We are all story-tellers at heart, and the stories you keep well-dusted and within arm’s reach are the most important ones. Because the memories you recite to yourself most often are the ones that take up residence in your Thought Closet and color the walls. And the way you interpret those stories– the meaning you assign to them– shapes the way you see yourself and others, your understanding of God, your ability to trust and hope and face the world. In the book of Deuteronomy God tells His people over and over to remember, to tell the stories of His deliverance and love to one another, to their children, day by day, so that they do not forget Him. Remember even the hard times, and see God’s protection and faithfulness in the midst of them. So that their lives will be colored by His presence and the significance of His plans for them. “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'” (Jeremiah 29:11) Remember this.

Paul underscores the why of remembering in his letter to the Roman believers: when you forget what God has done you begin to lose sight of Who He Is, and that is a downward slide into darkness. Forgetfulness is what the Enemy has been cultivating ever since he first started planting seeds in the Garden, whispering to the First Woman that maybe she didn’t know God as well as she thought she did. So God tells us to remember…remember what He has done… remember Who He Is… and tell it over and over to each other so we don’t forget.

When I remember God’s power to help and deliver, His beauty and holiness, then my heart bows down and worships the way it was made to do, and I discover who I am and who I want to be. When I take the time to acknowledge His many kindnesses undeserved, thankfulness wells up naturally, the created responding to the Creator. When I recognize His faithful love to me that gave up His own Son, how can I help but love Him in return and praise Him for Who He Is? The Wise King told his sons that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Proverbs 9:10) Remembering the right things is the way to grow wise, the way to make good choices in life, the way to paint your Thought Closet in shades of Light.

And we do get to choose what memories we tell ourselves, and how we interpret those stories. One of King David’s worship leaders sang about his choice to remember God in the middle of his distress, feeling alone and hopeless, ready to give up…but he remembered what stories to tell himself at night…he chose what to recite to his soul. “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember Your miracles of long ago. I will consider all Your works and meditate on all Your mighty deeds.” (Psalm 77:11-12) And as this singer focused on God and on what God had done, the atmosphere of his Thought Closet changed to praise and joy and hope. “Your ways, God, are holy. What god is as great as our God?” (verse 13)

What the worship leader says poetically, Paul reiterates as warning for the early church, “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 1:21) It is dangerous for us to forget, to tell ourselves stories that aren’t true or that focus only on our needs, our pain, our fears. Open your eyes to see God at work in your life, and be thankful; tell those stories often, to yourself and others, so that you will remember. Especially when you grow weary of walking, and feel the sorrow of living in this world, and when you can’t see your way clearly. Especially then, choose to tell the stories of God’s presence and power, so that you can remember that He is God and He is good, and you are His.

“When I feel the cold of winter,
And this cloak of sadness, I need You;
All the evil things that shake me,
All the words that break me, I need You.

Over the mountains,
Over the sea–
Here You come running, my Lover to me.

Do not hide me from Your presence,
Pull me from Your shadows– I need You.
Beauty, wrap Your arms around me,
Sing Your song of kindness– I need You.”
(Song of Solomon, Jesus Culture)

“Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous; it is fitting for the upright to praise him….For the word of the Lord is right and true; He is faithful in all he does. The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of His unfailing love.” (Psalm 33:1, 4-5)

Last week we talked about what we treasure most, and how the distractions and demands of daily life conspire to make us forget, run rough-shod over our days till the things that matter most get shoved to the back shelves of our closet. And it is no small thing, to let our deepest treasures (the things at the very heart of us) collect dust. We could fill an entire life with accumulated baggage and clutter, just trying to keep up with the whirl, eyes on the here and now, and lose the unique and beautiful person-God-made-us-to-be in the process…forget where we are headed and why we are here.

It is a conspiracy really, big enough to excite the most paranoid of theorists– the complex web of deception laid down by an Enemy who prowls around us night and day; who seizes every opportunity, every moment of weakness to steal away the potential God created in us; who sings us to sleep with what we can see and taste and touch… until we can’t see anything clearly any more. We might even get to feeling that it hardly matters if we live half-asleep; after all, aren’t we fairly inconsequential individuals in the grand scheme of things? It takes a bright ray of clarity to cut through the clutter and confusion and wake us up to Truth again.

