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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

psalms

Weekend One Word: Sojourner

April 2, 2016 By Michelle

Sojourner

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry…
For I am but a sojourner with you, a wayfarer,
as all my forebears were… (Psalm 39:12-13)

As you might know from reading this post, I just finished reading Addie Zierman’s new memoir, Night Driving. Addie and I could not have had more different faith journeys. She was raised evangelical and experienced a burning fire for God in her youth  – a fire that has since all but dimmed, if not at times been entirely extinguished. I, on the other hand, have bumbled through a lukewarm faith, at times wrestling through long, deep periods of outright unbelief.

Addie had the fire but lost it; I never had the fire, but can’t stop seeking it. Though we began at markedly different places, our paths have intersected.

As we’ve stumbled through our long darknesses, Addie and I have both come to realize something important. She puts it like this:

“Love doesn’t always look like romance and faith doesn’t look like fire and light doesn’t always look like the sun — and this matters.

Jesus is the Light of the world. In him there is no darkness, the Bible says. But there are so many different ways that Light manifests itself. It’s the pinks and oranges of a summer dawn. It’s the full, bright sun glancing off the wave tips of the ocean. The hazy winter starlight. The shivering, waning moon. The falling dusk, still glowing like a promise at the edges of the world.”

In other words, there is no “right” way to have faith. This is no “one” way. Faith ebbs and flows, turning like the seasons — petals, leaves, bare branches, buds. Faith can be bright as the midday sun, soft as dawn, faint as a single pinprick star in a black sky.

We are not in this world for long. We are sojourners – people who stay only temporarily in a place — and wayfarers – people who travel by foot, slowly, and at times, ungracefully, picking our way through the vast wilderness.  But we keep walking nonetheless, trusting that God is with us, no matter how brightly, or faintly, our faith lights the path ahead.

Filed Under: doubt, faith, psalms Tagged With: Addie Zierman, Psalms

When God’s Not in Your Plan A…Or Your Plan B

January 12, 2015 By Michelle

Holmes Lake Ice

I’ve been thinking a lot about obedience lately. In the conclusion to 50 Women Every Christian Should Know I wrote that obedience is the thread that ties all fifty women together across diverse time periods, geography and personal circumstances. “Circumstances don’t matter nearly as much as obedience,” I wrote in the afterword of the book, “because God calls us to answer right where we are.”

Sounds like I have obedience all figured out, doesn’t it?

Oh yeah, I do. On paper.

As it turns out, obedience is a cinch to write about, but awfully hard to live out in real life.

I am walking through an uncertain period right now. Several publishers have turned down my current book proposal, my agent is asking me hard questions about what I want to do next, and I don’t have any clear answers. It feels a little wildernessy, and I’ll be honest: I don’t like the wilderness one bit.

And so I’ve been doing what I always do in the face of uncertainty and doubt. I’m racing ahead of God, bent on figuring everything out myself.

For the last two months or so I’ve concocted a number of plans and expectations of how I think all the pieces of my fragmented career will fall into place. When the tide seems to move in a certain direction, I run with it, confident that I know God’s plans for me.

“Aha!” I declare. “THIS is what God’s going to do. THIS is how it’s all going to work out!” Until, that is, it doesn’t work out that way at all. And then I find myself back at square one – still with no publisher, a lot of questions and no direction…in addition to being frustrated with and disappointed in God.

I cycled through this process of planning, expectations, hope and disappointment three times in the last two months before I realized something important:

God hasn’t failed me, and he hasn’t led me down these dead-end paths, because God isn’t the one who created any of these plans in the first place.

I did. I put my faith, hope and confidence in Plans A, B and C – plans of my own making – instead of in God himself.

Holmes Lake Bridge and verse

Come, let us worship and bow down. Let us kneel before the Lord our maker, for he is our God. We are the people he watches over, the flock under his care. (Psalm 95:6-7)

When I recently read these two verses from Psalm 95 aloud to Brad, he said this in response: “Obedience has to begin with a position of humility.”

The more I thought about it, the more I realized Brad is right. Obedience starts with humility – with our honest acknowledgement that God is sovereign and that he alone is in control. God is the shepherd – the leader – and we are the people he watches over, the flock of sheep who follow under his care.

As my friend Shelly, who recently walked through her own wilderness, says: “Having a Plan A or a Plan B isn’t at all what God wants. He wants us to trust him with all the uncertainty and to put our hope in him, not in our best-case scenario.”

Obedience begins with humility, with kneeling before the God who “holds in his hands the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountain,” the seas and the dry lands. (Psalm 95: 4-5).

Let us kneel before the Lord our maker. Let us hand over our plans and all of our self-created best-case scenarios to him.

Filed Under: #50Women, obedience, psalms, wilderness Tagged With: 50 Women Every Christian Should Know, when you're in the wilderness

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Two Words

August 27, 2012 By Michelle

 


Yup, that’s Brad, slogging through the Mud Run.

