THE LOVE OF JESUS SHED ABROAD

A number of years ago when I was training to become a Bible Study Fellowship teaching leader I was told that my aim would be to run a tight ship and at the same time, be a tender shepherd to the leaders and women and children who attended our class.  I knew immediately, because I was totally at home with rules and regulations, that I would have no trouble running a tight ship.  Being a tender shepherd, on the other hand, I knew would be a massive challenge. 

The Lord made me an introvert, quiet, shy, reserved, happy keeping my own company.  I have never really been a people person.  When I was growing up, if I had a choice between being with people, or reading a good book, I’d choose the book every time!  When I reached adulthood I would tell people that I would rather give a lecture to a room full of people than have lunch with 4 people I didn’t know.  When it came to people, I always felt love “challenged”. 

So, it did not completely surprise me when after dinner one night during that training week, we were each given a Bible verse, chosen especially for us by the director of BSF, that mine “happened” to be this prayer of the Apostle Paul’s for his Ephesian readers:

“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”   Ephesians 3:16-19

I knew that the difficulty I had in loving others was rooted in my lack of understanding of God’s love for me.  By faith, I knew that the Lord loved me.  There was plenty of evidence of that in God’s Word – beginning with the death of Jesus on my behalf, but in reality, I didn’t see any reason for Him to love ME.  Paul’s prayer was one I wanted the Lord to answer for me as well.  Over the next four years as I served as a teaching leader, the Lord would do exactly that.

Week one of writing weekly lectures and planning weekly training sessions for leaders, plus all the other administrative responsibilities of being a teaching leader, was just the beginning of my realization of just how much out of my depth I was!  The task was WAY too big for me!  Daily, I found myself on my knees crying out to the Lord, acknowledging that I could not do what He had asked me to do unless He helped me every step of the way.  What I wanted was to “feel” better immediately.  What I found myself doing more and more over time was simply worshipping Him.  It was in that way that I began to experience His power, wisdom and love, and begin to grasp, as I focused on HIM, and not my own inadequacy, just how much Jesus loved ME!  I did run a tight ship (as any of the leaders would have told you!), but during those years of waiting on the Lord for what I needed, I was taught by the Holy Spirit Himself to be a worshipper of the Lord in a way I had never known before. 

Miraculously, the more I understood how much Jesus loves me, the more I began to see others the way Jesus saw them.  He loved them too and because His love abided in me, I could love them too.

This week my stint as an English tutor, with the English as a Second Language program offered by our town library, began again.  This year I have 4 Asian ladies. One is continuing on from last year, but the others are new to ESL and very new to the U.S.  These lovely young women really want to become fluent in English, to help their children with their homework and to be able to navigate the phone, shopping, and relating to Americans in their everyday lives.  

Yes, I will be their English tutor, but in MY heart and mind, my role is so much bigger.  I find myself also wanting to be a friend and encourager.  I admire them for accepting the challenge, nearly always due to a husband’s job change, of moving to a country where you do not speak the language.  I don’t know if I could do it!  What an opportunity it affords me for demonstrating the love of Jesus to them, even if I never get to talk to them about Him.  Where did this new love for strangers come from?  Well, from the Lord, of course, answering my prayer to know His love and then giving that out to others.

In my volunteer role with hospice I also received a new assignment this week.  What a blessing to visit this man and his wife, to simply be a companion and give comfort for the brief time I am there.  And then, to have the added blessing of sharing some moments of talking about the Lord with their home care aide, a lovely Christian woman from Kenya.  A few years ago I never would have dreamed I would be comfortable walking into the home of seriously ill people to bring some companionship.  Where did this new ability and love for the dying come from?  I guess you know by now – from Jesus – who shed His love abroad in MY heart through His Holy Spirit.