Until we wake up– open the eyes of our souls to God’s way of doing things and His plans for us– we will not be able to keep our Thought Closets cleaned out, put the most important things we treasure on the front shelves and guard them the way we need to. As long as we live half asleep, comfortable under the blanket of deception, we will miss out on Real Life. The Singer rejoices with eyes wide open, saying “Many, LORD my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us.” (Psalm 40:5)  And “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand.” (Psalm 139:17-18)

Praise is an undeception–a moment of waking– that opens our eyes to who God is, and reminds us that all is gift; all flows down from the Father of Lights as grace. And when we wake up and focus on God, we can see the Enemy’s lies for what they are– just part of an elaborate plot against the Divine Ruler, with us as pawns to use and destroy. When I choose to acknowledge God’s awesome power and His utter faithfulness and kindness, I do what Satan refused to do: I acknowledge my place in the universe as a being created to worship; I remember that I am made for the pleasure and glory of the Creator; I recognize that it is right and good to serve His purposes and not my own. When the eyes of my soul are open and attentive to my Father in Heaven, I become more Myself than I have ever been– the person God had in mind when He hand-knit me together. Thankfulness is, at its heart, remembering who you are and who God Is, and finding your right and meaningful place in the grand scheme of things again….it is a restoration of the way things were in the Garden at the very Beginning, working out salvation in one small corner of the world.

Wake me up out of lethargy and tune my heart to sing Your praise. “…for the light makes everything visible. This is why it is said, ‘Awake, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’ So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise.” (Ephesians 5:14-15)

“All the wickedness in the world begins with the act of forgetting — forgetting that God is enough, that what He gives is good enough, that there is always more than enough to give thanks for.”  (Ann VosKamp)

“You are my one desire,
You are the holy fire
That burns in me;
The lover of my soul,
God, You don’t let go,
You make Your home in me.

You are my everything–
All I need is in You;
 And all I have,
All I am is in You.”
(My Everything, Jesus Culture)

Some things we need to do ourselves, and no one can do it for us. I see him out of the corner of my eye on a Sunday morning, as soon as we begin to sing, making a beeline down the aisle with his shirt tucked into khaki pants, dark hair combed neatly, eyes fixed on the front like a man fixing to make something right. He can’t be more than seven. Straight to the altar, and onto his knees, clasping his hands in front of him so naturally you can tell this isn’t the first time he has talked to God. Everyone keeps on singing, and I look around to see who he belongs to, but there are no signs of parental hovering. Just one small boy with a need, and I marvel at how completely unselfconscious he is, wonder what inner workings propelled him to the front. There is something innocent and holy right there in front of us all, Jesus’ words echoing: “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:14)

Some things only I am accountable for, regardless of how I might squirm to escape that burden of responsibility at times: my thoughts, my emotions, my choices, my health and growth. Wise child to realize that this was something he needed to do himself, for his own good; wiser still to know where to go to fix it. Looking at the rows of a couple hundred adults standing in the auditorium, the contrast is striking; it makes me wonder if we are that much less needy, or if we only grow more skilled at covering up, as the decades pass. Or maybe it is just that stubborn self-sufficiency cropping up again.

Through the first two verses of Amazing Grace the boy stays serious on his knees. It is his choice to come, his space to make things right with God, and after an elder finally walks over to pray with him he goes up the aisle again; later I see him sandwiched between a young couple, the mother’s dark hair draped down as she whispers in his ear. Wise woman to understand that no amount of her own good intentions can accomplish real change in someone else’s heart. It’s a lesson all women have to learn at some point, that no matter how deeply we love someone or how far off the path he goes, how much he is hurting, there are some things we cannot fix. Only the one who is looking for change can come to the Cross and find it. Paul expressed that hope to his readers this way: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)

This mid-Winter housecleaning is tough, making us face the grubby ragtag collection in our Thought Closet and take responsibility for it. This is something we need to do ourselves, and no one can fix it for us. Rooting out old prejudice and narrow assumptions, shameful memories that brand us deep…wrestling with the expectations of others we took to heart without even examining…looking honest at who we have grown to be after all these years, the bad habits we have cultivated in the dark. God’s Truth is like a lens focusing fresh on mental furnishings we were so used to seeing that we didn’t even notice how cluttered and shabby it had become. But once we have a clear view, our responsibility is also clear, and the choice. We can shut the door again and make our excuses about “too hard…too late…too ugly” or we can never mind what anyone thinks and make a beeline for the Cross….set our faces toward hope and let Jesus make all things new.

It’s really up to us.

“To the cross, I look, and to the cross, I cling;
Of it’s suffering, I do drink, of its work, I do sing.
For on it, my Savior, both bruised and crushed,
Showed that God is love and God is just.

At the cross, You beckon me;
You draw me gently to my knees,
And I am lost for words, so lost in love.
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered.”
(Sweetly Broken, Jeremy Riddle)

We seem to be back at the matter of vines and branches, this week, and Jesus is reminding us again “…apart from Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) If we are serious about housecleaning in our Thought Closet, we need the power and work of the Holy Spirit.

