Blessed Are Those Who Mourn

I have never cried so hard as I did on December 8, 2017.  That was they day my wife delivered our daughter at only 15 weeks.  As I held her tiny body in my hand I saw every possible moment in her life that she would never have a chance to experience.  And even now I would give anything just to hold her once more.  She never got to breath a breath this side of heaven, and I can't wait to hold her again in heaven.  What follows in this post and the next couple to come are going to be my journey through grief and how God has and continues to bring me through.

But first, like the proud daddy I am, I have to share a picture of my beautiful little girl Miracle Faith Farris.  My 5 year old daughter, Sophia, said she is doing the pledge of allegiance and looks like a jelly bean.  So that is our nickname for her.  She is our little jelly bean.

With that stated, in the hospital the Holy Spirit truly illuminated the understanding of a verse I always had glossed over and thought was just stating the obvious.  The verse is from the sermon on the mount and states,

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."  Matthew 5:4

It seems obvious that those who mourn would find comfort in Christ.  However, God reminded me that not all those who mourn look to God for comfort.  But even bigger...the Spirit showed me that to often we have a tendency to run from grief and pain, so if we do that we don't allow ourselves to properly mourn, and if we don't mourn properly...how can we be comforted?

So I let it all out.  I didn't hold back the pain or the heartache that I was feeling.  I fell to the ground on my knees rocking my sweet child and I let the Holy Spirit communicate with God through my bitter tears and sobs.

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God."  Romans 8:26-27

So I want to encourage you, if you are going through a hard time, please don't run from the pain and sorrow.  Instead, run full speed into it with God at your side.  Because even though there will be days that you don't want to get up in the morning because of sadness and pain Christ and His church will be there with you.  They will bring comfort to you and walk with you through this valley of pain.  Don't ignore it because it won't go away until you face it head on.  Don't let grief destroy you...instead allow God to use it to make you stronger and more effective in His Kingdom.

I'll have at least 2 more posts on this subject coming...until then I want to leave you with a song that has brought comfort to me and expresses quite well the emotions I have been feeling.  Thanks to Tracy Lessard for sharing it with me.

Emotional Journey Part 1

Whether you handle them well or poorly, we all experience a wide range of emotions.  The question is how do we deal with those emotions?  My favorite way is to use music and poetry to both express my feelings and to learn how to handle them in a God honoring way.  The music is worship and the poetry/music are the Psalms.

I want to take you on an emotional journey that I went through over the past year and half(ish).  I want to show you how God helped me deal with these through worship music and the Psalms.

Reason 1 - This is me putting a bookend on a series of events.
Reason 2 - I hope that this is helpful to even one other person to help him/her through a difficult period of time.

2014 had two major events that caused turmoil in my family's life.  In the spring I resigned as youth pastor at our church.  Then in September my wife experienced a miscarriage.  So for obvious reasons that year is not a favorite of mine.  However, it is also the cause of great growth in me.

The first emotion I felt after the miscarriage was anger and confusion aimed at God.  Just because you go to seminary and become a pastor does not mean that you are exempt from going through the grieving process.  I withdrew from God for awhile because of my anger, because I knew He was powerful enough to heal and He chose not to do so.

Than the first song of healing entered my life.  Never Once by Matt Redman

Though I owned the album with this song on it over a year before any of this took place, it was during a worship service that I first heard this song and tears came down my face.  God was reminding me that He Never Once Left Me.  He had been holding me in His arms the whole time.  It was the first time since we lost our Annabelle Hope that I felt I was truly able to lift my heart in worship.

And the Psalms reminded me that I am not the only one to ever feel this way.  God reminded me that I was not alone.  This became my prayer:

   “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation” (Psalm 42:5, ESV)  

So no matter what you are experiencing (anger, loss, sadness) put your Hope in God and praise His Mighty Name!

To Be Continued...

Bonus Song That Helped Me...My Hope Is In You by Aaron Shust-

Trashy Christmas Presents

The other day I wrapped gifts and prayed that those who receive them will be blessed and reminded of the love of Christ when opened.  Afterwards, I placed all the packages underneath the tree where they will sit until Christmas Eve/Day.

As I sat looking at the stack of presents on the ground a beautiful passage came to mind for me. 

 Philippians 3:7–9 (ESV) — 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.

