Holy Spirit

Godly Sorrow

~ Heather Davis ~ 6 Comments

Ever since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, rumors of possible revival are simmering in various places. I admit I am cautiously excited. However, this excitement is tempered by an understanding of the abject depravity of my fellow humans, self included. We are beings easily led by our emotions, but when those feelings fade, often so does our loyalty, inspiration, and yes, even our faith. What we need is not impassioned sentiment but genuine godly sorrow.

“As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us” (2 Corinthians 7:9).

Sorrow and grief over our wicked propensities is not where God wants to leave us, but it is the beginning of the transformation we must undertake to be truly useful to him. And here it is where the Great Shepherd ends up sorting the sheep from the goats, because not all people who hear the good news of the Kingdom of God will experience true godly grief.

There is another kind of sorrow, a subtle but dangerous mimic: worldly grief.

“For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:9-10).

As we take a hard look into the darkness of our own hearts, do we truly see the perversion there? Do we grasp the vast gulf between our degenerate state and the perfection of a holy God? If we do, godly grief comes of its own accord, and although painful, it is good. Godly sorrow is the lancing of the infected wound so it can drain and heal. Freedom from the infection of sin comes through the agony of first excising the rotten portion of our hearts. It hurts, but it’s a pain bringing with it an incredible relief.

With true godly sorrow for our sin, we are driven to turn away from the darkness, repelled by it, rethinking our lives and motives and everything. Godly sorrow turns us completely around away from self-focus and sin-focus to face the Living God. And we are undone by His majesty and kindness, for in place of the hollowness sin leaves behind, He offers us forgiveness, total healing, and a sure hope for a future brimful of joy.

But worldly grief is a different thing. The sorrow of the world is either a false sorrow or it is a sorrow that feeds on itself.

False sorrow leads to false conversion, the seed sown on rocky or thorny ground, the “faith” springing up with joy at the good news but turning away because of persecution or being choked out by pleasures, worries, wealth, hardship, life. False, worldly grief is as temporary as it is shallow, quick to come and as quick to ebb; a feelings-based or even attention-based lip service to God that never reaches the heart or results in a changed person.

Besides this false grief, there is another worldly sorrow, one more closely resembling true godly grief and yet masking a fiendish self-focus. This type is the grief that turns inward, fixated on the horribleness of self and refusing to turn outward and gaze upon the glorious Savior with healing in His wings.

Worldly sorrow either lies and only pretends to accept the gift of salvation, or it gnaws itself endlessly until nothing is left, spurning the gift of forgiveness offered by the King.

Either way, death is the result, because only in the transformation brought about by turning to God and surrendering to His way of being is real life found. The Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Life. Death holds sway everywhere else.

And there is only one Door into this Kingdom. The only way a wicked human being can enter is by turning to the Christ, the Son of God who was sent into the world to live a life with no need of sorrow over sin because He never sinned. The Door to the Kingdom is Jesus, and there is no other way in. We enter the Kingdom covered by the righteousness of the Christ or we do not enter it at all.

We who, in godly sorrow, turn our backs to our sin may now march right through the Door, frame soaked by the blood of a spotless Lamb, and enter into a Kingdom like no other. A Kingdom that is among us and yet is not yet fully realized; a Kingdom where tension between sin and holiness, life and death, will last a little while more but where ultimately sin, darkness, and death will be overthrown and swallowed up by joy, light, and life.

A Kingdom all are invited to enter, but only some will be willing to part with the sin they hold so dear.

Will you come? Will you abandon yourself to godly sorrow so you may be saved from certain death and given over to the promise of pleasures forevermore and abundant joy at the right hand of God? Friend, I hope you will. Godly sorrow may bring weeping during the night of this world, but joy is sure to come in the morning of the Great Day of the Lord.

Where Else

~ Heather Davis ~ 6 Comments

When a person’s best efforts to serve God faithfully fall short; when life feels lonely and purposeless, your back is raw from cross-carrying, and the ministries you poured your heart and soul and everything into crash and burn, it’s tempting to wonder if the Lord really does care. Do our efforts really matter? Is all the sacrifice really worth it? At such times, only one thing stops me from quitting: I know Jesus has the words of eternal life. Where else can I go?

After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.  So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”  Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,  and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:66-69 ESV).

Even if I don’t always like the truth, it remains true.

But in all honesty, every season of trial and every dark valley I’ve walked through in life was followed by a new dawn. There are moments of rest, refreshing, and joy. Even so, the times of failure and heartache often cast long shadows.

