Category: Christianity

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Living

What Does God Need From You?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Image  Let’s face it.  When it comes to our relationship with God, from His perspective it has to often seem like a one-way street, where we are constantly seen with our hands out, often calling to Him in times of great need when He may not have heard from us for so long, He doesn’t quite recognize us at first.

Of course, God always recognizes us, knows what we’re up to, and HAS A PLAN for whatever is happening in our lives, no matter how helpless we currently feel or how bleak our present outlook.  In Bible class today, we discussed some of the really crisis moments different members had faced, moments so terrifying that they were forced to look to God in a complete realization of just how helpless we human beings are.  In those moments, these people truly experience the all-encompassing power that is God.

More importantly, they learned a key lesson that they have taken away from their experiences: God is not through with them yet!  He has plans for them in this world that they are yet to achieve.  He has journeys for them for which that crisis may have been the first step or for which they have not yet taken a step at all.

As I listened to these shared stories, I was struck by the realization that God has a plan for us even when the crises in our lives are entirely of our own making.  What if your crisis is spending more money than you can afford to pay or choosing to go out with someone you know your parents wouldn’t approve of, much less God?  Now, because of those decisions, you live in fear of phone calls from debt collectors or have wound up married to a non-believer who may be abusive to you.

God has a plan for that.  This fact does not mean that He wanted the bad things to happen to us.  We live in a fallen world.  Bad things are going to happen.  But God has a plan for your life that includes bringing to the good something for you, for your family, or for others in this broken world from the ashes that are the destruction crisis may have punched into your life.

Does this mean that we might as well sin, or even live a sinful lifestyle and just expect God to make something good out of it?  Of course not!  Whenever Jesus reached out loving arms to sinners, He always loved the sinner but hated the sin.  He never let them part from Him without warning them or entreating them to turn from the ways they knew were wrong.

The Bible offers us example after example of people who looked to God for their deliverance but who also kept doing what was in their power to do to move that deliverance along.  The woman at the well knew that her current live-in was not her husband in God’s eyes and that she would have to end that relationship.  The disciples fished.  Paul made tents to earn his living as he spread the gospel.  Instead of being greedy and holding out hands that have not tried to help themselves, these believers did what they could and looked to God to fill in all the gaps only He is able to fill.

I find this truth that God is working His plan for me even when it doesn’t feel like it a key to throwing away a lot of the anxieties I have put on myself when it comes to what I think He wants from me.  First of all, whatever happens in my life is going to happen on God’s time, not mine.  Secondly, I have made decisions in my life about what jobs to take, whom to marry, what kind of schooling to get, and I am not the only one living with those decisions.  God is too.  He knew what I was going to decide before I decided it, and He also knew how He was going to use those decisions in my life to do something good for Him, if I will only keep tuned in to His frequency.

So, what am I worrying about all the time?  The little things, material things, things that have more to do with my pride in skills God gave me in the first place that I shouldn’t be taking pride in but giving to the glory of God.  If I must put thought to something (and the thoughts shouldn’t be worrisome; Jesus told us not to worry), shouldn’t it be how I can love God more in my life, how I can reach out to other people in love, how I can line up my actions with the instructions so clearly laid out in God’s word?

What does God need from me?  My faith in His truth, my devotion to His word, my love for Him and the other humans around me holding our hands out, crying out rightfully to the sky but sometimes forgetting the good those hands can do grounded back on earth in fellowship and as God’s helping hands for others around us.

What will God “work to the good” (Romans 8) for you this week?  Can He get some of what He needs instead of being the One giving?

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Living

How Do You Cope?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

There are countless analyses on the book of Job that cover the key issues in the story, the importance of what Job’s friends say, what Job says about himself, and what God finally answers. But as I finished reading the book this week in my Bible study, I have to admit I felt a bit let down as I read the epilogue to the tale.

