Walking in the Word with Breast Cancer

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. —James 1:5-8 We can tap into wisdom any time we need it. In those moments we just don’t know what to do, we have access to wisdom. When we are faced with a difficult decision, or we are trying to find the right words, He promises to give us wisdom any time we ask. Perhaps we need to better understand a situation, or we need to see it from a different perspective, perhaps we want answers to difficult question, or we want truths revealed. All we need to do is ask and He will pour His wisdom on us generously.   I have spent far too many days in my own wisdom, reacting to situations without seeking ...

2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. - James 1:2-4 One of the hardest things to do is find joy in the midst of our brokenness. The times when I am already searching for solutions to problems and more seem to fall on me - that's the hardest time for me, that's when the enemy tries to steal my joy. Trials upon trials - they can knock the wind right out of you. But that’s how they seem come in my life - one right after another, without any time to breathe in between.  I’ve clung to the promises in this scripture more times than I can even remember in life. It’s truths have seen me through some of the deepest valleys. Every single time I’ve held on to these promises, He has proven Himself to be faithful. We are told we can find joy even in the most difficult str...

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, - Ephesians 4:11-13 We know from meditating on this verse for a week that we are the saints, who are being equipped by our pastors and teachers, to do the work of building up the unity of faith and knowledge in the church body until we are mature like Christ. This is our purpose. This is what glorifies God and should be what dominates our thoughts. “What can I do to further the kingdom of God?” should be the question on our mind every morning and throughout the day. “How can I take what I have learned and use it to teach others, to further build up the body of Christ?”  We can get so wrapped up in the busyness of our days that this true purp...

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, - Ephesians 4:11-13 As the saints, we are to work to build up the body of Christ, so that we all have unity in our faith and knowledge of Jesus ~ to mature manhood. I've always read this to mean us ~ until we're mature, as individuals.  But that's not exactly what it’s saying. It's saying we are to work toward maturing the body of Christ to act as Christ acted - as a whole. That's a hard concept to get our heads around, so let me say it as John Piper says it: The aim of the ministry is not just that individuals be built up, but that the body take on a personality like Christ's and a strength like Christ's and a love like ...

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, - Ephesians 4:11-13 We now understand from studying this passage that we are the ones who should be building up the body of Christ, and the rest of the verse tells us what that looks like - until we all attain unity in faith and knowledge. This verse stresses that we should not be so focused on ourselves as individuals, but unity is about the church as a whole. And we should keep at it until everyone attains unity in faith and knowledge. Everyone. Don’t settle in to your comfort zone - that’s a lot of people.  Far too often, we are consumers in church and small group - it's easy to get caught in the trap of attending church or small group, or...

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, - Ephesians 4:11-13 We are given spiritual gifts from Christ, but we are also given leaders whose job is to equip us, or to repair what's broken and supply what's lacking in the believers. As they do this, our gifts change and grow. Our faith and our knowledge should be growing as a result of the teaching we’ve encountered, and we should continually be challenged to the next level. As God sends leaders into our lives to help fix what is broken, we grow in different ways and different gifts begin to strengthen.  But what is it all of this for?  We see the answer in the next phrase - for the building up of the body of Christ. We are equi...

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, - Ephesians 4:11-13 So, we are the saints - it is our jobs to do the work to build up the body of Christ. It is our job to care for one another, to pray over one another, to mature one another.  I am so blessed to be in a small group that puts this verse into action.  There is never a hesitation to jump in when care is needed, when encouragement or prayer is needed, when a meal is needed. Our community goes beyond just the encouragement and support, we confront one another with the hard truths, and continually challenge each other to live according to God’s calling - even when it’s painful or hard. We understand the purpose of His tri...

