God

What Is Your Gift?

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

fall 2005 036I’ve been typing and editing away all week, getting ready for the Mt. Hermon Christian Writers Conference in Santa Cruz, California.

It’s hard to unpack all the reasons I’m excited about this: Drinking wine with old friends, cavorting among the Redwoods, smelling the Pacific, but mostly I’m thrilled to be taking another step toward what I’m meant to do with my life. It is such a relief.

The Apostle Paul told the Romans, the gifts and call of God are irrevocable, so maybe that’s why I get cranky and anxious when I’m not writing enough.

Until I started reading The Bible, I didn’t understand that while I am capable of many things, I am best at one thing, and God’s got a plan for it. I just have to cooperate.

At Mt. Hermon, they seem to get that. Not only do they round up the publishing industry folk, but everybody gathers to sing and praise the Lord first thing in the morning. It’s as though networking with God is the foundation for networking with anyone else. Evidently, at Mt Hermon somebody decided to take Proverbs 16:9 seriously:

The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.

For the last eight years, I’ve had a career in corporate insurance sales. That’s what happens when you don’t bother to let God establish your steps. I could do it, but I wasn’t made to do it. When I surrendered my stubborn streak to the Lord, I began writing. On Thursday, I’m getting on a plane with a completed manuscript in hand.

So, even if you have to use your gift on the side of everything else, get busy and do it. Next week we’ll work up strategies for how.

On Taking Things For Granted

/ Erin Kirk / 3 Comments

The other night, Tim Garland of SCRUBS Medical Mission described what it is like to be peed on by a child that isn’t yours, knowing a shower is nowhere in sight.

“Somehow, it doesn’t bother me.”

At the Light-Hope School in Chongwe, Zambia, a child, who is literally and figuratively hungry, is likely to crawl into your lap to be held. Sometimes they fall asleep and pee.

Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls (Photo credit: tonymz)

Why am I desperate to go on this upcoming medical mission trip to Zambia? Why do I want to sleep in a crowded grass hut, in a village with dirty water, hungry children and people who walk for miles for help with an infected tooth. Why do I want to go somewhere for two weeks and make a negligible dent in human suffering?

Because I believe the gospel, but I take it for granted.

What if you never heard of a God who so loved the world he sent his son to save it? What if you never heard of Isaiah who predicted a savior would come and announce:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1

Jesus showed up 700 years later and said: “I’m Him, I’m the one you’re waiting for.”

Doesn’t that sound like good news? Especially if you’re broken-hearted, mourning, captive or poor?

It’s unbelievable of course, and yet here are a bunch of his followers, rich Americans not eating overpriced hot dogs at Disneyland but kneeling in the dirt, hungry and unshowered too, cleaning a wound on a child they don’t know. Why would they do such a thing?

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

Initially, I believed going to Zambia was about bringing my skills to them, but that’s silly, I’m not that skilled. Rather, I think God just wants my faith, so he can show me miracles. He wants to show me what He can do among people – African and American – who will believe Him without disclaimer.

Why can’t I do that in Texas?

Because I don’t know how. I’m stupefied by my own excess, the petty tyranny of my first world problems and what passes for Christian behavior in our culture. I don’t have enough faith to say “give us this day, our daily bread” and mean it literally.

So I’m planning to take what little I’ve got and lay it before God, and do what he asks:

Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy. Proverbs 31:8

Are You Mad at God?

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

One of my favorite passages in The Bible comes from of the book of Job. I love it because it is a poetic and beautiful rejoinder to a man complaining to God.

Job had reason to complain. He was an uber-wealthy guy who served God well. For reasons he didn’t know, he lost everything: His family, his home, his vast wealth and was left sifting through the ashes of his life, his body covered in weeping sores. His friends came over and tried to help, probing the scriptures, trying to sort out what Job had done wrong.

Job never cursed God, but for 36 chapters, he and his friends speculated.

Finally, out of a whirlwind, God spoke to Job.

English: Pleiades Star Cluster

Pleiades (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man and I will demand of you, and you declare to Me. 

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? …Have you entered the treasuries of the snow, or have you seen the treasuries of the hail…Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords of Orion? Can you lead forth the signs of the zodiac in their season? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you establish their rule upon the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds so that an abundance of waters may cover you? Can you send lightnings, that they may go and say to you, Here we are? (excerpted from Job 38)

Then Job replied to the Lord: Behold I am of small account and vile! What shall I answer You? I lay my hand upon my mouth. Job 40:3-4

Whoa!

IMG_0018Ummmm frankly, I expect a little more coddling than that when I have a problem. But why should I? We’re talking about the creator of hoar frost, the aurora borealis and lightning. I hurled insult at Him all the years I refused to serve Him, taking credit for the success in my life, and blaming Him for the suffering.

Either God is sovereign over all of it or he isn’t. Gird up your loins little girl, and choose!

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, Proverbs 9:10 says and that’s the message I get from Job. If we plan to cultivate a life of faith that radiates love, kindness, courage, justice, peace and confidence, we must get comfortable with the mystery and respect it, accepting joy and suffering as parts of the human equation. Clinging to God through both is the key.

Happily, the Bible is littered with promises to encourage us.

  • For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11
  • Come to me all you who are heavy laden and weary and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28
  • But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31

Job did that and his story ends like this:

And the Lord turned the captivity of Job and restored his fortunes, when he prayed for his friends; also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Job 42:10