The truth is, my call was never to make something of myself, nor indeed to make something of my children (although I desperately wanted to make them dedicated heart, mind, and soul to Christ). My call was never to comfort, convenience, or even what the world calls success. My call was – and is – to die to myself; to take up my cross daily and follow Jesus. No matter what the outcome.

Cold comfort, maybe, but comfort nonetheless because it is true.

But then, there’s the beautiful part of Truth – it IS true. Even when my hopes, dreams, and efforts have collapsed into ash and ruin, there is always a light breaking into the darkness of the tomb; a breath of hope amidst the stench of death: none of this is forever.

No pain, no failure, no sorrow or suffering will last forever. Even if the last lap of my life yields only more failure, so long as I have Christ, it is enough.

There will come a day when living no longer means pain, fruitless toil and wasted time, lonesome weariness and grief. The tiny speck of my earthly labors will be swallowed up by Life – eternity in the presence of the Glorious One.

Where else would I go? Nowhere.

Even when the way is hard and dark and full of sorrow, there is nowhere else I would rather be nor path I would rather take, because no other road leads Home.

40 Day Feast

~ Heather Davis ~ 4 Comments

I tried something new over Lent this year. Rather than fast from food, I fasted from social media, which is not novel in itself. The new part was adding in a Lenten feast. For forty days, I replaced any entertainment (fiction books, movies, shows, etc.) with reading God’s Word. All of it. I had a 40 day feast on the Word of Life.

The number 40 appears in several places throughout the Scriptures, often expressed as a period of 40 days and nights or 40 years. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but the following examples will demonstrate my point:

  • In Genesis 7, rain fell for 40 days and nights
  • The Israelites and Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness
  • Moses spent 40 years in Pharaoh’s household
  • Moses also spent 40 days and nights fasting on Mount Sinai and receiving the Torah. Twice.
  • Joshua, Caleb, and the spies explored Canaan for 40 days
  • Several of the judges were in charge for 40 years
  • Elijah walked 40 days and nights to the Mountain of God
  • Ezekiel bore Judah’s sin for 40 days
  • God gave Ninevah 40 days to repent
  • Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness fasting and being tempted by the accuser
  • After His resurrection, Jesus appeared to people over a 40 day period

Early in my walk with God, the idea of reading the Bible in 40 days morphed into a life goal. Early attempts when my kids were young fell prey to the reality of not even having “entertainment time” to sacrifice – the kids were my entertainment for many years. Then when they got a little older, chronic illness derailed me for a season.

Not to mention, I first tackled the task without any semblance of a plan or daily goals.

This year was different. Although I’m in school, my schedule is flexible. My kids are grown and either in college or beginning careers. My illness is under control and symptoms have stabilized. I actually have time to read for pleasure, so I just shifted that time to reading my Bible. I also prayed for a full week that the Lord would help me to not only do it, but pay attention as I read.

By His grace, I got through the entire Bible in 40 days, beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Sunday, April 13.

The experience profoundly impacted my thinking on Bible reading. I realized how many connections I’ve overlooked because I read a chapter or two at a time rather than whole books. And I know of the few I noticed, there are several I missed.

Some of these threads, I documented on a slip of paper tucked between the pages for future reference. It’s a list I look forward to adding to and exploring.

I may or may not read through the Bible in 40 days again,  but I will absolutely carve out time to read larger sections – a quarter to half a book for the longer works; a complete epistle in one sitting (as they were meant to be read), ideally at least once a week in addition to my normal reading.

In between, I’m excited to pull those threads and follow them where they lead.

Now more than ever, I relish the astonishing fact that the Creator of all that is left this intricate, compelling, and beautiful Book so I can get to know Him here. The more time I spend in its pages, the more the Spirit helps me in “increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:10).

Not only that, but also through His Living Word, God gradually restores in me the original design, transforming me from a wreckage of sin and sorrow, conforming me more and more to the image of His Son, and preparing me to spend all of eternity with Him.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in his work, Life Together, “The Holy Scriptures do not consist of individual sayings, but are a whole and can be used most effectively as such. The Scriptures are God’s revealed word as a whole. The full witness to Jesus Christ the Lord can be clearly heard only in its immeasurable inner relationships, in the connection of Old and New Testaments, of promise and fulfillment, sacrifice and law, Law and Gospel, cross and Resurrection, faith and obedience, having and hoping.”

Amen.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:10-11, ESV

Less Popular Perspectives on God’s Call

~ Heather Davis ~ 2 Comments

Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation…” (Genesis 15:13-16, ESV).

