts… Sure we’ve all tried only to land the weight of it all square on our own shoulders.

Josh speaks it from the pulpit. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this shall all men know you are my disciples, if you have love one to another.” John 13:34-35 The epiphany hits. When you are one of His they will know you by the way you love and you can’t stop breaking for the whole wide world. Eyesight was just the bonus gift to the real gift of salvation. If you have Jesus you just can’t help but see. You’ve just got to look! It is the only way we can know how to meet their needs; the only way to know how to love them well. It’s the way we can stoop down beside them to help carry the weight of it to Jesus.

Yeah Ann, it finally clicked. “It turns out that the ones who can bear the weight of suffering will bear the weight of glory.”

 

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