Faith

Faith for Freedom

May 4, 2022 By Mary Fichtinger

And whether you turn to the right or to the left, you will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way. Walk in it.” -Isaiah 30:21

Last week during a prayer ministry meeting our leader, Kelly, shared a vivid dream Jesus had given her. In the dream she was preparing to teach, studying her Bible, making her notes, outlining her points. Then the Holy Spirit asked her to draw a line down the middle of her page, dividing it left from right. Leave the right side blank, counseled the Spirit. Make your notes and outline on the left side. The revelations I give you along the way, record on the right. She complied and filled the page with Scripture references and talking points founded on Biblical truths. When the Spirit revealed something fresh or highlighted what He wanted to say, she documented it on the right side. Finally the page was filled and the work complete. Then the Spirit told her to take her paper and tear it down the middle, dividing the right and left sides. He tossed the left side away and handed her what remained. This, He referenced the half-sheet He had spoken to her during her studies, this bears fruit.

I do not expect this dream needs interpretation. I do believe it has extensive implications for the people of God. Our hope and prayer would be that all teachers who present the Word of God to others would follow identical principles. As a fellow follower of Christ and minister of His teachings I’m afraid that is simply not true. We are also of flesh; we who prioritize and “professionally” practice ministry are prone to working out of our own capacities for understanding and application. We teach according to what we think and what we know, which is astonishingly insufficient if we consider the Spirit of God wants to teach according to what He knows. He knows the full extent of the truth, and He knows the precise needs of the audience at hand. Only He can properly extract and effectively convey what is necessary.

So let’s ask ourselves some tough-love type of questions. These are questions for me, not just you. Perhaps this is more of a challenge, because I hope we’ll take it to heart. Take it to Jesus in our hearts.

How does the piece of paper in my friend’s dream represent your life? You have several decades on earth afforded to you, shaped by the respective time, place, family, society you live in. You didn’t get to decide much of what defines the unique you; you were assigned a specific era, gender, ethnicity, personality. You are you, whatever you do with yourself. With the freedom of that broad, blank page, you make decisions that fill in the spaces. When external influences (people, systems, nature, etc) make a mark on your page, you still have to decide what to do from there. What will be the story that surrounds those things? How will you respond?

But really, in the postmodern West most of us retain a degree of autonomy shocking to the rest of the world and history. We have endless freedom to choose how we will live out our days, what studies we will pursue, what work we will engage in, how we will spend our time/energy/money, whom we will live with, what sounds appetizing to eat, even which games we desire to play. I think when we begin to understand the extent of our freedom we recognize the weight of responsibility it carries, and that can twinge a bit of terror in our hearts. Further, when we see what all the western world has invaded our freedom with, we could be quickly overwhelmed by the clamor of voices competing for our attention, resources, lives.

So how do you fill your page? How do you outline your life? What are the main points you want to hit? The western middle class outline is fairly typical: childhood – adolescence – university – career – family – hobbies – retirement. These are the ways people know us. For some reason they are what communicate our personal value according to a long-evolving system of overcoming, overpowering, overdoing, and overindulging. What selections we honor with a place on our page are destined to bring us ongoing honor or shame. Or sometimes we try to cut them out and pretend they never had a place there, only to mangle our own life. What is on your page? How much margin is there around it? How many words or images reflect your truest values? How much tells the story of Jesus?

Did you ever divide your page in half, so the Spirit has freedom to fill in blank space in your life? Did you even give him a Sabbath seventh to pour goodness, joy, and restoration into your soul? Did you ever surrender your tiny tithing tenth to cut you loose from trust in money and let Him care for the needs of others? Where is He permitted to make His mark? Do you trust Him to Author, to Illustrate, to Illuminate?

What if, when the Spirit shows up and tears off the portion of paper He was allowed to write on, tosses away the temporal excess, and holds out His segment to you He says, “This bears fruit. This will last. Your investment was so worthy; come enjoy the return. You’ll never see the end of what I’m doing with it.”

How much of your life is represented on that piece that is removed? How much of all you worked so hard on, spent your actual life on, will fall away and never be thought of again? Do you feel grieved? Amazed? Cheated? Humbled? Exploited? Relieved? Ashamed? Expectant?

Just for this moment, I want you to really feel it. What if 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 is actually true?

How do you feel? And what do you think? Is God unfair? Is the world’s system unfair? Have you been robbed of opportunity to know the truth and be set free? Have you squandered the truth and remained captive to false gods? Captive to yourself? Have you embraced the truth of all Jesus is, and lived free?