Why were you disappointed, you might say. After all, Job receives all that he lost and more for the rest of his life. He gets to understand that the questions he is asking of God are above his pay grade, issues to which a human mind cannot begin to perceive the true answers. He never learns that all his suffering is due to what amounts to a bet between God and Satan, but even if he had known, the answer to the additional questions of God that knowledge might illicit are really explained by the same reasoning God gives Job when He allows the persecuted man to stand up before his God.

No, my disappointment was more from a storyteller’s perspective because this story, which has kept me riveted to the Word for chapter after chapter, somehow leaves an important human perspective out in the end. After his encounter with the Almighty and the return of his worldly possessions, how did Job cope?

How we cope is what makes a good story. We get to see how Job copes with his initial disappointment. He mourns his losses, claims his righteousness, and demands his day in court before the Ultimate Judge.

But, how would you cope with the rest of your life after going through the tremendous loss and physical pain that Job experienced? Surely, Job loved his new children, but wouldn’t he always be torn up about the children he lost? Wouldn’t there always be whispers in the community, despite the testimony of Job’s friends, as to what had happened to Job and why?

God controls the sun, moon, and stars. He told the ocean how far to reach. He created and controls even the leviathan. But knowing that compared to God, we are as intelligent as humans consider a flea doesn’t necessarily make it easier to cope with the challenges that the world throws at us. It’s hard to give away to God the need to know the reason why. When God says it’s on a need to know basis and we don’t need to know, we are truly challenged to believe that He has numbered every hair on our heads–“whom shall we fear?”

Job didn’t worry. He believed, worshipped, and allowed God to give him the strength to carry on. There’s a lesson to learn here.

But I would still have loved to see inside Job’s head as he coped through the rest of his life. Coping through my own life could use all the Biblical examples it can get.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Living

Is Your Truth THE Truth?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

   Like a winding set of stairs (especially like the stairs in the “Harry Potter” films that change on a whim), when you define truth according to your own rules, by what you think is right or, even more deadly, what feels right,  you start upon the journey of a very slippery slope that can only land you in the world of self-delusion.

Self-delusion is a favored land for popular culture.  “I’m OK, you’re OK” is the slogan here.  In popular culture, there are segments of society against which nothing bad should be said and other segments against which any barb is OK.  This reality is nothing new.  The Romans did an awesome job of persecuting Christians while allowing a variety of cultures to continue in religions which were in opposition to popular Roman thought.

But reality doesn’t equal truth.  Think about this.  Just because something IS does not make that something TRUE.  When truth is actually TRUTH, it is also RIGHT.  And who claims sovereignty over right?  For us Christians, the answer to that question is easy–God.  And the reference for TRUTH is not what we think or feel, but what is written in the Bible.  But not just the parts of the Bible you’d like to pay attention to.  The TRUTH comes from understanding the Bible in its totality.

I had a Sunday school teacher when I was young who explained that the Bible is so wonderful in part because it is at the same time simple enough for the most challenged of minds to understand and yet so complex that even a genius has difficulty deciphering all of it.  Without a strong knowledge of the Bible, think how easy it would be for someone to pick and choose the parts they needed to convince you of something that is actually the opposite of what God really says.  That is exactly how we have wound up in a world where more than half of marriages end in divorce and a shocking percentage of teenagers have already lost their virginity outside of wedlock.

Francine Rivers wrote a wonderful novel on just this premise: The Last Sin Eater.  In this novel, a prominent individual convinces an entire community that a sacrifice for the dead other than the sacrifice Christ made for us all is needed for each departed soul.  In the novel, the people have lost connection to the Bible and its TRUTH.  It takes hearing the Word and the bravery of just a few characters to believe that Word to begin to heal that community and teach them who the last sin eater truly is.

Is your truth the TRUTH?  Can you hold it up to the guidelines of unconditional love of God and your fellow humans that is laid out in the Holy Word?  And how many things do you hold as true that aren’t actually in line with what the Bible says?  Do you think you are too far gone to be redeemed, for example?  God never says that in the Bible.  In fact, Christ even accepted the confession of the robber who died on the cross with Him!  Talk about getting in by the skin of one’s teeth.

