Muddy-Paw Days

It’s springtime! Isn’t it great? As much as I love fall and winter, I can still agree that there’s something special about spring. It’s exciting to watch the world wake up when the ground warms up and thaws out. Everything outdoors is alive and growing. I love hearing the meadowlarks singing in the distance outside my back door and seeing the trees cover their bare branches with new leaves. I can’t wait to get some planting done, though here in WY we’ve got a few more weeks before the danger of frost is gone.

Our new house has a great big backyard – significantly bigger than the backyard we had where we lived before. There’s room for a nice sized garden and everything! We were all pretty excited about it when we moved in – especially the kids and the dogs. The kids were pulling each other around the space in my old wooden wagon and planning all sorts of activities they were going to do. Of course, due to the time of year we moved in, it soon became less attractive to be outside as often – brrr! And then it snowed. Now, we haven’t had a whole lot of snow this year overall, but, nevertheless; a problem has become apparent, which is aggravated even more as the ground now begins to thaw…

I love outdoor spaces. I dreamt of acreage as we were house shopping, but budget constraints put a large yard on my list of hoped-for items instead. Soo… I’m not complaining about the space, exactly. I do like it. And I’m okay with some yard work and maintenance. But… there is an issue… with melting snow (or rain) and MUD. The grass is kind of thin overall, and nonexistent in spots. We also have dogs that enjoy spending a large part of the day outside. Whatever the weather, they run around and play and come to the door to be let in… and when they come in, they now bring a good portion of our yard with them. Ugh! Our 2-year-old Labrador has the typical 2-year-old Labrador enthusiasm, which regularly sends her tail into a frenzy, spraying droplets of mud across furniture and walls. Then we also have a Corgi, and he collects probably a cupful (or more) of dirt on his low-slung underbelly and deposits it liberally wherever he goes. Both of them grace the kitchen floor, rugs, and carpets with chunks of earth and large, brown pawprints (not to mention the springtime shedding explosion that’s happening simultaneously). The vacuum and the mop are indispensable right now, to say the least.

 

 

A little while ago it finally dried out after about two solid weeks of muddy mayhem, so I bathed the dogs – which was no small undertaking. The aftermath required me to deep clean the entire bathroom, too (you should have seen my walls!), so this was an entire half-day project. The two of them were so nice and clean and they smelled lovely… for three days. Then it snowed again (of course), and two days later the mud was back, too. Isn’t spring so lovely? Oh, to be a dog and not care how dirty you are!

Mud. It’s just part of life – whether or not you have a dog. Literal mud… and figurative mud. Getting through the tough times in life can sometimes feel like wallowing in deep mud. You’re moving, but not getting anywhere very quickly, and everything looks and feels a mess.

When PJ and I faced each other a little over a year ago and recognized how broken our marriage had become, we were at a crossroads. Where would we go from there? It really didn’t take a whole lot of discussion for us to come to the determination that we both wanted to work on things, but it has been a long journey we’ve been on since that point. God has brought much healing and restoration into our lives, but there have been many challenges as well. It definitely has been, and continues to be, a process. Sometimes marriage - and life - feel a bit like our backyard looks. There are times when the ground is solid, and things are really good. Walking is easy. We might have to brush a little dust off of our feet from time to time, but overall it’s pretty smooth sailing. Then it rains. Or snows. Maybe a little, maybe a lot; but either way, it creates some “mud.” Past hurts, current offenses, miscommunications and misunderstandings, selfishness and pride, anxiety, difficult circumstances… things like these have us collecting some muck in our minds, making it harder to continue moving forward. I’m betting you can identify with this as well. Whether in marriage, other relationships, or just life circumstances in general, we all go through these times.

 

To be sure, I’m not writing this from the perspective of a person who has everything figured out! There have been plenty of times when I wished that God would just come in with a pressure washer and blast all the grime away in an instant, never to return, so that I could be done with all the mess just like that. However, I think it’s important to recognize that there is value in the “cleaning” process. I think that’s why God doesn’t just rush in to rescue us from every little difficulty every single time we run into one. We try not to do that when teaching our children, so why do would we expect our heavenly Father to do it with us? We love our kids and want them to be able to problem-solve later in life, so sometimes we have to allow them to figure something out instead of reaching in and doing it for them right away. Of course, we are there beside them to offer assistance if and when it’s needed, but there is importance in them learning to work through some challenging things, too. We would do a disservice to them if we always did everything for them. Just like our kids, we ourselves learn perseverance in the process of working through things. We learn how to move towards our goal instead of attempting to run from our problems. We learn how to communicate more effectively. We learn more about each other – and about our own selves. We learn to trust God because, time and again, He has proven to us that He always is, and always will be, there to help us through. As He shows us His faithfulness, our confidence in Him should only grow deeper. He’s not going to leave us in the mud. He desires for us to walk on solid ground again, and for our experiences in the low places to be a learning opportunity for us – and not only for us, but also for those around us who have seen and heard our testimony. David speaks to this through his words in Psalm 40:

“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him.”

