Our Heritage is in the Lord….
As I look around our home, I see photos of old people staring at me
from our walls. Some don’t like them,
thinking them forbidding or forlorn or mayhap even scary at times.
Here is what I see:
Heritage
Both Ian and I come from the stock of family which loves the Lord and
which has chosen His Word as the foundation of our lives, our family’s lives….
And, as God wakes up my self this morning, first thoughts coming from
my head are a desperate plea for His help to help me mother better, parent
better, lay down HIS word on the hearts of my worldly self, my world children,
my worldly home, so that we, too, will be strong stones on the walk of our
forefather’s heritage.
My great fear?
That while my children know of God, they do not know God.
So easy when they are little and a captive audience to sing, and pray,
and talk all Jesus.
To share His mighty battle stories and have ears turned to listen with
rapt attention.
So easy to set them to “Bible Man” singing and stomping out “Being in
the Lord’s Army”.
Sweet and simple it is to fold their little hands and pray; to clap
hands and shout at the top of their voices, “Jesus loves me”.
I long for a re-do on those days where I held captive their little
growing, Godly hearts all pliant and bending and willing. When their every moment was an immersion into
the love of Christ, the heart of Christ, the will of Christ.
For it is a much less simple thing to cause them to realize God’s great
provision when they grow into their age and into their world.
I write and write and write, pouring out my soul’s longing on pen and
paper, laying down my hopes and dreams for my children to read when I am no longer
here to guide.
But for 2013, what I long most for is to teach and teach and teach God’s
word, God’s will, God’s love to my children. To live it more….daily….now, where they can see and hear and learn
and be changed.
I
claim that verse, “(Isaiah
55:10-11) For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth
not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it
may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: (11) So shall my word be
that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it
shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto
I sent.
I claim His promise that anything which comes from Him will not
return void but will accomplish that which He pleases…
And, not only that is accomplishes, but that it prospers His
purpose.
I claim it. I claim
it. I claim it.
And, I seek His ways….how does a mother of a twenty-two year old
and two seventeen year olds reach into their hearts where God’s Word has been
planted and pull it out right where they can see and remember and live it?
I have good children.
Great children.
And, if I ever doubted their tender hearts, those doubts were
laid to rest this weekend as pain and sorrow became their guiding lights as
they buried their sweet Papaw. Love
overflowed in our home…words were sweet, comfort real, tears few, but Jesus was
present in the hearts of my children….all of HIM.
As I set them on a path with their Dad to go bury their Papaw, I
wept for things broken, lost and unredeemed in the lives of my children. Would there be no hope, I would just lay my
head down and sleep with Papaw right there on that Eastern Kentucky mountain and,
right still, sleep between him and my heavenly deposit named baby Joseph
Matthew Scott McKenzie.
But, there is hope, and it is that hope I claim today in the
lives of mine…and my children’s.
Hope that “never will he leave us nor forsake us”, even when we
fall short.
And I am
convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor
life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries
about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No
power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation
will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in
Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-30
For I know the plans I have
for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give
you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11
I claim that future and
that hope…..
I claim it for myself, my husband but
especially I claim it for my children…
I was moved recently by the words of a
favorite sister blogger, Ann Voscamp…..when she said in that intimate way she
speaks, that there are only a few
people who truly know her heart from the inside out….God….and because of God, our
children.
I love that vision…
God creates our heart and places it in
our earthly bodies and then knits those souls of our children right there
inside where they, too, for a brief season, come to know our hearts, “from the
inside.”
Powerful, powerful thought.
Wonderous, wonderous gift.
A treasure to be nurtured
and cared for and loved.
So, as I head into 2013 with this
exquisite picture in my head and on my
heart of my obligation to Him and to them, my children, I am prayerfully asking
Him to show me all of the ways I need to
be…..to bring more of Him into the lives of my semi-adult children while I
still have them in my home.
Here is a start….I share with you and
ask you to pray for me and our family….
What can you expect
God to do in your life in 2013? Some pretty incredible things. You can expect:
- God’s mercies to follow you, and pursue
you, every every minute of every hour of every day. “Surely goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. ” (Psalm 23:6)
- God to meet every single true need that should
arise. “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches
in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19)
- God to lead you, counsel you, guide
you, and give you wisdom. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge
him, and he will make straight your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
- God to freely forgive your sins each time you
repent. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
- God to wonderfully correct and discipline
you if you should stray into sin. “For the Lord disciplines the one he
loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” (Hebrews 12:6)
- God to continue working powerfully in you as you
pursue holiness. “…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,
for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his
good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13)
- God to help you overcome patterns of sin that
have plagued you for years. “For sin will have no dominion over you, since
you are not under law but under grace. ” (Romans 6:14)
- God to use trials in your life to refine and purify
your faith. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of
various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces
steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be
perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-4)
- God to give you every good thing. “No good thing
does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.”
God has promised to do
all these things, and many more. His promises are sure. 2013 is bursting with
blessings by Stephen
Altrogge on January 1, 2013
I claim
these actions from God (of which the list would be so endless), and in faith
that He will help me, I promise Him in return to seek him more….with all of my
heart, my body and my soul. I ask Him to
grow in me a deeper passion for His Word, His work and a stronger understanding
of His love.
I seek
simplicity in my daily life and an order which places Him and His word first on
my heart each morning as I first awake.
I seek His
guidance to those right passages which will guide my day.
I seek Him
fostering in my a heart for prayer before my feet would hit the floor each day.
And, I ask
Him not to just cover me with HIM, but to empty me of me and to pour fully from
toes to top of head, HIM so that there is no room for a single morsel of
anything which is NOT….Him.
And, I
pray for diligent, permanent and deep-rooted change in my heart which is so
evident, so redeeming, so tender and changing and loving that my children, at
the core of their very being are changed as well.
I call for
what dear friend and God-soldier Austin
French told me on May 11, 2010, when others were silent to me….”Lesa, pray
for change….undo this thing…..redo it rightly….and pray that God would use you
to do radical changes for GOOD for GOD.”
He and his wife Belinda, right there, in their car, stopped and prayed
and encouraged me and another for change in our lives, our marriage, our
children and our home.
I weep now
that I, did not understand Austin’s meaning, caught up in sorrow
and pain and fear which leaving seemed the only survival path. But, now, I understand….and, now I pick
myself up from my face-down position on the ground, in faith and hope and
understanding that there is more He calls me/us to do.
And, it
starts today….and tomorrow and all the days from this day hence…
Give it
over…not just a part, but the whole…of everything.
God requires it all….
Pray that
for me, for my family.
That we
give our all…..to Him.
So, that
one hundred years from now when young children walk the halls of their ancestor’s
home, the faces of their unknown family, their heritage, they can KNOW that
these flesh and blood people who walked this earth before them
Knew HIM…
I want
that for myself. I want my children to
know HIM, to know I know HIM…..so that their children will come to be in HIM.
It is my
most sincere wish for the hearts God gave to me, the ones who know my heart
from the inside…that they know His heart from all sides.
Blessings,
Lesa
C is for Caesura and Courage