Because TRUTH is more often than not more ugly than truth, it becomes so easy to fall into the popular culture sense of what is right.  I’m ashamed to admit that, despite the time I spend studying the Bible and theology books and Christian fiction, I still spend more time watching television.  How many lies have I let slip into my definition of truth from this bad habit?  How many more so for those who only interact with popular culture without understanding the TRUTH that is God?

I’ve constructed a visual STOP sign in my mind for this week, and I plan to use it whenever I think, feel, or say anything that is truth as opposed to TRUTH.  I challenge you to do the same.

God bless.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Living

Find Your Joy

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Christians trying to win the race in which we have been entered is a tough job. We are, after all, following in the footsteps of the Perfect One. How do we do it? It’s easy enough to write things like read your Bible, pray a lot, and surround yourself with those who also seek God’s truth and not our own, but it is definitely much harder to put these things into practice.

But as I write about these weighty matters, I think I forget a very crucial element in this important race. What about the gift of joy in our race to perfection? I once read that God is not so much interested in our happiness as our salvation. But once we have accepted salvation, we have every right to grasp the joy of that truth. In fact, some days it is only the joy of belief in Christ that keeps us from utter defeat.

This week, I’m reminded that in the midst of trying so hard to serve God well, we can often forget to embrace the joy that is ours to be had through our faith in Christ. Personally, I have many reasons to be joyful. I have been blessed by a loving family and wonderful friends. I have managed to survive the health and emotional challenges that have come my way. I have had just enough challenges in life to really understand just how wonderful a normal, non-challenged day truly is.

When I was growing up, sermons seemed to be a lot about the fire and brimstone consequences of not following God’s word. Today, some churches have teetered so far to the other end of the pendulum, that I wonder if they even remember the consequences part of following Jesus. Surely, there is some cuddly place in the middle where we can find space to celebrate God and fear Him at the same time. Fear of Him, after all, is the beginning of wisdom.

But, we are talking about joy in God. Living in the big city, getting close to nature is sometimes hard to do, and I think that nature is where we feel God best. At least, I find my greatest peace often comes on a bright day, with a baby blue sky and a cool breeze. I take a deep, wonderful breath, and I feel the power of the Almighty all around me. I know He is God then.

It’s a bit harder to take a deep breath crammed in line at the supermarket, surrounded by overworked people in a hurry just trying to survive in this hustle-bustle world. But it shouldn’t be. I should be joyful just about all the time. I have God in my life. He looks out for every hair on my head. Even the bad things that happen to me, He will work to the good. Does anything else really matter?

So, remember to smile today. Even if you don’t feel like it. Especially if you don’t feel like it. You’ll find that just in the very act of smiling, you’ll start feeling better. And smiles are contagious. Pass it around. Joy in Him is truly joy to the world.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Living

