My version of the Stairs for the Psalms of Ascent

Grace

In the last few weeks, God has been taking me through a journey in His word surrounding very fundamental aspects of my faith. The last post was about righteousness and faith itself. This last week, I have been experiencing a progressive combination of faith and grace. I have been trying to remind myself over and over that is not by works that God deems me as righteous, that I need to rely on Him, I need to BELIEVE Him when He says He will take the load and He will not allow for me to be overwhelmed by my circumstances. It has been much easier said than done. I found myself still completely exhausted at the end of last week (yes, I know I would have no matter what since it is my first year) and I was very discouraged.

My journey this last week is tightly knit to one of my classes at school. I'll give you a little background:

It is a large class of 34 with 5 students diagnosed with ADHD...and who knows how many that aren't. It is by far my most frustrating and difficult class. The problem is, I LIKE THEM! "Why is that a problem?" you may ask, and it isn't really a problem, it just makes it harder for me to be as strict and focused as I need to be. In this class, I have 1 student in particular who purposefully tries to misdirect the class, rolls his eyes, throws a huge drama fit everytime I say ANYTHING to him...bottom line, he's difficult. Friday last week, I was openly frustrated with this class and was responding to them out of anger. I hated this feeling and it was completely ineffective with these students. Needless to say, I was discouraged and had no idea what to do.

So, on Sunday, I go to church and, of course, Chad talks about control. Control! I so desperately want control! I don't experience joy and I know that when I am frantically running about trying to make sure everything in my world is just right. But I keep coming back to it, I have to get class ready, I have to control this obnoxious student, I have to make that class listen, I have to plan the wedding, I have to make sure the house is clean, I have to make sure I am doing this and that and so on and so on. It isn't really the busy-ness but the attitude that I have to do it with my energy (which is ever so limited) and my time that overwhelms me, particularly in situations where I know without a doubt that I don't know what to do. The two main questions that grabbed my attention were:

"How frequently are you trying to grab the pen back from God?"
"Is there on-going evidence of experiential grace pulsing through your veins?"

I was able to quickly answer with a big fat YES! to the first and a sad no to the second. I have already described me trying to steal the pen, but as far as experiencing grace and having that be evident...I wasn't (yet again) allowing myself to experience God's grace because I was trying to be in control. And because I wasn't allowing myself to experience God's grace, I found it increasingly more difficult to show grace to those around me.

Now for the good stuff: What God did with this revelation

During the first song in worship on Sunday, I sang the first line of the chorus "I am overwhelmed" and lost it. Instead of being overwhelmed by my circumstances, I was overwhelmed by God's grace. His grace in giving me this job, his grace in putting me and Phil together and making our relationship strong and joyful, his grace in the future, his grace in the present, and so much more. I was completely overwhelmed. After a while, I prayed through tears, "OK, Jesus,........what would you have me do next?" As worship progressed, God showed me something I could do with my students to build trust and respect in class that was positive and he prompted me with ways to respond quickly to misbehavior that didn't allow room for anger.

These last two days of testing Jesus on his word has made me nervous at times. But everytime, he has followed through. I have thought over and over, OK I can't control how these kids respond, I can control their actions, I need you Jesus to influence and guide, I need you Jesus to transform me here and make me a servant of these students. And everytime, he has followed through. So far this week, my worst class, has been one of the best TO MY AMAZEMENT! And to my relief. Every interaction I have had with that 1 particular student I have precluded with a quick prayer in my head "You know what needs to happen, I am trusting you to give me words and to take what I say...if it doesn't work out, I'll continue to follow you and know that eventually you will make something change." This student has done a 105 degree turn (not all the way but A TON of improvement). Every time, I am openly shocked and amazed at God. Things are not the same, God has moved and changed things and all I did was ask "What's next?"

I am choosing to share this for two reasons because (1) I want people to know me better and this is a big deal for me right now; (2) but more importantly, I want to be one "who boasts... in the Lord.' For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.”- 2 Corinthians 10:17-18

Thank you Jesus, I really couldn't do anything without you.

Righteousness

"Sow for yourselves righteousness;
reap steadfast love;
break up your fallow ground,
for it is the time to seek the LORD,
that he may come and rain righteousness upon you."

Throughout the summer in the Beth Moore study the scripture from Hosea 10:12 kept coming to my mind. Depending on what the particular Psalm of the day was, a different part of that scripture stuck out in my mind. As the summer progressed, though, the lines "Sow for yourselves righteousness," and "break up your fallow ground," began to replay over and over in my head. I started to wonder, what is righteousness really? How does that look for me now that I have a full time job? I don't know if I totally want to break up my fallow ground, it hurts and it is exhausting.

Just as I decided to pursue this question of "what is righteousness?" I started my new job, a job that takes up at least 12 hours of my day, everyday. In the last 2 weeks, every time I have thought about this question, my mind started shutting down because I was thinking, "I don't know if I have the time or energy to 'do' righteousness right now, what ever that means." I was thinking, righteousness means completely changing my behavior, praying at least 1 hour a day, reading my bible at least 1 hour everyday, sharing the gospel with someone at least once a month, fasting twice a week, building and maintaining good, challenging relationships with people at second mile, fixing everything in my family, not getting overwhelmed, not getting stressed out, never doubting, always sacrificing, becoming the perfect wife, non-confrontational, a wonderfully and perfectly compassionate and caring teacher, and many other little things that would come to mind. Now, I know that all of those things are good, but not what makes me righteous in the eyes of God and that I was being ridiculous and that I need to trust God. But in the mucky muck of my life, I just felt overwhelmed by EVERYTHING and got caught up in that deadly cycle, trying to take control of my life and my circumstances, trying to make myself worthy of God's love and favor and attention.

Because of this line of thinking, I have regularly felt completely overwhelmed and borderline hopeless in the last 2 weeks whether it was about being a teacher, being an adult, getting married, planning a wedding, or just getting out of bed in the morning. Phil's patience with me in these last 2 weeks has been saintly. I really appreciate his support and reassurance, even though in the moment it sometimes felt frustrating.

Well, yesterday morning I decided it was time to come back to this idea of righteousness and see what the Word of God actually had to say about it because I knew I was off, but I didn't have any concrete scriptural examples set in my mind to bring the truth to light. I looked up righteousness in my concordance and found the following scripture in Romans 4:3, 9b:

"For what does the scripture say?, 'Abraham believed God,
and it was counted to him as righteousness.'...
We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness"

I thought about that all day. Let it just sink in. In the context around these verses, Paul reasons out the difference between righteousness "gained" by works and the righteous given through faith. He says, "For those who live by the law are heirs, faith has no value and the promise is worthless, because law brings wrath....Therefore the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring."

Then, this morning, I was pondering this further while resting in my bed this morning (one of my absolute FAVORITE things to do) and decided I needed to see examples of this kind of righteousness by faith. So I thought I'd look up places where God's people believed him. Before I got very far in this though, I found this scripture in Hebrews 10:37-38:

"Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay;
but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him."

Then all of chapter 11 is just examples of people who by faith were commended by God as righteous. HOLY COW! I felt surrounded by truth and it was liberating. This is a hard truth for me and it is one that I have to regularly be reminded of. I know that it is going to be a struggle for me to accept this and let go of my desire for perfection, to do it on my own (which is psycho), and so on but it was yet another piece of evidence for the position that perfection, doing it all, and getting right RIGHT NOW are not what God wants from me. I can rest and grow with Him by believing Him and seeking Him. Just another step in surrender :-)

Please pray that this truth would permeate my life, that I would continue to find scripture that will provide truth for me in the tough times, and that I would be able to see the fruit of this truth transforming my life.