Like you, it takes effort for me to stubbornly guard a space in time and uninterrupted exchange with Jesus to address the deepest, most critical issues. But what if just now you had a chat with Him about this? Please let me encourage you: this question is not to guilt you into doing more. You do not have to earn His favor. He is so delighted in His masterpiece of you, He has no desire for you to lose your mind or make unnecessary sacrifices trying to make Him happy. But He loves you so much that He is most delighted to fashion the most magnificent you. The you that turns out to be more than you asked for or imagined. He wants to fill your page with wonder, wants it as clear as possible of unnecessary pain, wants it free of sin’s treacherous greed to gobble up the space in one way or another. He wants to fill it with the evidence of His presence, with the fruit of His Spirit (Galatians 5). You do not have to strive for a single moment. Do not scramble to make a page look like one that honors Jesus. Just give Him the space to make His marks.

I also want to warn you about over-filling your page with all sorts of amazing-looking things Jesus really loves. Remember what my teacher at the beginning was writing out? It was Bible teaching. Leading women into deeper fellowship with Jesus through prayer. Her work was out of love and honor for Him, but it still contained an excess of her work. That probably describes my early years, with the wildly flailing passion: I love Him! I’ll do it all! I’ll go everywhere He goes and do everything He does. It’s so amazing to follow Jesus and partner with Him!

I love Him for inviting us to go with Him, to be with Him, to abide in Him and rule over our little corners of creation with Him. But oh, beloved. Even in your passion for Him, leave the page blank for Him. When He says go, go. When He says rest, rest. When He says heal, heal. When He says give, give. When He says rejoice, rejoice. When He says mourn, mourn. When He says wait and hope, wait and hope. Just give Him the freedom to dictate your page. It is the very essence of your freedom.

If you discover that your life’s page tells a different story than you really want it to, or is cluttered with a thousand distractions, or is so obscured by sin that the in-His-image-goodness-of-you can’t even be recognized, tell Jesus about it. Ask Him what to do, what to stop doing. Ask Him to rescue you, to help your unbelief. Follow Him to freedom.

Now this is the victory that overcomes the world: our faith. -1 John 5:4b

reduced

January 10, 2019 By Mary Fichtinger

humility (n.)

early 14c. from Latin humilitatem (nominative humilitas) “lowness, small stature; insignificance; baseness, littleness of mind,” in Church Latin “meekness,” from humilis “lowly, humble,” literally “on the ground,” from humus “earth.”

“Basically, humility is the attitude of one who stands constantly under the judgement of God. It is the attitude of one who is like soil. “Humility” comes from the Latin word “humus”: fertile ground. The fertile ground is there, unnoticed, taken for granted, always there to be trodden upon. It is silent, inconspicuous, dark, and yet always ready to receive any seed, ready to give it substance and life. The more lowly, the more fruitful, because it becomes really fertile when it accepts all the refuse of the earth. It is so low that nothing can soil it, abase it, humiliate it; it has accepted the last place and cannot go any lower. In that position nothing can shatter the soul’s serenity, its peace, and joy.”

Living Prayer, Anthony Bloom

– – –

There is a tree that stands at exactly one half mile from our home. It was our first landmark on most all of our runs with the boys this summer. We’d stop to stretch, and the faster ones would get a little break and wait for the others of us (those of “us” most recently entitled “granny legs”…. cheeky little monkeys) to catch up. It was actually a tight cluster of three trees, trunks basically merged at the base. Then there was a windstorm at the end of summer and two thirds of the tree came down. It was such a sad sight, the bulk of those big, strong trunks lying flat on the ground, splintered and jagged at the base. Abased. The honeybees had fled their hive in a hollow of the trunk 10 feet up, and someone had already come to carve it out and harvest the sweet secret it held. We watched the branches and pieces of wood slowly be chopped up and removed over the following weeks. It felt odd to stop there again… it felt like the tree was just gone.

It’s been a hard season. Autumn is my favorite for its captivating beauty and the relief from the heat of summer, for the clarity with which it announces that change and season are beautiful, even if it means a season of cold, darkness, and death is included in the mix. I’m trying not to miss the joy of this particular time, but life has in many ways been a bit brutal. Part of it is just within myself.

I was running with the boys yesterday afternoon, preparing for the Evansville Rescue Mission’s Drumstick Dash on Saturday. We turned south and ran (some of us on granny legs) toward that tree, and deep in my soul it felt like a reflection of me. There it was, still standing tall, stark against a gorgeous early-evening sky. To one who hadn’t known it before it may have looked like a tall and handsome tree, sturdy and sheltering, a landmark. To me it looked like a skinny fragment of itself, an image of vulnerability and reduction. It wasn’t what it used to be. It’s almost painful to stop and all share one slender trunk to stretch against. It is a picture of loss and bears those feelings.