No Lie

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

We can lie to our friends and to ourselves, but let’s not lie to each other.
How many times have you heard this pithy comeback when you’ve just said something that you wished were true, but that everyone knows is just not the case? How often have you really needed to hear that comeback because what you’ve just said is something you are trying to convince yourself is actually true, even though your subconscious is screaming at you that you just aren’t right?
Under perfect circumstances, our relationship with God is one in which we do not lie to each other. Of course, God’s ability to hold up His end of the relationship is a given for those who believe in His infallibility. God never lies, does what He says He will do, and takes His promises seriously.
Since God is omnipotent, it’s really silly on our part to try to lie to Him. In essence, when we lie to God, we are really only deceiving ourselves.
It’s silly of us, really. God makes it easy to be honest with Him. Christ serves as our intecessor. His death has made it possible for us to ask for forgiveness and actually receive it.
Think on Christ’s companions on this earth: wayward women, tax collectors, lowly fishermen. He even died on the cross alongside two criminals (and extended redemption even then). We don’t have to be squeaky clean to be accepted by Him. We just have to willingly step into His open arms.
But stepping in requires that we first step in truth. One of the main things Christ required from His followers was honesty. When Peter claimed his loyalty to Jesus, Christ told him he would deny Christ three times before the rooster crowed. When the woman at the well was honest enough to admit that her fifth relationship with a man was not a marriage, Christ acknowledged her truthfulness and encouraged her to discontinue her life of sin.
Not lying to God means truly repenting of our misdeeds. Repentance involves not only recognizing a sin, but also determining to do one’s best not to submit to the tempations of that sin again. When we repent in honesty, we don’t lie to each other.
Don’t know if you’re lying to yourself? The fact that a little voice in your head has asked you the question should be the first indicator that you need to stop to address the issue you may be lying to yourself about. Analyze it. Take it apart. Look at it as if you aren’t you, but somebody else, like God, for example. And see how well your truth stands up against the test of the Bible.
One of the easiest tests of a truth versus a lie is asking yourself whether what you are doing is an action that shows love to those around you. Loving God first and loving others as we want to be loved ourselves sums up the law, according to the One who best knows.
Let’s not lie to each other. Being a Christian is a wonderful gift that deserves our best thanks–a life lived striving to be as Christ-like as we possibly can be.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith, Self-Help

To Know What He Knows

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Annie Dilliard writes about the experience of going to church and being caught up in the wonder of God’s sense of humor, for what else would account for His tolerance of the off-key voices and humanly-limited actions that we call a worship service? Doesn’t He deserve so much more than we could ever offer, and yet He puts up with our best attempts, and we deign to think these attempts at worship might be called good.
It is a fundamental flaw, really, to think that a human mind could ever really know God, and yet our perception of Him is constrained by just that, our very limited minds. The simple reality of our situation leaves us in a bit of a pickle. We can try to understand God through His word, but even that is limited to our own ability to understand and interpret.
Some of the biggest mistakes we ever make are done in full knowledge about what God has to say about our actions, wrapped inside a bubble of what we have convinced ourselves He really meant. How many times have you heard a cheating spouse OK her actions by claiming that God wants her to be happy? How many people explain their religion to you according to what “feels right?”
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord,” in Isaiah 55:8. God does not think like us nor act like us. So, why are we always trying to reason out what God is up to as if He was the keeps-to-himself neighbor in the creepy house at the corner of the street? Why do we think He would ever want us to do something that goes against what He has said, like loving Him above all else rather than putting fancy jewelry or cars before the work of feeding widows and orphaned children just because we are trying to “feel good,” and wouldn’t God want that?
The Spirit of truth can only speak to us if we are constantly in preparation for hearing what that Spirit has to say, even the words we least want to hear. God does things in His own time and in His own way, and we will not understand it, no matter how many words we write, or inspired movies we create, or lies we tell ourselves are real.
The Greeks envisioned the gods as superheroes who shared the same emotions as us humans, but amped to the ninth power. These gods were jealous, wrathful, petty, capricious. Only when the Jews claimed one, true and only God, did mankind begin to conceive of a God above the emotions of man, a God who was constant, consistent, and true.
We have used our understanding of God to validate wars, affairs of the heart, and our own plain meanness of spirit. Yet, His ways are not our ways, His thoughts not our thoughts. Ultimately, we understand what He wants us to understand, know what He wants us to know. If we do not test our knowledge of God through extensive Bible study, sincere prayers, and the validation of our thought processes through sharing with fellow Christians, then what we know is not only not what God knows, it is less than nothing.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Living, Love