-Psalm 40: 1-3 (NIV)

Just as I don’t really enjoy the muddy-paw days of spring, I also don’t really enjoy the muddy-life times. I’m sure very few of us do. There are things in the past that I wish I could delete as easily as I can delete a typo and leave no hint that it was ever there. Well… sort of. I sort of wish that, in a way. As much as I wish certain things had never happened, I also wouldn’t want to trade the lessons that I learned as I walked through those times. I’m not really thankful for the tough times themselves, but I’m more than a little grateful for what God taught me as He walked me through them, and I’m grateful for my “new song.”

So, wherever you’re at – cruising along on solid ground or slogging through knee-deep mire – remember to thank God for His constant presence in your life. Deal with the mud as it comes. Face it head-on with God by your side, and be open to what you can learn in the process. There will be drier days ahead.

 

The God of the Hopeless

Looks like a hopeless spot to find any growth, doesn't it?

It doesn’t take a psychologist to notice that there are hopeless and hurting people all around us right now. Watch the news, talk to your neighbor, look in the mirror – it’s certainly quite plain to see. Current events have pushed many people to the brink, and beyond. People are stressed out and worried. How does the need to protect health and safety jive with the need to protect individual rights and freedoms? How do we respond to our neighbors, friends, and family when they don’t agree with our viewpoint or our political leanings? Unfortunately, many people have become pretty hostile with each other. This year has been a real doozy, and things don’t appear to be letting up anytime soon.

PJ and I have had our own share of difficulties this year, largely unrelated to current events, and we’ve made some big changes in our lives recently too. I’ve been silent on the blog here for a while, but I have still been writing quite a bit, and I’m getting to the point now where I think I’m ready to start sharing again. While up to this point I’ve never spent a significant portion of time on the blog on a daily (or even weekly) basis, it was still important for me to take some time off from it completely. Sometimes, well, more often than not actually, it is good for us to process and really think through things before speaking or writing – particularly when there are a lot of emotions involved. I have started writing for the blog several times over the past months, but I’ve always ended up scrapping those posts when I realized that I was writing from a place of raw emotion and pain, and that what was coming out was not going to end up benefitting anyone or glorifying God. It’s not that I’m feeling 100 percent all the time now – in fact, I’ve had a pretty stinky couple of weeks, to be honest – but there’s definitely some improvement over where I was at several months ago. Here’s a little background info to catch you up somewhat before I get down to the heart of what I want to share today.

As some of you know, PJ and I spent the last six years (or so) pastoring a church. In February of this year, we found ourselves in a place where it became painfully apparent that we needed to take some time off from ministry to focus on putting things right in our personal lives and in our marriage, and so we resigned from pastoring the church. This was not an easy decision, and it was not the only big change we made this year. At around the same time, we felt that God was leading us to make a move as well. We believed that this was to be to a specific community, and PJ began putting in some applications to start the hunt for a new job. Then COVID hit, and everything ground to a screeching halt. To make a (VERY) long story quite short, after many months of uncertainty and waiting, God opened the doors for us to move and we have been spending the last several weeks getting settled in our new home. When we knew definitively that we were moving, the leaders of the church we had pastored invited us to come and share what God was doing in our lives as a way of bringing healing and closure since our resignation was very sudden and unexpected.

That brings me to what I want to share today, which is the last sermon that PJ gave at that church. Incidentally, it was also the first Sunday morning message that I gave there (or anywhere, for that matter). I’m pretty comfortable behind the keyboard… not so comfortable behind the pulpit. The Lord helped me overcome my fear, and I was glad that we were given the opportunity to share what was on our hearts with some of the people that we love so much. I’m sharing the written version. I know that when we stood up in front of the church and spoke, some of the words were changed - and I also did some minor updating before posting it here - but the essence of it hasn’t changed at all. We titled this message, “The God of the Hopeless.” Though much of it speaks to our specific situation, and what God has been doing in our own lives, I believe it’s also a timely message for a wider audience given how much hopelessness is running rampant in our local communities and in our nation as a whole right now.