Besides the usual seasonal blahs I associate with Tennessee’s grey January weather, I’m coping with a (thus far, blessedly mild) return of a few ME symptoms, a rather barren season of life, and a dose of reality that led to the digital sulks permeating my last post. I feel it critical to state that my own lament, like most of the laments in the Psalms, does not reflect a turning away from God and His goodness, but a pressing into Him even in moments where I can’t see, feel, touch, taste, or otherwise sense His goodness. In my continued Scripture reading and prayer, He reminds me of the less popular truths behind His call.

Bleak seasons are a reminder that God is good because goodness is His nature, not because of what He does or does not do. His goodness has nothing to do with my subjective feelings about either Him or my circumstances.

As I’ve pondered my own understanding of God’s call to write about what He teaches me and His work in my life, it occurred to me how much of my own expectations I added to the call. My sense of failure isn’t God’s fault – it’s mine. He never promised anything; He just gave me a directive.

I embellished it. I see my Western background showing up clearly here.

You see, historical Middle Eastern peoples did not necessarily think of “God’s promises and call to me,” so much as “God’s promise and call to my house (my clan, my family, my people).” It’s a nuance most of us overlook in the hyper-individualistic West, but one worth examining.

When God calls us to do something, He doesn’t necessarily mean we will soon enjoy the fruits of our labors. Indeed, often our lives on earth may end before our cultivated areas bud, much less produces ripened fruit. His plan is much more far-reaching than our feeble little lives; a fact we easily overlook or forget.

We can see this in Abraham’s life. God promised Abraham many things – an heir, the land of Canaan, that all nations of the world would be blessed through him. Still, Abraham waited around 25 years1 between the promise of an heir and the birth of Isaac, the son of the covenant. The only land he owned in Canaan was the cave and field2 of Machpelah where he and Sarah were buried, and the Blessing for all the nations of the world would not come for another 2,000 years or so3.

Then there’s Moses, the lawgiver and the shepherd of Israel through the decades of wilderness wandering. Although his calling was incredible, like many of us, his obedience was less than perfect. His was the privilege of leading God’s people out of Egypt, yet while he was allowed to see the Promised Land from a mountain, he did not set a mortal foot inside its borders4.

There are many other examples – these are just the two that come most readily to mind. It’s not a popular view, but it is important to remember that God’s promises and call do not come with a guarantee of worldly success. They DO come with a promise of His presence, His glory, His purpose, and His goodness.

Sometimes I lose sight of the truth that He is my shield and my great reward. God Himself is the reward, not the fruit of my labors nor the gifts He gives. Just Him. Which is more than I deserve.

Even so, He blesses me in small ways to remind me that His love, while broader in scope than my tiny imagination can cope with, is also quite personal. Today, my King blessed my bird nerdiness with a beautiful surprise right in the middle of my communion with Him.

And I am reminded His ways are not my ways; His thoughts are not my thoughts. I am humbled, content, and grateful to play even a small, invisible part in the work of a Kingdom crossing all barriers of geography, ethnicity, and even time.

When I think of it in those terms, how silly it seems to imagine my part as anything more than a trifling contribution to a magnum opus far beyond any mortal scope.

  1. See Genesis 15:2-4; 16:15-17:1; 18:10; 21:1-5 ↩︎
  2. See Genesis 23:17-20; 25:9-10 ↩︎
  3. Matthew 1 ↩︎
  4. Exodus 34 ↩︎

Half a Century | A Reflection

~ Heather Davis ~ 1 Comment

On March 10, 1974, a tiny human protested the forceful eviction from the warmth of her first home into a cold shock of light and noise.

That is to say, this past March, I turned 50. Oddly enough, checking the box labeled 50-59 doesn’t make me feel as old as the day one of my kiddos (then in middle school) exclaimed in utter disbelief, “You were born in the 1900s?!?” (emphasis unfortunately hers).

Yes. Yes, I was. Thanks for pointing it out.

Born in the 1900s, I am a member of Gen X who worked 40 hours a week during high school, began paying rent at the age of 19, and out of sheer stubborn, stupid pride, shouldered a variety of adult responsibilities and challenges that would probably cast many of today’s young people into a state of horrified catatonia at the mere suggestion. And I didn’t even have social media to document the trauma.

My earliest memories are rather vague: my great-grandfather, who shared his birthday with me, bending over and opening his arms wide; my great-grandmother lying oh-so-still in a bed; my dear Mammaw standing up from a rocking chair, sobbing with a tissue to her face, and walking toward my mama. These are shadowy pictures of great-grandparents; people who passed into eternity before I turned three.