Tiny Steps Make Great Feats

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

I have a friend who shares my proclivity to demand perfection of ourselves and the grand ability to beat ourselves up when we fall far short of the over-reaching goals we have set for ourselves. Lately, our conversations have circled around the concept of “magnificence.” In other words, we are trying to make it OK for ourselves that we are not going to be “magnificent.”
Then, I have to stop us. Whenever we make statements like this, we are shortchanging ourselves in so many ways. First, we are denying the truth behind what we define as magnificent. Of course, our definition is much too tied to the ways of this world. Because we haven’t made millions or written the country’s greatest novel, we are failures in our own eyes. That definition, in itself, though, is a failure in the eyes of God, who even when He came to earth in the form of man, did not seek stardom, even shunning the crowds that thronged toward Him as much as possible at times, asking those He had healed to keep the event to themselves.
This is when we are better served to remind ourselves that God’s version of magnificence is a tiny mustard seed, which, once planted, can be nurtured by the Spirit into a truly wonderful plant. Our actions aren’t the thing that make the end result, however. God is interested in the mustard seed size actions we take that, culminating together, create the final, magnificent result.
Maybe our small actions are simple things like holding open a door, smiling to those we meet, or stopping to help someone change a flat tire. Perhaps they are actions that are a little more involved like making a meal for someone who is ill, or cleaning house for someone who cannot do the job him/herself. Maybe the action is being privileged enough to be the first person to share her gospel experience with a person who has never had the opportunity to know Jesus.
When I look out my back window and watch the robins and cardinals and squirrels scampering in my backyard, a plethora of color and motion that reminds me what it means to be peacefully human, I sometimes think about the ways that God speaks to us in just as tiny a motion as the mustard seed He also requires. Hasn’t He more often been a whisper in the wind than earth-shattering thunder?
It’s hard to re-define success in a world surrounded by capitalistic ideals, but my friend and I keep on trying, holding each other accountable for the moments when we berate our mustard seed actions and long for superhero status. The prideful will be humbled, God warns us. We do our best each day to humble ourselves before we need to be humbled. Paying attention to our mustard seed actions is a good way to stay on the right side of humility. I’m getting older, and my knees can’t take another fall.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Living

A Christian Bucket List

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Some of us are list makers. We have to-do lists for every day, week, or month. We make to-do lists to plan vacation packing, school year supplies, or medical testing. We even have the honey-do lists for our spouses.
Do you have the list that is brown with age, that crinkles when you unfold it? The list you made when you were seven or ten or twenty-one? The bucket list of items you hope to do before you die, from seeing the Eiffel Tower to hiking the Grand Canyon?
But what about a Christian’s bucket list? What should it entail? Paul’s letter to the Colossians offers several important things to consider when creating your own bucket list. “Set your mind on things above,” he advises, “not on earthly things” (3:2). This axiom seems like simple enough advice, until you read his further definition of those things above as opposed to the things of this world.
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry,” Paul admonishes (3:5). For those who have died to the earthly nature when they asked for Christ to be their Savior and now walk with the Indwelling Holy Spirit, these may seem like big picture evils that are usually on the radar to avoid. But for God, all sins are equal. Only we humans have graded them as better or worse.
Paul makes the extent of our requirements to the good even more specific when he writes, “But now you must rid yourself of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its evil practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (3:8-10). The bar is raised to what can only seem impossibly high standards to mere mortals, but which is all possible through Christ.
Does your bucket list include to-dos like kind words, good deeds, self-sacrifices, and speaking in truth? Does it include volunteer work and using the gift(s) God gave you for the purpose to which He gave it? If my eyes are truly on things that are above, will it really matter if I see Disneyland as long as I have a neighbor who is hurting and needs my help? Shouldn’t my greatest glory be God’s greatest glory?
That’s easier said than done in a world where those who have material things are looked upon with awe and wonder. But when we realize that material things are meaningless to God, just think of the peace of mind and the endless opportunities that open up for us on this earth, and in the heavenly kingdom to come.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