I believe there is value in my being vulnerable with you all, and so don’t shy from that. John told us explicitly of the tremendous value of walking in the light, and our Light has overcome all darkness; He is glorious even in the grave, so I am unafraid to find Him anywhere. In many ways the past several years have been a dramatic reduction. Let me be clear: it’s been my less-preferred type of reduction, where it is not in my desired way, timing, or idealized goal. Obviously the key word there was “my”.

I had tried reducing myself before, removing unwholesome food, excess stuff, wasteful entertainment habits (time the greatest victim), distractions from what is of eternal worth, toxic things in my home, laziness/apathy/ignorance, (inches from my waistline…). I have pursued Christ with fervency, walked with Him in growing intimacy for 19 years. I allowed Him to replace my set of passions for His, redirect my achievement goals from self-advancing ones to others-serving ones.

He is faithful, and He did all of that. I’ve never performed perfectly, but He loves and redeems perfectly, so there has been a beautiful story full of adventure and revelation and God’s power as it unfolds. He wrote into the little story of me a heart of worship, a love for His Word and for His image-bearers, a cross-cultural call to the unseen and voiceless. Things from Heaven, for Heaven-on-earth, things that I could never produce. Then He wrote in medicine, then a husband and two sons, and then adoption…

The bigger the assignment became, the more insufficient I became. I tried so hard to do it right, to be faithful to God, to join Jesus where He was in the hard places on earth, to parent traumatized children with evidence-based and Spirit-directed wisdom, to serve His people in crisis (or not) with excellence in the ER. I’d told Him at the beginning to spend me, to maximize His opportunity with my life. He did. He was worthy, and there was so much I loved about all He’d done in my life.

So in His “yes” to my offering, He spent me. Took my best and invested it in given-ness to others that He loved. Isn’t that the only way to live, after all? Spent on someone else? Isn’t that what Jesus did when He spent His time in flesh, given… to a mother, to shepherds, to kings, to disciples, to the blind and unclean, to cruel men? (Let me confirm the obvious: I still take more than I give. I still receive far more than I could deliver, despite my best earth-and-sin-defiled intentions, whether it be love, kindness, justice, food & shelter, dollars. The practice of receiving with humble and amazed gratitude the lavish gifts of God in balance with loving even my “Samaritan” neighbor as myself is a life-long journey of wrestling to learn what’s right and freely rejoicing in life continually lived on both sides of the coin.)

So the creating and giving God creates and gives us, too. Because we’re not isolated or autonomous, it is a constant way of being human. Our happy participation and surrender to His wisest strategy is our chief joy in life. Nothing really can compare to knowing the investment is made for something imperishable and eternally lovely and valuable. Obedience, regardless its earthly appearance, is of great worth and glory in God’s economy, which is the one that will stand when all of this is gone.

I say this feeling like that tree on the backside of the summer storm. It’s such a paradox that I can’t grasp even though I live. I wanted Him to use me: grow me big and strong and sturdy, to offer shelter and shade, landmark and encouragement, house the little things and provide sweet nourishment from hidden places to the world. Then He blew me down.

You could argue nature or nurture, but I think both play their role under the wise hand of a kind Father. Genetics, physical injuries, general life wear & tear… then absorbing children with a compiled 24 years of early trauma, sustained abuse, a high-stress job, poor self-care, isolation, and ultimately sinful bitterness and pride… finally blew me right down. I know major depression, PTSD, chronic pain (though mild compared to what I often treat) and fatigue, a new physical/mental/emotional weakness that leaves me feeling a sliver of what I thought God had made me to be still here in my mid-thirties.

But when I see what fell, I see so much contaminant. Self-sufficiency: that He would give me the strength and then I would use what He gave to do what He said, as I understood it. But it’s so easy to become prideful and self-reliant; so limiting to be constrained by my perception of strength. Entitlement: that obedience in one thing would protect me from temptation in another. That walking by supernatural faith would somehow save me from human frailty. That God’s promise of faithfulness would mean always seeing it, and that when suffering came it would be strategically brief (don’t you want to laugh out loud at that one?). I wasn’t expecting Him to crush me, to lay me down in the dark. For a long time. But it was necessary for so many reasons, and good for so many more.