Another early pictorial memory is of a smiling lady with short, dark hair. I recall her taking my hand in the church nursery and lead me out into the parking lot, where we were joined by a pair of trousered legs to her right. Then, the hand holding mine abruptly let go. Afterward, only vague, mixed-up images and a recollection of terror: a sense of being very, very alone and fear as a large car passed very close to me. Somehow being found by a kind older lady. Then – oh joy! – my mama bolting toward me, black hair streaming behind her.

Years later, my family filled in the gaps of this wordless memory, and I learned how close I’d come to leading a very different life. This was my brush with trafficking.

The more concrete memories began when I started school, and I won’t bore you with them. However, I am fascinated to think back on how the world has changed. For example, I began school in first grade, before mandatory kindergarten; a fact I recalled in high school when reading Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

“The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That’s why we’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re almost snatching them from the cradle.”

Excerpt from Captain Beatty’s monologue; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Both my grade school experience and this quote leapt to mind the first time a younger mom confided to me during my homeschool days how she worried her 3-year-old wouldn’t be prepared for kindergarten if she couldn’t afford preschool.

How susceptible we are to suggestion…

Still, I’ve enjoyed a rich half century filled with highs, lows, in-betweens, fascinating people, and beautiful sunsets. I’ve seen certain fashions cycle through cool -> dated -> laugh-inducing -> cool.

I’ve shed tears and shared laughs; I’ve followed my heart into a cramped & stifling chamber of horrors; I’ve visited the depths of despair and found God there waiting to bring me home.

Then there are the crazy technological changes I’ve experienced, especially in telephone tech:

  • The rotary dial phone with its restraining cords redeemed by the gratifying wham-ching! of the angry hang-up. Bonus: these babies doubled as formidable weapons.
  • The first push button phones = less time to dial + retaining the pleasures of slamming the handset into the cradle.
  • The wonders of the first cordless phone and testing the bounds of its range before losing the connection. Sometimes you could even make it to the mailbox!
  • The advent of call waiting and caller ID – and screening calls.
  • The first cell phones for rich folk and doctors; monstrosities about the size of a brick.
  • The first time I saw a grandparent Face Timed into his grandkid’s birthday party brought a sense of Star Trek come to life.
  • Then there’s today, where people who can’t even afford milk still manage to pay their monthly cell phone bill. Formidable weapon turned formidable distraction.

<Random Phone-related Memory>

Waiting tables in the 1990s: one afternoon, the hostess led a party of four to their lunch table, each member of the party clutching their 90’s-era cell phones to their ear. The dining room din quieted for a moment, followed by a single snicker. Soon, the whole room was filled with poorly-stifled laughter as the four red-faced businessfolk quickly ended their calls and hid behind their menus.

<Cut to Modern Restaurant Lunch Scene>

Several people are staring at their phones while the hostess seats a party of four who have Bluetooth earbuds in, unobtrusively finishing their calls. All four send a text from their watch before using their phones to scan the QR code and read the menu onscreen. No one notices because this has become normal. And yet, despite the physical proximity of diners remaining the same as in the 90s, there is a vast and subtle social distance surrounding each one.

<Back to the Present Reflection>

Even email, now pervaded with marketing and scams, began as something different. I remember a time one checked emails on occasion via dial-up, hoping to hear the cheery voice proclaim, “You’ve got mail!” – and the email was from an actual, flesh-and-blood acquaintance.

I could go on, but I won’t. There is so much; far too much.

Yet what amazes me most in this last half-century is how God has shored me up through it all. From the moment He sent an older lady out for air at the exact moment a strange couple had spirited three-year-old me half-way through the church parking lot through the times I rejected Him and embraced the values of secular humanism all the way to the moment I recognized those values left me with a life bereft of meaning.

He’s seen me through a long season of intense physical pain and fatigue due to chronic, intractable migraine and post-viral syndrome. What’s more, He even sustained me enough to lay an educational foundation for my three children (then homeschooled), enabling all three to graduate from a private high school with honors and do well in college. The eldest just graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering. The two young ladies will graduate in 2025 with degrees in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Pre-physical Therapy respectively.

Since I was operating in a semi-conscious pain haze during most of their homeschooled years, I cannot claim credit for one bit of it.

Even better, two have maintained their relationship with God through college and the one who ventured away seems to be returning to the Truth that sets free. Only God can do this; I got more wrong in my part than I did right.

And today, the same God is sustaining me through a new season – a season of renewed health and reduced physical pain; a season of reevaluation and reflection. A season of burying the corpses of dreams and mourning what could have been.

Even in this season of upheaval and change, God is good; my Sustainer, my Counselor, and my King. Every moment of pain has only made Him more real, and so I bless His Name for all of the last half century – the good, the bad, and the truly terrible.