Pleading the Fifth?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

One of my mother’s most cringing stories from her childhood involves the time when she got caught trying a smoke for the first time and was dragged to the front of the entire congregation that Sunday by her mother (who smoked, by the way) to confess her sin.
But she never took up the habit.
My Bible reading this week included James 5, where we are reminded that we are forgivable and are therefore instructed to “confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. . . .”
I could be wrong, but I think it may be hard to find a church body where sins are regularly confessed amongst each other. I’m not saying the modern church doesn’t support each other. I am saying that even in a small modern church, not to mention the huge, popular churches that are the sizes of some small towns, it would be difficult to find an environment in which we could be so vulnerable. What would we do if we spent a chunk of each time together exposing the core of what makes us human? What would it do for us to hear our own sin confessed before fellow travelers, witnessing in their eyes the compassion and horror that we should feel about ourselves as we fall short of God?
What would happen, for instance, if one part of service involved everyone speaking aloud their sins of the past week, a cacophony of confession that only a God as powerful as the One we claim could understand? The idea brings to mind the gathering of the Israelites in the book of Nehemiah. The people have been scattered from their homeland under the Babylonians for generations. Finally, under the Persians, they are allowed to return to their homeland and begin to rebuild their temple and their defensive walls around the city of Jerusalem, not without tremendous obstacles. As the work is being completed, the entire community gathers to read the Law and confess their sins, standing for hours as Nehemiah leads them in this group effort at redemption.
When was the last time you were in a situation where you were made to utter something aloud that you hesitated to speak about? Why did you hesitate? When you finally said the words, how did you feel? Did the world end? Did whatever you feared actually happen, and was it as bad as you thought?
God wants us to confess our sins to Him. Through Christ, we are promised forgiveness when we truly repent, no matter what we have done. Have you truly repented of something that you haven’t said aloud to yourself, much less somebody else?
And just what is the end result of all this confession? James tells us that, too, at the end of verse six: “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
“No man is an island” as the poet says. We all function more effectively in community, even when it comes to doing one of the hardest things a human ever does, admitting when we are wrong.
Wherever two or three believers gather, He is there. Can you find just one more person of belief this week to share your confessions with, as James admonishes? Think about what kind of difference it could make for you and for the person with whom you share.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity, Faith

Time to Grow

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

How many times do you make a big decision in your life and only remember to pray about it afterwards? Even when you pray about big decisions you are trying to make, how much of the “answers” you receive are really just a reflection of what you wanted all along? How do we know that we’ve gotten any kind of true answer at all?
I think about these issues when I am faced with life’s big questions–new house, new job, relationships, big expenditures–but what about the everyday decisions I make so quickly, I wonder if I thought at all? Do daily prayers that include generalized statements like, “Your will be done,” really cover the bases?
Sometimes, I envy those who lived in the time of the ancients when signs from God were an actual occurrence for the truly faithful, like dew on fleece or the discernible whisper in the wind. I do not envy those living in the four hundred years of silence between Malachi and the arrival of Christ. How desolate life must have been when God kept Himself from even the prophets, especially in a world not yet saved by the blood of Christ.
But in a world where we have daily access to the great Intercessor, how human of us to take that great gift for granted. Jeremiah 17:9 reminds us that “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” How many times do we hear an answer from God that our heart has actually given us instead? If we do not temper our decisions with a strong foundation in the actual word of God, peacefully studied throughout life so that when moments of upheaval which call for decisions to be made actually come we are duly prepared, we will be more than vulnerable to the trap of thinking with our heart and not the Spirit that should truly guide us. Those who think with the heart believe they are validated in hurting others when they too are miserable, jumping out of marriages, for example, because God would want them to be happy. As Philip Yancey has pointed out, among other great Christian writers I am sure, God is not interested in our happiness so much as our salvation. The narrow road is often much less happy than the wide path, but much more peaceful in the end, and full of wonder.
Growth in life cannot come without pain, for how would we really understand joy if we had not also experienced loss? But growth also cannot come without being wholly committed to God, everyday, with every decision, in thankfulness for the Holy One.