The truth is that underneath every Christmas tree is dump heap.  That is in comparison to the riches that we have in Christ.  Now I understand that the context for this passage is about Paul's past and prestigious heritage and not about any current or future blessings.  With that said, it puts the pile of presents in perspective.  It reminds us that these presents are worthless in comparison to love of Christ Jesus.  It also reminds us that God loved us so much that He gave us the greatest present: Jesus!  And now when we receive these gifts/blessings at Christmas time I see it as God showing off.  

So now I ask you to be God's instrument to show off His great love.  Use your time, talent, and/or treasure above and beyond normal this season to show the love of Jesus to someone.  Proclaim the gift of His great love when you give.  Otherwise, we will all just be surrounded by heaps of trashy presents.

Below is one of my favorite Christmas Songs:
The Gift by Randy Travis

Asking For Help

For the last couple weeks I have been going through my apartment looking for a book we checked out from the library.  Last week I realized that we had run out of renewals so I looked online to see how much it would cost to replace the book.  That's when I found out that it is out of print.  As a result, it would cost way more than I would like to replace it.

So one more time I prayed and asked God to let me know if this book could be anywhere else besides our apartment.  That is when the thought came into my head that I needed to go to the library and look for it there.  So the next Tuesday we went to the Library for storytime as usual and I looked for the book hoping that it just didn't get checked in.  I found a copy of the book!  So I took it to the front desk and asked an employee to check if this was checked out to us.  He scanned the book and said it wasn't checked out to anyone.  But again, I believed this to be the book that we checked out so I asked him to please compare the bar code to the book checked out to us.  Low and behold, it was the same book.  Somehow it had got checked in through the system but had not removed the title from our account.  It was a rare and strange glitch.  I praised God at the counter and told the man that I had prayed and God told me to look for the book here.  His response was a bit confused with a smirk.

Now I believe that I forgot about returning that book, along with a plethora of others, and the glitch for two very specific reasons.

1.  That I would have to trust God for help.  I had to call on Him for help and than go a little further in believing what He told me when the system said that the book was not checked out.  It may be easy to say that it is just a little thing, but God cares about the little things such as lost books.  Especially if it helps us learn to talk to Him.  I know that I want my little girl to come to me with anything, big or little.

2.  I believe that the man who worked with me on the situation needed to hear the testimony of God that I shared.  He was a bit confused by it and didn't want to talk about it, but he still heard it.  I don't know if that will lead to him knowing Christ in the future or not.  All I know is that I was being obedient to Christ and that He was proclaimed to someone that didn't know him.

So remember that God cares about the little things just as much as the big things.  And when God answers prayer...share how He worked in your life for the edification of believers and so that He might be glorified before unbelievers.  Because you never know how your story will affect others.

Thank You For Slapping Me...

This year one Psalm has repeatedly shown up in devotionals, sermons, and quiet times.  It is Psalm 141 and it has encouraged and strengthened me.  I'd like to point out just a few of the verses that have impacted me enough to make this my daily prayer.

The first is Vs. 3 & 4:
    “Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips! Do not let my heart        incline to any evil, to busy myself with wicked deeds in company with men who work iniquity,          and let me not eat of their delicacies!” (Psalm 141:3–4, ESV)

For me it is extremely important that God watches over the door of my mouth.  For starters, I am around my little girl all day and I want to make sure that I don't say anything bad around her.  However, this goes far beyond my vocabulary.  It goes to the content and emotion in which these words are spoken.  It is a prayer to keep my anger in check, to make what I say count, and to ensure that it edifies her and others around me.

The second is verse 5:

   “Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it. Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds.” (Psalm 141:5, ESV)  

This is basically stating: Lord if I mess up smack me...I would greatly appreciate it.  

Now why am I appreciating someone calling me out in sin?  It is because if my brothers and sisters in Christ don't confront sin in my life than I will most likely continue on in it and damage my witness for and relationship with Jesus.  So I pray that if you see me in sin, you will, metaphorically, give me a hard and loving smack across the face.  Don't be afraid of my reaction, be afraid of what God will say/do because of your condoning sin.
**Disclaimer: Don't go up to random people on the street or even in church and call out their sin.  This is something that should follow Matthew 18:15-20**

The last is verse 8:

   “But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless!”            (Psalm 141:8, ESV)  

Lastly, I am putting my focus on God and asking Him to be my defender.  I mean, seriously, who better to have your back than God!?  Because I fix my eyes on Jesus every morning, I hope that the smackdowns are few are far apart.  But when they do come I will thankful for them bringing me back onto His path.