In seasons of joy and wonder, I am reminded these are mere glimpses of the true joy and wonder of eternal life in the presence of my King. And in seasons of suffering, loss, or disillusionment, He prompts me to remember this world is not my home as He removes all entanglements out of His lovingkindness.

No matter what the next few years or decades bring, I know I can rest in the completed work of Jesus Christ, my King; for in Him, my sins are forgiven and my future secure. Everything else is just another stepping stone toward glory.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
(Romans 5:1-5)

Choosing Life

~ Heather Davis ~ Leave a comment

Moses was nearing the end of his substantial ministry, preparing to hand leadership off to Joshua, and getting the descendants of Israel ready to take possession of the land promised to Abraham many generations before. In light of his, Moses had just finished reiterating the entire covenant between God and His chosen people so they would go in with a clear understanding of what it looked like to keep their end of the promise. In short, Moses offered them a choice between life and death.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days…
(Deuteronomy 30:19-20)

Note: I highly recommend reading all of Deuteronomy 30, but this is the gist.

Today, of course, believers are under a new covenant promise; a covenant bought and sealed by the priceless blood of the Divine Lamb of God who lived out that perfect obedience to God’s covenant law, laid down His life to pay the penalty for our rebellion, and took His life up again so all who put their trust in the sufficiency of His sacrifice may be set free from slavery to sin.

Because of Jesus and His sacrifice, we are given an opportunity at a new life, being remade in Him. Further, His gift of the Holy Spirit makes it possible for us to choose life. Yet obedience is still necessary for us. Indeed, Jesus equates our love for Him with our obedience to His commands many times in John 14.

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
(John 14:21)

And while it is popular in some circles to say we are “free from the law,” it is more accurate to say we are free from certain specific constraints of the first covenant meant for Israel before the first advent of her Messiah. We are not free to do as we wish; certainly if we belong to Jesus, we are not free to sin but free to escape from sin.

We are still liable to a moral law, one which Jesus actually accentuates rather than diminishes. For example, Jesus not only says we should not commit adultery, but that we should not even look lustfully at another person. He doesn’t just say, “Don’t murder,” but instructs us not to be angry with our brother – in fact, to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He calls us not to mere obedience but perfection (see Matthew 5:21-48).

This is what I want to hone in on. When it comes to a modern understanding of sin and obedience, I think we get a little confused. We look at a specific sin and think, “Well, at least it’s a small sin. It’s not something really bad, like murder.”

Or we hold our sin up against cultural norms and think it used to be sin but maybe it isn’t anymore. Perhaps God changed His mind, or maybe humans have progressed in our understanding of sin, or maybe it’s simply outdated to think of certain actions as sinful.

We think we’re comparing good and bad or better and best. But in reality, we are still comparing life and death.

Even though Moses was talking to an ancient people about a specific covenant between their nation and a holy God, the principle of what he says still remains. Brothers and sisters, when we weigh obedience to Christ’s holiness against conformity to our culture, we are still choosing between life and death, blessing and curse.

For the love of the One who gave all so we might have His righteousness, and also because I love and care about your eternal well being, my friends, I implore you: choose life.

Darkness, Light, and Subjective Morality

~ Heather Davis ~ 2 Comments

As our 8:45 p.m. flight took off, I watched the ground fall away through the airplane window. The ambient brightness of the city at ground level faded quickly. Night encroached. In my bird’s-eye view, large pools of light pushed back the darkness as we gained altitude, soaring over stadiums, shopping malls, office complexes, and street lights. The further from the city we journeyed, the more feeble the pools of light became and the more prominent the surrounding darkness grew. An apt visual metaphor for subjective morality.

We were heading home from a brief visit with family members who do not have (so far as I can tell) a thriving relationship with the living God. During the visit, I was told about the kids’ “religious classes,” and one of said kids informed me on Sunday, “We don’t have to go to church.” God’s name was invoked in the standard secular way along with a string of other words my husband and I have allowed the Holy Spirit to excise from our vocabularies.

But more telling was the fruit. The desperate striving to be a “good person” on a sliding scale of virtue. Anger when one has been hurt by the actions of another, but justifying similar actions in oneself.

I hate him because of what he did to me; when I did it, it was for a good reason. It was different.

Justice struggling to find footing on an unstable, convulsing foundation of right vs. wrong. A steady undercurrent of fear and uncertainty and thinly-veiled shame. Palpable darkness seeping in at the edges.

It’s a world I used to embrace, and the reminder left me both sorrowful and grateful.