It’s been a few years in this position, and I know it better now: I can’t help you, but I know Jesus will. He cut me down so He can actually do something in the space I take up, with the fleeting time He’s written me in. And I’ll give whatever paradoxically little-much He gives me, but having been ground up and mixed up in manure, I know it so much better now: my greater value is in being the soil, not the tree.

– – –

Maybe, now in the darkening winter, you’re feeling the smallness and the cold, even the death of many joys. Maybe the weather reflects your soul some days, and you feel dormant, waiting for something. Rest your heart in Jesus. He is near, and so tender toward the weak. Our proper response to everything, even our own sin or brokenness, is to draw near and worship. To be nothing so that He can be everything is precisely how it belongs. He is Life, so our open invitation to Him will always bring Life, even as we wait to understand it.

Let us not trouble ourselves about the cause of our earthliness, except that we know it to be some unrighteousness in us, but go at once to Life… God is all right – why should we mind standing in the dark for a minute outside His window? Of course we miss the “inness”, but there is a bliss of its own in waiting…. Let us think to ourselves, or say to our friend, “God is; Jesus is alive. Nothing can be going wrong, however it may look so to hearts unfinished in childness.” -George McDonald

Praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has given us a new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, uncorrupted, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being protected by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. You rejoice in this, though now for a short time you have had to struggle in various trials so that the genuineness of your faith – more valuable than gold, which perishes though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. You love Him, though you have not seen Him. And though not seeing Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

1 Peter 1:3-9

Gifts of Various Sorts

December 8, 2016 By Mary Fichtinger

When we arrived back in Perth, we landed amidst the largest October quarter YWAM Perth has ever had. There are nearly 600 students and staff on base right now. As our direction to stay back from the Kimberley was a bit late-in-the-game from human standpoint, and there were no empty beds on campus, our housing predicament was significant and urgent. Some friends delayed moving into their own new apartment on base so we could stay there a few nights. Then there was quite the scramble to find us a place that could or would immediately accommodate a family of 7 (somewhat abnormal for this area… okay, very abnormal), for a month, and not be obscenely expensive.

Our best option came up to be a hostel in city center. We went to visit it. It was a nice place, in terms of a hostel, and they would rearrange beds/rooms to keep us all together, and I believe we would have been safe and fine there. But it was not what I had interpreted “settle and rest as a family” to entail. Especially over Christmas….

Pregnancy hormones were not serving me well at the time, and as the tears flowed in the courtyard of that hostel, our friend who’d been searching diligently for housing options got a return call from a real estate agent. We were offered a holiday home of three bedrooms and two bathrooms, in a quiet community (walking distance to the train station into base, and the grocery, and a library, and a lovely park). It was immediately available, and we’d be given a discounted rate “because of the situation”… a rate even a bit cheaper than the hostel.

It’s only available until the 9th of December. Would we like it?

YES. And THANK YOU, Lord.

We have so enjoyed this little home and the comforts and conviences it offers. We’ve felt like a somewhat-normally functioning family again, just over the past two weeks. That kitchen has accommodated all of my pregnancy cravings (cinnamon rolls, biscuits and gravy, spaghetti with meaty sauce, pancakes, casseroles, hummus and veggie wraps, crunchy cereal and milk!, big colorful salads, and loads of fresh fruits). There’s also a barbecue on the front patio, next to the outdoor dining area, which Bob is loving. And you saw that bathtub, right? Oh, yes. A bathtub.

Whoever said “it’s the little things”…. they were largely right.

We have less than a week more here, now, but God has already opened a place for us to stay after that: a lovely townhouse on the other side of the city, just across the street from the famous King’s Park (go ahead and look it up and get a little jealous), and nearby to our only non-YWAM friends in Perth and their kids. Also at a reduced price, because of the kindness of strangers, the gift of God.

While I’m tearing up again at the generosity of God and His tenderness toward me in my most vulnerable states, toward us all in our fatigue and need for rest, would you just take this one little story -and it is only one of hundreds- and be encouraged to walk by faith? To trust that your Father is a good Father? That He really is God and not a sparrow falls without His notice… and we are much more valuable than they. That while we are wise and responsible and plan and prepare best we can, we don’t have to do all this worrying and all this depending on ourselves. I don’t know about you, my self has long run dry and I need Someone far more capable and with far greater supply to call the shots and direct the steps. He is faithful, friends. He is faithful.

OH… and… of all the places in the world we could be, we’re in a place that celebrates Christmas. Not just a community, but an entire culture. That’s a gift I don’t know that I’d counted until this time ’round. The co-op kids decorated one building on 1 December: the first day of Aussie summer. (There are “real”/artificial Christmas trees, too. We just didn’t put them up!)