In thinking back over the last 10 years I realize that I’m not the person I was back then.  The years of being a BSF teaching leader were stressful and anxiety filled, but how faithful the Lord has been to me to make those verses from Ephesians 3 a reality in my heart.  I’m grateful to have had experiences that were so outside my ability and comfort zone that I had to rely totally on the Lord.  In the process, I have learned so much more about just how high, and wide, and deep, and broad the love of Jesus is and in so doing, I’m now able to demonstrate His love to the others He brings across my path.

 

 

 

A SURPRISING CHANGE OF HEART

If you have been following my blogs then you know that Jim and I are planning a move to Florida, hopefully early next fall.  Due to life circumstances, back when the economy fell a few years ago, our daughter Becky, her husband Nathan, and our now 17 year old granddaughter, Emma, have been living with us.  With the advent of Emma’s last year in high school, the time has come to think seriously about a move.  We’ve already started cleaning out filing cabinets and getting ready for the first of many garage sales.  But a move wasn’t always something I anticipated with happiness.

Jim, God bless him, worked hard for more than 40 years for Deloitte, and saved for retirement.  Florida, that income tax free, low property tax, senior friendly state, has been calling his name since the day he closed the door to his office and never looked back.  While he was imagining his stress free life in that “stretch your retirement dollars as far as they can go” mecca, I was digging in my heels in good old New Jersey soil!  I did not want to go to Florida!

All I could think of were the losses.  I would have to leave the state I have called home since I was a baby.  The celebration of the joys of the changing seasons would be a thing of the past.  My loving, supportive, and much loved church family would be left behind.  We’d have to say good-bye to my brother and Jim’s, all still living here in New Jersey.

And then there was the weather!  I hate hot and humid.  My very own internal flame causes me to break out in a sweat in a sub-zero blizzard in January, how would I ever manage when it was ALWAYS hot and humid?

My daughter, Becky, who LOVES Florida in any season, and who plans to move there herself, would give me pep talks whenever I would give verbal vent to my doubts.  She’d remind me of how much better it would be as I got older never to have to shovel a sidewalk again, or tread lightly on ice.  She would remind me that there were also churches in Florida and we would find one and make it home, as we’d done before right here in New Jersey.  And she’d encourage me that before I knew it, I would be making new friends, teaching in a church, or attending a Bible study, or doing something else I loved here in New Jersey – only in Florida.

I grappled with all of it for a long time without letting go of my resentment.  Until I finally took it to the Lord.  Essentially, I said: “You know, Lord that I don’t especially want to go to Florida, but Jim does.  So, Lord, if this is something You want me to do, You’re going to have to change my heart.”

It didn’t happen overnight, but gradually I began to stop thinking only about me and start thinking about Jim.  It would be hard, I think, to find a more hardworking and faithful man when it comes to preparing for the future.  Jim worked long hours at Deloitte, with a 3 hour a day commute for many of the last years and he saved, and saved.  How could I now refuse to consider a move that would enable those retirement dollars to sustain us for even longer because I just didn’t want to go elsewhere?

When my eyes shifted from ME to Jim, my resentment left, and I began to think differently about a move.  I will still find it hard to leave my church family.  I love serving the Lord with them and worshipping together on Sunday.  They will be greatly missed.

It will be hard leaving family behind and maybe having to find new ways to celebrate family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I will most definitely miss the change of seasons.  I’m sure that will take a few years to get used to, but I was there once in February when it felt like May here in New Jersey.  I think Februarys that feel like Mays might just be pretty easy to get used to.

Then there is the heat and humidity.  Thank the Lord for air conditioning!  I’m hoping for a lot of help from the Lord for that one!  However, I did see my mom, who originally hated the heat of Florida, adapt.

I thought it was especially funny when today I received an e mail from Becky, who is currently vacationing in Florida.  She and her family also plan to move to Florida next fall.  This time it was SHE who was having doubts about moving to Florida and I giving the pep talk! 

Lord willing, this time next year, all of us will have made the move.  In the meantime, we’ll be savoring all the delights of fall, winter, and spring, alongside all the New Jersians we know and love, right here in our good old home state. 