I am deeply grieved for loved ones still imprisoned by the deceitfulness of sin. Yet I am grateful for the One who healed my spiritual blindness and shined the light of Yeshua (Jesus), opening my eyes to the singular Way of escape from my self-constructed cage of sin, guilt, and evil.

I glanced back out the window. Only pinpricks of light appeared below now, far-flung and lonely in the inky blackness of the night.

All our human effort to eradicate the darkness of sin – whether the poison within own rebellious hearts or the evil stalking us from without – are like those dwindling lights.

At ground-level in a large crowded city, all seems well. Our self-made righteousness blends in, and while we may be doing worse than some, at least we’re faring better than others. One can think of the darkness as somewhere out there, far away. OK, maybe I’ve been around the block more than once, but at least I’m not a murderer.

In the throng, it’s easy to fit in. Easy to hide.

But when we’re alone, the darkness looms and our good works flicker like a lit match in a drafty room. There’s no real warmth, little light to see by, and nowhere to run when the light is snuffed.

We can try to push back the darkness on our own, but we’ll never get far. A centimeter, a meter, maybe a little more, but our little circle of good works quivers as hungry shadows press in from all sides, waiting. Unrelenting. Inexorable.

No matter how good we try to be, we can never do enough good to erase the evil we’ve done. Instead, our good deeds only serve to highlight the murkiness of our motives and the taint upon our souls. The dim light we produce is shot through with shades of inadequacy.

On our own, we’re caught in a losing battle of push-and-shove against our very nature. We cannot rescue ourselves from this losing battle; we can only prolong the inevitable moment when the darkness forever swallows our faint gleam.

But there is hope. There is a true and effulgent Light of the World powerful enough to banish darkness; a Light that heals and cleanses and restores and renews. And He has a name.

Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. . . (Ephesians 5:7-11).

Friend, if you’re caught in the flickering and uncertain light of subjective morality, this is an invitation to you. There is a real Light, a true and powerful Light unconquerable by the darkness. His Name is Yeshua, commonly called Jesus in English. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the light of truth He brings is strong enough to scour the deepest and oldest stains from your very soul if you will turn your back on your sin and run into the light of His love and grace.

His morality is true Light, and while He knows we can never measure up to God’s standard of perfect holiness, He offers Himself as a bridge. Through His torn body, we can cross over from darkness to light, from death to life.

There, in the powerful Light of Truth from whence the Glory of God shines, the stains of our rebellion are scoured away. He’s given us the Word of Truth, and by its light we see Light. All our horrible secrets are laid bare, but in that pure light, they are exposed to be excised by the Healer of our souls.

But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Ephesians 5:13-14).

In Yeshua, we are restored to what we ought to be and have no more need of fallible, artificial lights of our own making. In Him and through Him, the full radiance of righteousness shines.

He is the only way; humanity’s only hope. But we must make a choice. We must choose Him; His way of sacrifice, letting go what we once were to become what He created us to be.

Step into the Light, let Christ shine on you, and find joy and peace, healing and wholeness, and rest for your soul.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, 
but in order that the world might be saved through him.  
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, 
but whoever does not believe is condemned already, 
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, 
and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 
For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God" (John 3:16–21).

Homeschool Advice Part 8 | Stay Engaged

~ Heather Davis ~ Leave a comment

Once again, this advice is for all parents, not just homeschoolers. Whether your kids are never out of your sight or you hardly see them; whether they receive their schooling directly from you, from a public school, private school, or a hybrid; literally no matter what is going on in your life with children, the advice is the same: stay engaged.

I know firsthand how tempting it can be to zone out during your homeschool day. Especially once your children reach the age where you become more educational facilitator than hands-on teacher, it’s easy to just let them go do their thing and assume all is well.

Resist this temptation.

Instead, stay engaged in the educational process. Initiate discussions. Ask questions. Have your learners repeat the information they are reading out loud. Not only will this simple practice keep you fully connected with their strengths and weaknesses, it will help them retain their lessons. It is wholly worth the extra few minutes.

Avoid Easy Buttons

Another bit of advice in this realm: don’t waste one of the greatest assets you have as a homeschooler – the ability to review mistakes made in homework. In my words: never waste a good mistake. All mistakes are fantastic opportunities to learn. So, don’t hit the easy button and just discard your kids’ work. Stay engaged in the entire process of learning, grading, and reviewing.

I recommend what I did – grade your children’s homework daily, then take time to go over not only what they missed but why they missed it. Sure, it takes extra effort on your part, but I promise the benefits for them vastly outweigh the inconvenience to you.