I really wanted to go with Deidra and Jennifer to hear Ann Voskamp speak at the Women of Faith conference in Des Moines this past weekend. Really, really.

But I didn’t go. I didn’t go because the Holy Spirit told me to stay home. {although for a few days I pretended not to hear}

You see, Brad ran in the Lincoln Mud Run 5K on Saturday morning – a race he’d diligently trained for over the past few months. {and yeah, it’s as gross and grueling as it sounds: slogging through knee-deep mud, scaling walls and squirming beneath obstacles on your belly}. And even though he told me, “Go, go! Really, go to Women of Faith, you don’t need to stay just for the race,” and I knew he meant it, I felt something else in my gut. I felt the Holy Spirit telling me to stay in Lincoln. To go to the race and support my husband.

Fast forward to Sunday morning, when I read this from Psalm 134:

“Come, bless God, all you servants of God!”  (Psalm 134:1, Msg)

In fact, I read it twice to make sure I had read it right.

Isn’t God the one who does the blessing, I wondered? Isn’t he the one who bestows all good things, and isn’t it our job to praise him and thank him? So what’s this about us blessing him? What kind of blessing can we flawed and insignificant beings offer the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-creating God?

These were my questions as I sat in the pew and listened to yesterday’s reading. And truthfully, I didn’t get much of an answer from the pulpit. Or so I initially thought.

The problem wasn’t with the sermon, per se. It was simply the fact that I couldn’t understand or hear the minister well. Pastor Mmanga, who is visiting from our sister church in Uswaa, Tanzania, has a beautiful, melodious voice and a thick accent – and as Brad will attest, I do not do well with accents. That, combined with the fact that my left ear is almost entirely blocked from an infection, had me leaning forward in my seat, squinting (because that helps with hearing, right?) and straining to hear the sermon.

When Pastor Mmanga returned to his seat, I realized I’d gotten just two words from his sermon:

Obey. And trust.

But those two words were more than enough. Those two words made all the difference in my understanding of how we flawed and insignificant beings can, in fact, bless God himself. Those two words got me thinking about that crazy Mud Run race again, and the fact that when the Holy Spirit told me to stay home, I actually listened.

Crossing the finish line

You see, when Brad crossed the finish line filthy and soaked, Rowan and I cheering under our umbrellas as the rain came pouring down, I couldn’t have been prouder of him or happier that I’d stayed in Lincoln to watch the race instead of going to Women of Faith (a race in which he finished first place in his age division and in 14thplace overall out of more than 700 runners!). And when I heard those two words in Pastor Mmanga’s sermon I knew why:

When we bless God through our obedience and trust, God blesses us, sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

“Come, bless God, all you servants of God! You priests of God, posted to the nightwatch in God’s shrine. Lift your praising hands to the Holy Place, and bless God. In turn, may God of Zion bless you – God who made heaven and earth!” (Psalm 134)

Have you ever imagined that you, yes you, can bless God?!
 

Welcome to the “Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday” community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you’re here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in — thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you — I am so grateful that you are here!

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Filed Under: Ann Voskamp, blessings, Holy Spirit, obedience, Old Testament, psalms, trust, Use It on Monday, Women of Faith

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Why Can’t We Just Get Along?

August 20, 2012 By Michelle



How wonderful, how beautiful, when brothers and sisters get along. (Psalm 133:1, Msg.)
It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It sounds easy and simple and true.

Yet the reality is, so often we don’t get along. We nitpick about differences in doctrine. We point fingers at others’ flaws. We decide who’s a sinner and who isn’t. We vow toboycott chicken sandwiches or to not boycott chicken sandwiches, and we judge those who don’t do the same.

Really? Is this really what God wants from us? To separate ourselves from “others?” To hang with the “in” crowd and avoid everyone else? To notice the sliver in another’s eye and ignore the log in our own? To bicker and gripe and tear down instead of build up?

Yesterday, right in the middle of Pastor Sara’s sermon on Psalm 133, I heard a commotion toward the back of the church, and when I turned to look over my shoulder I glimpsed an elderly man being carried down the aisle and out into the lobby. Two men gripped the man’s arms and two men carried his legs, as the man’s wife (I presume) hurried behind. A few minutes later I heard a siren just outside the sanctuary windows.

I don’t know for sure what happened to the man. All I know is that when he showed signs of distress during worship, four men, undoubtedly strangers, jumped to his aid and literally carried him to safety.

And that, I thought, as I sat in the pew, is the perfect metaphor for Psalm 133.

That is exactly what God expects from each one of us – and not just with our fellow church members and our own friends and family, but with every one of our brothers and sisters in our neighborhood, in our nation and in our world. He expects that we will stand in the gap, come to one another’s aid, lift up and encourage, support and pray for.

In short, God expects that we will carry others when they are unable to carry themselves.