Life transformation is not something we can manage on our own, and it keeps surprising me how slow we are to learn that; it’s not like the old life of doing it on our own was actually successful. But pride and self-sufficiency die hard in us, apparently; Paul was similarly shocked at the first-century believers’ missing the point: “How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? Have you experienced so much for nothing?” (Galatians 3:3-4)

The very word salvation is all about needing a Savior to rescue and deliver, because those who are in trouble cannot help themselves.  Paul is incredulous at the saints’ ability to whitewash the situation, exclaiming “Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross.” (Galatians 3:1) The eternal God died. Because of you…..for you. How does a universally climactic event like that get taken for granted? As a teacher, he must have been pulling out his hair at his students’ short memory. I am guilty as charged. If I was so helpless that I needed a divine Savior in order to escape death and judgment, then why would I think my life now would be any different? As a person rescued, my life is dependent on Christ the Savior, bought by Him, hidden in Him, “for from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”(Romans 11:36) When I slide into living on my own resources, it should not surprise me that I run dry very quickly.

Paul follows through logically, laying it out so the believers can see it plain. “Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ.” (Galatians 3:2) And I see that, am reminded again of how I got here and how I must go on from here.

Of course Jesus said it quite clearly as well, telling His disciples how to live in Him. “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.” (John 15:4)  But my figuring out what that means in practical terms is taking a lifetime of trial and error. After all this time, still I need His reminder, “…apart from Me you can do nothing.” Not ministry. Not relationships in the Family of God. Not marriage or motherhood. Not the little every day stuff even…at least not with any resemblance to Jesus. Because you can’t have it both ways– can’t be both rescued and independent. If you truly need a Savior (and we all do beyond words), you’ll need to give up your old life and let Him save you completely, so you can live completely new. “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.” (Romans 6:4)

So we are housecleaning in our Thought Closet this week, throwing the door wide open and inviting the Holy Spirit in, to do what only He can do: spotlight the self-deception, sweep out the laziness and apathy, root out the false assumptions we have been building on. We will ask Him to guide us into the Truth, and show us Christ’s love and power that can transform even the shabbiest spaces. And we will stay close and keep listening, put into practice what He tells us to do. That’s how we vines grow and produce anything worthwhile.

“Falling on my knees in worship,
Giving all I am to seek your face–
Lord all I am is yours.

My whole life
I place in your hands,
God of mercy;
Humbled I bow down,
In your presence at your throne.

I called, You answered
And You came to my rescue, and I…
I wanna be where You are.”
(Came to My Rescue, Hillsong United)

“So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise…. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do….be filled with the Holy Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Ephesians 5:15, 17-20)

Some weeks we feel the full weight of this tired old world, and all the brokenness around us sinks in bone-deep, like a chill you just can’t shake. Some weeks you keep trying and failing, and it seems that for as far as you’ve come, you still have so much yet to learn. Some weeks are just like that, and on Sunday morning the words sound like a modern-day psalm, the chorus of these human hearts crying out to God:

“All this pain–
I wonder if I’ll ever find my way;
I wonder if my life could really change
at all.
All this earth–
Could all that is lost ever be found?
Could a garden come up from this ground,
at all?” **

Weeks like this, the words inside your head can begin to reflect the sin-disease around us: that no one hears you, that your life is going nowhere, that there’s no use in trying to do better, that your bridges are burned and there is no way back from where you are, that you’ll never find the belonging you are looking for. Our Enemy is called The Accuser of The Brethren, but he has taught us his songs quite well, and we can be our own enemies, singing his lies in the dark without much help from him at all.

King Solomon the Wise knew how easy it is to lose your way in this world, if you take your eyes off the Wisdom that makes your path straight; he wrote down a guidebook for his sons: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6) Complete trust in God is how to find your way in this world, never mind the way things look, or what we think makes sense; submitting to the rule of the Creator is the first duty and privilege of us created ones, and there we find wisdom. So we pour out our hearts to God on Sunday mornings, offering up the questions that matter most… to the One who matters most… the way King David did thousands of years ago.