This process of reviewing missed problems or questions allows your children the enormous blessing of learning from their mistakes. Plus, it keeps you accountable for not letting things slide on the administrative end.

Win-win.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Colossians 3:17).

Another easy button to avoid is entertainment in the car. Those trips to and from activities or field trips provide excellent opportunities for conversation. You have a captive audience – as long as you don’t surrender your kids’ attention to technology.

By God’s grace, I avoided the use of technology in the car until my kids were nearly college-aged, and as a result, I was blessed with a multitude of incredible teachable moments and deep conversations. It always amazed me what would come up naturally in the course of passenger-seat conversations.

I still treasure our many (often hilarious) car-ride convos and have never once regretted leaving the distractions behind. To this day, my now college-aged kids prefer chatting in the car to zoning out on their devices when we are driving together.

Deadlines

One critical commitment you must make as the homeschool teacher is enforcing firm deadlines. When my kids were still babies, I began to research the pros and cons of homeschooling. I learned one of the most often reported complaints from colleges was the inability of homeschoolers to meet deadlines.

(And yes, I did in fact contact college admissions departments before my oldest turned four…)

As a Christian, this deadline failure ought to be an ouch moment.

Think of it this way – instead of demonstrating reliability, trustworthiness, and faithfulness, homeschoolers instead present a lax, disrespectful, and slovenly attitude toward other people’s time. An inability to meet deadlines and keep appointments displays a lack of integrity. It is both rude and irresponsible.

Not only would such a failing reflect poorly on your student, it dishonors our Lord. As Christians (homeschooling or no), we bear Christ’s name. Because of this, we are His ambassadors; thus, we should strive to do whatever it takes to make Him look good – reflecting His integrity and excellence to a watching world.

Even if it means doing hard, inconvenient tasks in our homeschool days.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:20).

On a practical level, think of what failing to enforce deadlines teaches your student about the real world. When rent or the electric bill comes due, deadlines become quite important. If your student goes to college, they will need to submit their work on time. If they enter the work force, they will still be required to show up on time and meet goals or target dates for their work.

Slippery deadlines are a HUGE temptation as a homeschooler. Yet I urge you – do not be careless with this vital skill. It has far too many real-world ramifications.

When you’re tempted to “show grace” on a deadline, imagine a doctor rolling in a couple of hours after the scheduled surgery while you lay prepped on the table or an electrician putting off an appointment to fix a smoking outlet for a week or two. Then be firm and hold your students accountable.

Homeschooling as a Job

One major way to keep yourself engaged is to treat homeschooling (or parenting) like a “real” job – even though it is a job you pay to do rather than getting paid.

Think of it as your full-time career with the Lord as your boss – because, well, that’s exactly what is going on if you are called to homeschool.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ (Colossians 3:23-24).

With this in mind, imagine your response if you sent your kids to a public or private institution and discovered the teachers were busy scrolling Instagram, never bothered to look over homework, or just decided to take the day off and watch movies once or twice a week.

Most of us would be outraged to discover this was going on in school, yet we find it all too easy to excuse the exact same behaviors in ourselves! Not cool.

Your kids’ education and well-being is worth the effort it takes for you to do the job well – not perfectly, of course, but to the best of your ability.

Don’t underestimate the trickle-down effect of slack behavior. If you demonstrate negligence, your kids will pick up the cue that cutting corners or scrimping on quality is an acceptable way of living life. Instead, model hard work, integrity, and personal sacrifice for the sake of God’s ways so they learn to do the same.

Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys (Proverbs 18:9).

Stay Engaged in Kingdom Work

Finally, stay engaged and look for gospel opportunities throughout your day. Homeschooling is not only about educating your child’s mind but also about discipling his heart. It is Kingdom work, and it is work with an eternal impact.

Keep the Word of God foremost in all you do. Look for chances to point out God’s work in your daily life, and draw attention to evidence of His mercy, grace, and goodness. Exalt Him wherever possible, even in the mundane details of your homeschool.

Final Thoughts

While it seems as if these years will drag on forever, they won’t. Your time with your children is precious and limited. Don’t squander it. All of the advice I’m writing out comes from a place of mingled regret where I failed and joy where I succeeded in my homeschool and parenting.

In homeschooling, I had no mentor, and I learned a great deal from failures. My heart’s desire is to give you a leg up so you can land on the other side with more successes and fewer failures than I. And above all, my hope is God can be glorified through sharing both my mistakes and my successes in homeschooling and beyond.