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, - Ephesians 4:11-13 Interestingly, the word equip translates not as 'to teach or prepare' as I thought it might, but rather it translates as 'to fix what is broken'. So, for me, this changes the meaning slightly, and helps me to understand the bigger picture a little better.   We all know Christ has given us these spiritual gifts, and we know these gifts all vary from one person to the next. This is where the beauty in diversity can be found in our church, but it is also foundational. Our diversity is where the strength in our church can be found as well. We are all needed - each of us with our different gifts - to build up the ...

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, - Ephesians 4:11-13 These verses are the blueprint of God's calling for the church - they explain how we are to do ministry. It is a description of how the body of Christ must work in order to fulfill its God-ordained purpose. This is what we all should be working toward if we have set ourselves apart as believers in Christ.  We know from Ephesians 4 that Christ is the center of the church and He gives spiritual gifts to His people. The purpose of these spiritual gifts is the building up of the body of faith in knowledge, faith, and love. But God didn't just give the gifts to us - in these verses, we see that He also gives us the proces...

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.   Bearing is to hold up or support, so when you are bearing all things in a relationship, you are supporting it through anything. There is nothing that will can weaken the foundation of your relationships because we are called to love as Christ loves us. We put up with anything rather than hinder the work of Christ. The mark of a truly loving person is someone who will not wince or falter under pressure, but will lean in to brace the relationship ship when sufferings and afflictions hit. The enemy seeks to destroy and divide. He will sneak into any relationship you ha...

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is not irritable or resentful. If we want to love like God calls us to love, then it’s crucial we take the time to unravel these original meaning of these words. When you look up irritable, it means easily angered, annoyed, or provoked. In Paul’s original text, the word is the passive form of the verb to provoke or bring to a sharp point, meaning the person is being acted upon, but not acting itself. So, it would seem what he was trying to say to us is that love does not respond when triggered. In other words, someone who loves well chooses to accept another’s attacks without fighting back.  When our loved ones seem to be grumpy, or come after us tryi...

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 One of the greatest causes of strife in a relationship is the need to be right. Look at every argument between a husband and a wife, between siblings, a parent and child, co-workers, and you will see the need to be right at the root of the argument. Far too often, we insist on our own way and we get upset when we don’t get it.  We all have a specific idea for how we should be treated, how we spend our money or our time, how we make decisions; and we all have experiences from our past that drive those ideas. So long as the people in our lives are behaving within our defined parameters, everything is fine. In fact, we may not even be aware of those param...

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is not boast, it is not arrogant or rude. When these three characteristics are considered together, we are describing a prideful person. God calls us to a life of humility, one where we are consistently putting others before ourselves. It’s important to truly analyze each of these characteristics and how they manifest themselves in our lives. To deny these three traits exist in our hearts is to be prideful - they exist in all of us. It is true they can all be subtle, and without the magnifying glass of scripture, we may miss them. Our job to become keenly aware of what they look like in our own hearts so that we can surrender our pride in confession a...

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love does not envy or boast. When you are envious or boastful, the focus is on you. God calls us to love others as He loves us and to put others before ourselves, so He includes envy and boasting as things love is not.  People tend to consider jealousy and envy as synonyms or they use them interchangeably, but they’re not quite the same.  Jealous occurs when something we already possess, typically a relationship, is threatened by another person. Envy occurs when we lack something that someone has has - whether it’s a relationship, a lifestyle, looks, job, etc. So envy is a discontent with our current situation, instead it is desiring another...

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind. I love the other translations of scripture that replace patient with long-suffering because that makes the connotation of patient more visual for me. Love is long-suffering. Love accepts that there may be some time devoted to waiting through the hard stuff. We all have those relationships in our lives where we struggle to love well because the relationship is difficult to navigate. But we never stop loving as a response - that’s never an option if we are loving as God loves us. The love we have for that person is maintained through the struggle, love always comes out on the other side of the challenge.  It’s important to note ...