The Wise King taught his sons in plain terms: “Get wisdom.Though it cost all you have, get understanding….fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways. Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil.” (Proverbs 4:7, 25-27) So we turn to God’s Word every week, read it through, focus on His nature and His plan revealed there, and learn from Him. It’s not just a good habit or something we are told to do. It is what we hang onto with both hands as we walk through this world. If God’s wisdom takes up residence in our hearts and thoughts we will have a compass for finding our way; we will find strength to resist the Accuser’s words; and we will keep singing our psalm to God:

“All around,
Hope is springing up from this old ground;
Out of chaos life is being found in You…
You make beautiful things out of the dust;
You make beautiful things.
 You make beautiful things out of us…”
(**Beautiful Things, Gungor)

“When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered, I was senseless and ignorant…Yet I am always with You; You hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward You will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:21-26)

A new study. A new group. And me scared and stiff, as always. My husband points out how I never like new things at first. It doesn’t help. But somewhere in the first hour when one dear sister says how the challenge to give thanks changed her life, and another one murmurs how praise is always the right way to fill your thought closet, this room feels like home again. This is why we gather each week, because we need each other’s reminders of what is important; need to tell each other again and again what is True and Right and Noble and Excellent. So we do not forget when the earth shakes, and the places we find our strength and security fail, that there is a Truth that remains: “‘…My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken,’ says the Lord who has compassion on you.” (Isaiah 54:10)

We are examining our thoughts, this Winter, looking hard at the words we say to ourselves, because somewhere we got the idea that if it doesn’t hurt anyone else, it’s okay; and somehow, we absorbed the culture’s standards on what makes a person “good enough”. But since when did the world around us set the measurements for what is right and wrong? And since when did the media have any kind of a grasp on what a whole, healthy, redeemed person should look like? And so we gather around God’s Word again, looking for His answers, listen to Paul’s earnest voice: ” So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him.” (Romans 12:1, The Message) Your thought-life too, because He already knows what goes on in there anyway– did we really think we could keep back a piece for ourselves?

And so we find ourselves going back to old lessons learned together: about being thankful in everything, seeing the reflection of God’s beauty and grace in all that is good in the world and listening for His whispers of Truth, looking for His plans unfolding and threading through our Everyday. This is why we need to meet together in the middle of the week, to stay focused and alert to His presence. A good start to a New Year. A good way to find a fresh start in life. And thankfully, never too late to start again.

When Jesus is beautiful to you — how can your life not be thankful to Him? (Ann VosKamp)

“Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” (Romans 12:2, The Message)

Three days into the New Year, and already I feel like a failure. Impatient words that spill out…too-tired tumbling into bed instead of feeding the tired soul… the long-suffering sigh that could have been a smile…a deadline already missed…and a storm of tears unexpectedly burst over an evening. Check. Check. Check. The list of my failures goes on and there is an Enemy who is quick to mark them black and big. And I think of what the older woman told me just a couple weeks ago, that “whatever you are doing on New Year’s Day, you’ll be doing all year.” I laughed at the time, fending it off easily with good humor, but now it feels like too big a burden to carry, the weight of days ahead in light of my weakness. And the Enemy of our hearts is whispering loudly that it’s no more than he expected and after all, this is only who I am.

But we talked about that in small group on Sunday, how he prowls like a lion, his single purpose to destroy our devotion to Christ, fight tooth and nail against God’s glory. The struggle may be his own refusal to submit to his Creator, but we are caught in the crossfire as God’s Image Bearers, and the battle plays out in our minds and our hearts in the most mundane of Everyday. “Whatever you are doing on New Year’s Day, you’ll be doing all year.” Failed in the smallest of things, and no undoing it now. This could be a black hole, swallowing my whole world if I keep listening. But Truth stands firm, like a beacon in the darkness: “So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to Him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.” (Romans 8:1-2)

So here I am at the beginning of a New Year wearing all these labels, staggering hard already….and I fall flat on the Truth: I am sinful but I have a Savior. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31) He gives His righteousness for my sin, His strength for my weakness, His hope and peace for the days to come. I hate that I will be doing this all year long– but if my failures drive me into the loving arms of a Savior, that is not the worst thing. Paul’s confident declaration of victory rings out through the ages: “I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.” (Romans 8:38)

Today I read a mentor-sister’s confession of the beginning of her year and I see that I am not alone– the old saying is true for all of us on the Faith-journey. We will be falling and standing up again, choosing, and being made new every day for the next year… if we want to be. We get to choose who to listen to. We get to choose whether to surrender our failures to Christ and let Him make us new, or to let the labels of the Enemy hang like millstones around our necks, pulling us down into despair. We are clay pots in process, and that’s who we really are in Christ… and it will not surprise the Father at all when we turn out for His glory in the end.

“Oh great love of God,
Who takes away the sin of all of us–
Gone forever!
Heaven opened wide in your resurrection;
You won’t be denied bringing life to the dead and dying;
You won’t be denied: we will rise and we’ll sing forever…”
(Oh Great Love of God, David Crowder Band)

“Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.” (Romans 8:33-34)

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