“The God of the Hopeless”

Me: A couple of months ago, PJ and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. Yup, fifteen years of wedded bliss... hahaha... well, that may be an overstatement. What is marriage if it's not difficult sometimes?  PJ and I butted heads a lot over the years. We didn't really understand each other, and there were many times where each of us believed that the other definitely had our worst interests at heart. Marriage often felt like a big disappointment. Where was the fairytale? Where was the happily ever after? Sure, we had our good times. Lots of them in fact. But when viewed across the years, neither of us had an overwhelmingly positive view of the whole thing. Our relationship was breaking, and our attempts to "fix" it usually involved one of us pointing out exactly how we were sure the other person needed to change. Our focus was almost always on how the other person was the root of the problem. This was a trap laid by the enemy, and we walked right into it. In the blink of an eye, we went from being a married couple with disagreements and disillusionments (all pretty normal) to being a married couple in crisis. PJ and I weren't on the same page, but we did have something in common. Both of us were hopeless, desperate, and heartbroken.

When you can't count on another person, and you can't even count on yourself, where do you turn? Ultimately, we turned to the One we should have been leaning on since the very beginning. Now, don’t get me wrong, it wasn't that we had ever stopped having faith in God... rather we had stopped leaning wholly on Him and depending on Him for everything. We had been depending on ourselves over all. And it wasn't that we ever stopped praying... rather we had stopped praying fervently and believing that He was listening. God, in all His sovereignty, just waited. He waited for us to turn to Him, seek Him, ask Him. When we did, He proved himself to be as faithful as ever. It didn't matter how far away we had turned. It didn't matter how hopeless we felt. It didn't matter how desperate our situation was. God was, and is, the God of the hopeless! He did what only He could do. When we turned our hearts back to Him, He responded with nothing but perfect grace and love. At one point in our journey, I received the same word from the Lord at least three different times within a day or two. The word was, "It's not over." The devil thought he was winning, and I thought he might be right. It looked like the end of our marriage. But God smiled and said, "No. It's not over." In turning to God, in apologies and in repentance, in making the decision to resign from pastoring this church, and in how we moved forward from that point... throughout this whole journey... God has turned our hearts back to each other as well. We were hopeless. God wasn't. He never is. He can take situations that seem completely hopeless, and people that seem completely lost, and turn them around for the good of the people involved and in order to use them for His glory. Sometimes that means we have to walk through the fire. Sometimes things don't turn out the way we think they should. Sometimes it gets downright painful. In our situation, things could have turned out differently. We are so, so grateful they didn't, but even if they had, we can know without a doubt that God would have still worked everything out for our good and His glory in the end.

God gave us a pretty powerful illustration of this process, and an important word, all before we ever went through it. Last year, during my antelope hunt, I received the clear word, "The Lord will provide." Also, during PJ's elk hunt last year, God gave him the exact same word. Each of us was then blessed to be able to harvest a beautiful, mature animal of our favorite species. PJ shared about our hunts, and about the word that God gave us, in some of his sermons last fall. God provided for our hunts, but both of us had an inkling that the word God gave us was going to have more significance for us in the future as well. It wasn't too long after that that things began to spiral downward in our marriage. But in spite of us, God proved Himself faithful to His word. He said He is the Lord who will provide and He is. We see this more and more with each passing day. This doesn't mean that things have been easy. Over the last year we have walked through the most challenging time we have ever faced in our marriage. We are coming out of it more unified than ever, strengthened in our faith in God and in our relationship with each other, but there are wounds and scars that are still healing too, which brings me back to the animals we harvested last year. My antelope buck and PJ's bull elk - I said that both of them were beautiful, mature examples of their species, and they were. But something we also noticed about both of them is that they were covered in scars from fighting. Old wounds along their front legs, shoulders, and chests, necks, and ears speak to the struggles they endured. There is a song I like, “Scars,” by TobyMac, that includes the line, "You, you're not alone. We've all been there. Scars come with livin'." That is so true. None of us go through life without acquiring some scars along the way. How will we heal? If we are receptive to the lessons that God is teaching us, then additional strength, resolve, and maturity are the results. If we resist God and attempt to put our own salve on our wounds, they will fester and refuse to heal completely until we submit to the master healer. He is able to do so much more.

