Daily Grace
One passage. One idea. A few quiet minutes. Short devotional readings for people being formed by grace, written from a small chair beside still water in Falcon, Colorado.
Pull one up. Read slowly. There is no hurry here.
Come Afraid
I thought the fear had to be dealt with first. Resolved, prayed away, sufficiently repented of, so that I could show up before God as a man with his house in order and his hands steady.
"Immediately he spoke to them and said, Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid." (Mark 6:50)
No one ever tells us we are allowed to come afraid. We assume the fear has to be dealt with first, resolved, prayed away, sufficiently repented of, so that we can show up before God as people with our houses in order and our hands steady. Which means that whenever we are most afraid, we do not come at all. That is the trap, and it is beautifully built, because the condition for coming is the very thing that only comes from having come.
But watch what the disciples actually do. They do not stop being afraid and then get into the boat. They are terrified in the boat. They are terrified when he walks toward them on the water, and more terrified, not less, because they think he is a ghost. And he gets in with them anyway. He does not wait on the shore for them to compose themselves.
So bring it, whatever it is at two in the morning. Bring it in exactly the condition it is in: unresolved, undignified, still shaking. You are not required to arrive brave. You are only required to arrive. The voice that tells you to wait until you have calmed down before you pray is not the voice of God; it is the very fear, protecting itself by keeping you away from the only One who could speak to it. Come as you are, afraid, and let him be the one who says, take heart, it is I.
The One Remark
I will never forget one of my performance reviews when we lived in Colorado.
"Whoever trusts in the Lord is safe." (Proverbs 29:25)
It is a strange and revealing thing about the human heart, that a person can receive a hundred encouragements and one criticism, and it is the criticism he carries out to the car, turns over at the sink, takes to bed, and wakes with in the morning. The praise slides off. The single unkind word sinks in and stays.
Why should that be? Not because the criticism is truer than the praise. Often it is not. It sticks because of what it touches. The compliments only tell you what you already needed to be true, so they find no purchase and slide away. The criticism tells you what you have always been afraid was true, and so it holds. It is not new information. It is confirmation. It lands on a fear that was already there, waiting for a voice.
This is the tell that our safety has been resting in the wrong place. If a room's approval can lift you up, a room's disapproval can lay you flat, and you have handed strangers the keys to your soul. The person whose security sits in the opinion of others will be ruled by whichever opinion is cruelest, because the cruel one always confirms the fear.
Proverbs sends you somewhere safer. Whoever trusts in the Lord is safe. Not whoever is praised. Not whoever performs well enough to silence every critic, for that day never comes. So when the one remark lands and will not leave, do not argue with it and do not try to drown it under praise. Take it to God and ask him the deeper question. What is it in me that was already waiting to believe it, and have I been trusting the room to tell me who I am?