 

 

THE ANNIVERSARY OF A LIFETIME!

Yesterday some friends were here for lunch when one of them turned to me and said, “By the way, Happy Anniversary”.  Jim and I celebrated our 44^th wedding anniversary back in July so I thought that’s the anniversary she had in mind.  It wasn’t, because she followed it up with, “the anniversary of your kidney surgery”.  Since the other guests at the table wanted to know more about it, I found myself reliving that event all over again.

It began with a Facebook link to an organ donor site, posted by Jennifer, a woman from my church.  She had just heard that the disease which affected her kidneys had progressed to the stage where going on dialysis would probably be only six months away.  At the urging of her daughters, she posted the link to the donor’s website with a, “it can’t hurt to get it out there” attitude.

I had known for some time, along with all the members of our church, that Jennifer had her name on a transplant list, but it wasn’t until I saw the link and realized the reality of a kidney shutdown in her not too distant future, that God began to speak to my heart about being her donor.  I visited the site and began to consider what to do next.

I had always admired Jennifer as a vibrant, spunky women.  She’s written a book, writes columns for local papers, travels into New York City by herself all the time, sightseeing or showing friends around, a woman diseased kidneys just can’t keep down!   She has an exuberance for life that makes her fun to be around.  I thought, if I could help this woman to get more years out of the life she lives to the full, despite diseased kidneys, then I was willing to do it!

So, I checked my blood type, which “happened” to be compatible with Jennifer’s.  Then I went into the city to New York Presbyterian Hospital for the cross match testing.  By this time, through far too many seeming “coincidences”, I was so confident that the Lord was leading me, that when Jennifer called to say we were a match, I said, “Well, of course we are!”  What followed was more than a year of further testing before I was finally approved as a donor and the surgery was scheduled.

Jennifer and I checked into the hospital for our surgery on August 14, 2013.  If you have ever been sure of the call of God on your life and determined to follow where He leads, then you KNOW what that morning was like for us.  We knew surgery and it’s recovery period, with the resulting discomfort and fatigue, lay ahead for us.  We knew the risks as well.  So there was some anxiety, naturally, but mostly we were flying high on adrenaline and the Holy Spirit!  We had a host of prayer support with us, plus our praying brothers and sisters in Christ from all over the country, and pray we did!  And the Lord was completely faithful!

Jennifer and I came through the surgery with flying colors!  We were interviewed just a few days later by television newscasters and we even made it on local TV where we had a wonderful opportunity to talk about the Lord and how He had led.  I know for me, and I can probably speak for Jennifer as well, it was a HUGE mountaintop experience for our faith!

A year has come and gone, with our kidneys continuing to work at optimum performance!  Jennifer has had a new lease on life, although she still faces other, equally serious, health challenges.  What a blessing it has been for her to have one huge one removed!  For me, kidney donation was a piece of cake!  Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration!  It is true that apart from the usual post-surgery discomfort, it wasn’t long before I was back to the gym, living the life I’ve always lived, not even noticing the absence of a kidney.

There have been a few other situations in my life (job opportunities, mission trips, teaching Sunday school, even a cancer diagnosis) where the Lord clearly spoke to my heart, suggesting some avenue of adventure in which to follow Him.  I always did some thinking and praying about it before I followed, because each opportunity came with a risk, plus accompanying anxiety, as is true whenever the Lord asks us to venture into the unknown.  I wanted to be sure each time that I was willing to see it through to the end before making a move.  However, the assurance of the Lord’s will and the constant comfort of His presence, as well as the overarching sense of anticipation and excitement, gave me the courage to take the first step, confident that where He was leading would always be far better than anything I might have planned for my life. 

He has never disappointed. 

 “Not to us, O LORD, not to us but to Your Name be the glory, because of Your love and faithfulness.” Psalm 115:1