So, the journey continues! Our journey, your journey, the journey of the person sitting next to you. All of our journeys continue until we go to meet the Lord. How we respond to things that happen in our lives and how we respond to God is our choice. Just remember: Worship in all circumstances and never stop praying. Show grace to the people around you. God is always faithful and trustworthy. He still does miracles. He. Is. Everything.

And one last note: remember that marriage is a blessing worth fighting for. If you're married and struggling, pray and seek counsel from a trusted spiritual leader before you are in crisis mode. We made the mistake of thinking that we didn't need any outside help. Take it from us - you don't want to go down that path. Meeting with someone doesn't mean that you have failed in some way by not being able to make your marriage thrive on your own. The devil would love for us to believe that we are isolated and alone. Talking to someone, sharing your struggles, receiving sound advice... these are actually signs of strength. One benefit of fellowship with other believers is that we can strengthen each other when we share and do life together according to God's principles. Naturally our enemy is trying to prevent any possibility of that happening. He is in the business of ruining relationships. Don't fall into the trap. We all need each other.

PJ: Isn’t it encouraging to hear what God can do? If you had asked my wife and I a year ago if we thought we would be where we are at today, we would have said no. Or we would have told you we were fine. But we weren’t fine. A year ago, I had completely lost my way.  I was hopeless, exhausted, and I had given up.  I still believed God’s word to be true but I was so hopeless that I thought everything was everyone else’s fault. I blamed my wife for every problem in our marriage. I claimed to love the Lord and yet my relationship with God was suffering. I felt empty, hopeless and alone. But here is the good news: God never gave up on me. My wife never gave up on me. I still remember her words to me one morning as I told her just how broken and hopeless I was. She looked at me and said, “I love you and no matter what you’ve done, or where you’re at, I will always love you.” She didn’t say she was happy or pleased, she said, “I will always love you,” and those words changed my life and led me to be broken and humbled before the Lord. She entitled this message “The God of the Hopeless,” and those words are so true. God is the God of the hopeless. Our marriage was hopeless without Christ, our lives were hopeless without Him, everything was hopeless without Him, but the love of God brought hope back to two hopeless and broken people.

1 John 4:7-21 (NKJV) says this: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. We love Him because He first loved us. If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have from Him: that he who loves God must love his brother also.”

This is exactly what God did for us. He revealed His love, and that perfect love drove out fear and started us on the restoration path where we could not only receive love, but also give love in a way we had never been able to before. I stand here before you a different man. A man who has been humbled and redeemed by the love of Christ. 

One of the things I have realized through this year is that it was not our marriage that suffered first. It was not my frustration or my hopelessness that started us on this bumpy road; it was my independence and lack of intimacy with the Lord. John said, “God is love,” and he who abides in love abides in God.  What does that mean? It means that I cannot love my wife unless I am first experiencing and abiding in the love of God daily. And she cannot love me unless she is experiencing the love of Christ daily, because hopelessness finds hope when God reveals His love to the most broken parts of our lives.

In Ephesians 3:14-21 (ESV), Paul says it best: “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Paul says we are rooted in what? Our beliefs? No. Our works? No. He says being rooted and grounded in love. Whose love? The love of Christ. Amen. This is where it all starts. This is what saved our marriage.  This is what led me to be broken and to kneel before God. The love of Christ is where we become rooted and grounded for every single area of our lives. And out of the love of Christ we minister to our spouse, our kids, our neighbors, and to the world. And so today I am humbled to stand here before you with my wife and to tell you that God is the God of the hopeless and His love will transform every single area of your life if you will abide in Him. We are living proof that God’s love is truly unconditional. I didn’t deserve it, but He revealed His love and He brought hope in the middle of our hopelessness.

“…to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think…” We can’t rely on our government. We can’t rely on our neighbors, friends, or family. We can’t even rely on ourselves. The ONLY one who we can rely on with 100 percent certainty is the Lord. He alone will never fail us. That doesn’t mean He is always going to do things the way we think He should, and it doesn’t mean that things will always be easy or wonderful in our lives or in the lives of our loved ones, but it does mean that we can place our confidence in Him and trust Him no matter what. He is the answer. Review your priorities. Read the Bible a little more and listen to the news a little less. We all need to turn back to God. Change doesn’t start with your neighbor – it starts with you. Will you let Him lead your life – all of it – including your thoughts, your actions, and what you say to others?

He’s asking for you to turn to Him today. How are you going to respond?

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

-Psalm 119: 105 (ESV)