As I write this blog post, my prayer journal is open next to me on the bed, and I read the verses I jotted last week as I studied 1 Thessalonians. Next to the verses I’d scrawled: lessons for living —

Live in a way that pleases God. (4:1)

Encourage each other and build each other up. (5:11)

Live peacefully with each other. (5:13)

Take tender care of the weak. (5:14)

Be patient with everyone. (5:14)

Always try to do good to each other and to all people. (5:15)

These are the basic human principles Jesus cared about and it’s what God wants us to care about, too. And while this list from 1 Thessalonians is more specific, isn’t this the essence of Psalm 133? Isn’t this what God has in mind when he praises us for living harmoniously with our brothers and sisters? Aren’t these the instructions for how to get along?

Harmony, God tells us, is a precious as oil and as refreshing as dew. And it’s no coincidence that there, right in the midst of harmony, God pronounces his blessing:

How wonderful and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony! For harmony is as precious as the anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head, that ran down his beard and onto the border of his robe. Harmony is as refreshing as the dew from Mount Hermon that falls on the mountains of Zion. And there the Lord has pronounced his blessing, even life everlasting. (Psalm 133, NLT)

Writing about the practice of relationship…with Ann Voskamp:

 

Welcome to the “Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday” community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you’re here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in — thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you — I am so grateful to have you here!

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Filed Under: Chick-fil-A, community, harmony, Old Testament, psalms, Use It on Monday

Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday: Obedience is a Gift

August 13, 2012 By Michelle


Last February, knowing it would probably be the last time he would see his dad, Brad asked me to go with him on his final visit to the hospice in Minnesota. The trip was only possible because my mom had flown in from Massachusetts to help with the kids. The plan was that Brad and I would travel to Minneapolis on Saturday and be back in Nebraska again before school on Monday morning.

I wrestled with whether to go or not. I knew what the right decision was. I knew what I should do, what I needed to do. I felt the answer as clear as any I’d ever felt in my heart.

But I didn’t go.

I stayed home with my mom and the kids while Brad traveled to Minnesota alone. It was the last time he saw his dad. Jon died four days later.

I told my mom, Brad, my friends and anyone who would listen that I didn’t go to Minnesota because of the boys. They were acting out more than usual, I explained. They were clearly anxious and grieving their grandfather’s terminal illness and impending death. I needed to stay home with them, I reasoned. Two grieving, unruly boys were too much for my mom to handle alone.

This was all true. The boys were suffering; their behavior was more volatile than usual. But that wasn’t the real reason I didn’t go to Minnesota.

I didn’t go because I was afraid.

Afraid to face death, again, just 15 months after losing Brad’s mom. Afraid to face my father-in-law, with his ravaged, emaciated body. Afraid to say goodbye, to say thank you. Afraid to witness my husband’s raw grief. Afraid I wouldn’t know how to comfort him.

I didn’t go with my husband to Minnesota to be with him when he said goodbye to his father because I was afraid. I didn’t get to tell Jon how much I loved him in person because I was afraid.

And that is, hands-down, my biggest regret thus far in life.

When Pastor Michael preached on the theme of obedience yesterday after we read Psalm 132, this story, a story of disobedience, is the one that sprang almost instantly to my mind.

You see, I knew without any doubt what the Holy Spirit was prompting me to do that weekend. I felt the answer in my heart. I knew it in my innermost depths. And yet I disobeyed because I felt the calling was too hard, too ugly., too terrifying. I was weak. I faltered in my faith. I doubted that God would see me through.

“Obedience is a gift, a gift of faith,” said Pastor Michael during yesterday’s sermon.

Back in February I let fear instead of faith prevail. Instead of trusting God, I fled. Instead of obeying the Holy Spirit and surrendering to the will of God, I relied only on myself. I thought I would have to face fear and death alone. I forgot God was with me. I turned away from the gift when it was offered to me.

In the end, my disobedience was a grave disappointment. I know that Jon didn’t hold my decision against me, nor does Brad. But I still struggle to let it go. Now that time has passed I’m able to see more clearly how God would have held me by the hand, in spite of my fear and hesitation. In spite of my weakness.

God would have led me through that terribly difficult visit. If only I’d had the faith to obey.

“When you are disobedient, you are trying to keep some part of your life under your own control. Somewhere in your heart you are refusing to listen to his call.” — Deitrich Bonhoeffer

What about you? Have you ever learned a hard lesson about obedience and faith?


Welcome to the “Hear It on Sunday, Use It on Monday” community, a place where we share what we are hearing from God and his Word.

If you’re here for the first time, click here for more information. Please include the Hear It, Use It button (grab the code below) or a link in your post, so your readers know where to find the community if they want to join in — thank you!

Please also try to visit and leave some friendly encouragement in the comment box of at least one other Hear It, Use It participant. And if you want to tweet about the community, please use the #HearItUseIt hashtag.

Thank you — I am so grateful to have you here!

Click here to get Graceful in your email in-box.
Click here to “like” my Facebook Writer page. Thank you!

Filed Under: grief, obedience, psalms, regret, Use It on Monday

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

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