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Okay, so we all know this verse well because we’ve all been to a wedding, but do we ever spend more than the few fleeting moments we are sitting behind the bride and the groom to truly meditate on the verse and apply it to our lives? We all love imperfectly because we all try to love others in our own power. We need to continually hold up God’s definition of love against what to world teaches us to find and fight the discrepancies.  And when we do, we need to think about how we love others - not how others love us. Far too often, we hear this list and immediately start thinking about how others in our lives have failed us. We’re not meant to apply ...

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:18-19 The reason there is no fear in love is that there is no threat of punishment for being a loving person. When you love someone with real practical deeds, you never fear any repercussions because genuine acts of love generally don’t bring punishment. Fear is what you feel when you have done something that deserves punishment, but love is never threatened with punishment. So there is no fear in love.  Perfect love is the overflow of His Spirit actively working on your heart. When you love others with "perfect love", it casts out fear.  When you choose to love others with a selfless, bold love, you can live with confidence.  When you choose to love those who are most difficult to love with a genuine desire to put them first, you can know God’s blessings will follow ...

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:18-19 What is perfect love? The words just before this verse say, "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. In this is love perfected with us." God is perfect love, and we’re told when we abide in God and God abides in us, love is perfected in us.  To understand how to have His love perfected in us, we need to be sure we have a clear understanding of abiding. In the vine and branches analogy of John 15, we learn that abiding in Jesus means to keep his commandments, and to keep his commandments means to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.   When we are abiding in Him, we are being obedient to His Word, and when He is abiding in us, His Word is stored in our hearts. We are in tune w...

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:18-19 If we accept and allow the perfect love of our Father into our heaven into our hearts, we should have no fears because we are told in this verse that perfect love casts out fear. There should be nothing controlling our thoughts or paralyzing our actions.  When we understand how we are loved with a perfect love, we should have no fears. Yet we do. And those fears cast out the perfect love because perfect love and fear cannot exist together.  When we give into our fears, we give power to our fears over God. When our fears consume us, our actions communicate God is not the most important, fear is.  When our fears dictate our thoughts and our behavior, we block the peace that surpasses all understanding from washing over us, we intercept the blessings He has for our...

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:18-19 God created us with the capacity to fear because it is necessary for our protection as we live in this world. Sensible fear can motivate us to stay away from dangerous things; it can cause us to move quickly in dangerous situations.   Fear protects us - when it is controlled and expressed in appropriate situations.  Uncontrolled or irrational fears control us. They darken our lives and stunt our spiritual growth. It is these fears that are addressed in this verse. In my experience, these irrational fears can be broken down into two categories - fear of something happening to us or our loves ones that is challenging to deal with or walk through, and fear of man.  Many of us live with the fear that something dreadful may happen to someone we love - for example...

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:18-19 Fear paralyzes us. It causes us to stop dead in our tracks, unable to move forward. It is such an intense emotion that it can cause us to rage against the people in our lives, and it can cause us to become very controlling. Unmanaged fears can destroy our relationships. When you are afraid, there are two things you need to do to drive it away. First, remember you are in God’s family - you are chosen and beloved. If someone or something makes you afraid, you need to stop and remember that you’re a child of God. You’re not an orphan; you’re not alone. He is your Father, and God is greater and more powerful than anything.  Secondly, you need to call on Him. You can cry out to Him anytime and he will hear you. He’ll send his Spirit to come and calm you down. What do you f...

18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. - 1 John 4:18-19 There are two types of fear referenced in the Bible - one will bring you life, and the other will bring you death, one is profitable and the other is detrimental, one is encouraged and the other is sin.  Fear of the Lord is the first type of fear. It is a reverence for who He is and all He has done. It is a deep respect or even an awe at the acknowledgement of all that He is. It is not the type of fear that makes us run from Him, but rather bow down in honor of who He is. This fear motivates us to respect the Lord and His commandments. We are told in scripture that there are many benefits to this type of fear - it is the beginning of all wisdom, it brings peace and contentment, and it leads to life.  The other kind of fear is a distressing emotion that keeps us f...