I would encourage you to make the entirety of Psalm 141 your prayer for a week and see how it affects your daily life.


And lastly our humor corner:

The video below is from the movie The Blues Brothers.  Warning it does have foul language to prove a point in a comical fashion.  Please bypass if you are worried that this will offend you.

Time Out

Haven't blogged in awhile.  That's a combination of being busy and/or not having anything worth writing about while I had time.  However, that changed the other day while I was working with Sophia to clean up after herself.

It began with a her crayons spilled all over the living room floor.  She didn't want to put them away like I asked her.  I gave her until the count of three or it was timeout.  As you've guessed she ended up in timeout. When she came back to the mess she still did not want to clean up the mess.

As a result, she ended up in timeout a few times.  Finally, I sat in the recliner while she sat on the floor surrounded by crayons and I told her, "We aren't going to do anything else until you clean up the crayons on the floor Sophia.  Now do you need another timeout or will you pick up your crayons."

After this she finally relented and cleaned up her mess of crayons.  While she did cleaned our Heavenly Father had a talk with me.  I was reminded that sometimes when if feels like life isn't moving forward or we are stuck in a rut it is for a reason.  We may be acting in a disobedient manner and not repenting of a specific sin.  It could be that we  are refusing to deal with emotions correctly.  It could even be that we are not submitting to God's plan for our life.

No matter what the issue is, our Father is saying you aren't moving forward to do anything else until we deal with this issue.  Just like I can out wait my darling Sophia, God can out wait us.  So if you feel like you are stuck in a rut/life isn't what you thought it was...talk to God about it.  Ask Him if you are in timeout and why.  Then you can get back to enjoying God, others, and life in general.

P.S.  Don't forget to color something (even without a kid) because it is still fun and relaxing! :-)

Putting Christ Back In Thanksgiving!

Now a days it seems as though the big push for some Christians is to put Christ back in Christmas.  I believe this to be a good and noble cause.  If not I wouldn't have gone to see Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas which is all about that.  Side note: overall it was a good movie.  With that being said I think it is more important for us to worry about putting Christ back in Thanksgiving.  I mean it is already a religious holiday and you are able to Go to a Christmas Eve service at most churches.  It isn't hard to put Christ back in Christmas.  In my opinion the hard part is making sure that we are jerks about how we put Christ back in Christmas.  A large part of that movie.

If you ask people what is the point of Thanksgiving today some may try to tell you about pilgrims surviving a harsh winter.  Most will simply say something simple like food and family.  Instead, I would like to suggest that Thanksgiving should be just as much about Jesus as Christmas morning is about Jesus.

You may be thinking something like, "Okay that's fine and dandy, but how do I do that? We already tell each other something that we are thankful for!"

Well, below are my thoughts on what Thanksgiving with my family/extended family is going to look like this year. (Not necessarily in this order though for family reading this.)

1. Everyone arrives at my sisters house with their food to share and mingles until everyone arrives.
2. We gather together in prayer to thank God for both the blessings this year and for getting us through the hard times we have experienced.
3. After prayer we eat! (I mean you don't want the food to get cold,)
4. While eating let people talk about what they are thankful for and how God has strengthened them through trials. (See previous post.)
5. A little time to enjoy the friends and family God has given us. (During this time I am going to take the kids aside and read the toddlers a simple book about God and thanksgiving.  Later I will read Squanto and The Miracle of Thanksgiving by Eric Metaxas to my niece who is in 3rd grade.)
6. We will gather together to recite a responsive reading and read Psalm 147.  
7. We will then sing a few hymns together praising God for Who He is and all He has done.
8. The last song we will sing will be O Come, O Come, Emmanuel to help usher in the Advent Season.  We will also do an ornament exchange.
9. Lastly, we will relax with one another and slowly leave to go to our own homes.

So those are my thoughts on Thanksgiving and Jesus.  It's not elaborate.  It's not shouting at people. it is about finding a way to praise and honor Christ at home with family.  Now will it be okay if not everything on my list happens?  Of course!  As long as we keep our focus on Jesus we can't go wrong.
 Instead,

I hope and pray that you have a wonderful and Christ Centered Holiday Season!