A Theology Built on Suffering

~ Heather Davis ~ Leave a comment

My walk with the Living God is not your typical Southern I-was-raised-in-church story. Although I did attend church with my family as a child, I didn’t “get it.” Nothing in my childhood Sunday school classes penetrated to the core of my will and reason, and so I was unprepared for the inevitable hardships of life in a sin-wrecked world. I had no theology for suffering.

As a teen and young adult, I adopted a worldview based on atheistic humanism. The problem was, this worldview necessitated I remain busy and preoccupied at all times. Otherwise, the reality of pain, despair, and emptiness would press me in a suffocating embrace. From my godless perspective, suffering was meaningless, and since life held a great deal of suffering, life seemed meaningless to me as well.

Then I met my Creator through His Word, and everything changed. But the verses that first resonated with me were not the standard reassurances of God’s love – the fear nots and the comforting promises of faithful love. To the contrary, the very first Scripture I remember striking a deep chord and reverberating through my brain was from the prophet Isaiah. It was a Scripture about pain.

Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.
(Isaiah 48:10-11)

For the first time in my life, I learned the anguish and angst I’d experienced in life had a purpose. There was meaning in misery; a reason for the suffering.

The craziest idea I’d ever had took hold of me. My pain wasn’t even ultimately about me at all. It was all allowed to occur for God’s glory. And He wasn’t going to share His glory with anyone – not even with me.

In those two verses, read in the context of the entire chapter but impressed into my heart by the Holy Spirit as a personal message, I realized all my life to that point had been a refining process.

The torturous heat I’d felt, sometimes due to my own poor choices and other times inflicted upon me by circumstance, wasn’t merely rotten luck. Instead, the intense heat of anguish melted down every atom of my being in order that the ugliness inside me could be separated and removed.

Even my stupidity, my “looking for love in all the wrong places” and the horrors I’d found in dark corners I never should have probed, was included in the liquefaction. The Great Refiner applied heat to every part of me, discarding what was useless to Him and reshaping the rest into a vessel He could use – for His glory.

My pain was for His glory, and yielded to Him, it became a thing of beauty; a connection point by which I could share my eternal hope in a merciful and magnificent Creator God with others who are wounded and broken by suffering. Life and life’s pain were no longer meaningless.

From these two verses, the Holy Spirit continued to reveal a theology of suffering to me through the Word of God. I was unsurprised to read Paul’s assertion that we should rejoice in our suffering or James’s admonition to “count it all joy… when you meet trials of various kinds” (see Romans 5:2-5 and James 1:2-4).

Nor was I surprised to learn that my salvation was purchased by the suffering of the Son of God, or that my obedience to Him required further suffering. I was simply ecstatic to learn all the pain had a purpose after all.

Homeschool Advice Part 2 | Prioritize Scripture & Prayer

~ Heather Davis ~ Leave a comment

The single most important item you will teach your children is to know and love both God’s Word and its Author. Because all we have comes ultimately from Him, start with prayer. And start with you – learn to spend daily time reading your Bible and talking with God about what He is showing you, even if at first you do it only because you feel you must. Ask Him to open the Word and help you love it, and He will!

When it comes to your children, Scripture training is vital. I’m not saying other subjects are unimportant. Indeed, math, grammar, and reading will lay a firm foundation for further learning, and extra-curricular activities can enhance life.

However, when it comes to setting priorities, I like to use what I call the 100 Year Rule. When making decisions on using the time you have, think about what will matter 100 years from today – not to mention the impossible-to-imagine stretch of eternity beyond. (Hint: it’s what we do for the love of the Lord, and His Word is the tool He’s given us to increase our knowledge of Him).

The grass withers, the flower fades,
    but the word of our God will stand forever (Isaiah 40:8).

The best way to pass on a love for God’s Word is to model it. You cannot pass on what you do not have, so if you do not have a Psalm 119 love for the Bible, pray for it. Ask the Lord to give you and your family a hunger for His Word and wisdom to understand it.

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day (Psalms 119:97).

Then, make the Bible the first thing you read together in the mornings. Memorize it. Take turns reading it aloud. Talk about it. Let the Word of God become a natural topic in your home, and point out how it shows up in daily life. Pray for eyes to see God’s Word in action so you don’t miss it. Pray for understanding of hard passages, for wisdom, for insight; pray for it to become the words of life for you and your family.

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Even while you prioritize time in the Word, don’t neglect to pray fervently and constantly for the hearts and minds of your children. Ask the Lord to do what you cannot and draw them to Himself, to grant them saving faith in His Son Jesus, to give them the Holy Spirit to be their Guide. Pray they will truly love the Lord their God with all that they are.

In all you do, keep eternity in mind and remember that eternity may go on forever, but it begins right now. What better time to start preparing for it?