I was once at a church thing where a speaker talked about the Hebrew words for praise. At the end of their message, they gave us an opportunity to practice doing each of those words. (Before you read on, I want you to know that I’m not throwing any shade to this speaker at all. And just in case, I’m also not going to tell you who they were. If you want to try to guess, know that I’ve been in many services in more than one country in which speakers have given basically the same presentation. So maybe I’m amalgamating multiple speakers into one; maybe I’m not. đ Anyway, back to what I was saying…) One of the Hebrew words for praise is towdah. The translation this speaker gave for towdah was, “to extend the hands with thanks for promises that are coming,” and the Scripture cited was Psalm 50:23.
"Whoever sacrifices a thank offering honors me,
and whoever orders his conduct,
I will show him the salvation of God."
(Psalm 50:23, CSB)
Even though I had heard all of this many times beforeâand had even taught it myself a few timesâI listened and took careful notes. And when it was time to practice praising God in different ways, I “knew the drill” and was ready to go. But when the time came to “thank God for promises that are coming,â I couldn’t do it and I sensed the Holy Spirit speak a loud, âno,â into my heart. âYou canât do this yet,â He said. It may seem strange that God would tell me not to praise Him yet. But I had a suspicion for why and decided to check it. So as the sound of people praising surrounded me, I pulled out my Bible and read the passage againânot as an isolated verse, but as a part of a wholeâbeginning with verse one.
Itâs important to remember that the book of Psalms was/is the Jewish prayer and song book. And for Christians today, it’s still meant to be our prayer and song book, giving us language to fully express our hearts to God. And whether we’re reading the Psalms or any other book of the Bible, when we isolate verses from their context, we misunderstand what those verses mean.
So now letâs take a look at Psalm 50. Many words of this psalm would not be suitable to stitch onto a throw pillow:
"Our God is coming; he will not be silent!
Devouring fire precedes him,
And a storm rages around him."
(Psalm 50:3, CSB)
When someone in the Bible spoke or prayed about God not being silent, there was something they wanted God to respond to. And that something was likely a source of pain, anger, or some other heavy emotion. What (or who) was causing this author to cling to God this way in this psalm? From verse 7, we learn that the offenders were Godâs people. (âListen, my people, and I will speak; I will testify against youâŚâ) These were people who had Godâs law and knew what He required of them. In todayâs vernacular, weâd say these people went to church, raised their hands and voices during worship, and they might have even been the loudest and most verbose during prayer time. But God rejected their acts of worship and called them “wicked.” Why?
"But God says to the wicked:
'What right do you have to recite my statutes
and to take my covenant on your lips?
You hate instruction
and fling my words behind you.
When you see a thief,
you make friends with him,
and you associate with adulterers.
You unleash your mouth for evil
and harness your tongue for deceit.
You sit, maligning your brother,
slandering your motherâs son.
You have done these things, and I kept silent;
you thought I was just like you.â
(Psalm 50:16-21, CSB)
In short, Psalm 50 expresses pain and anger about those who outwardly worship God and claim His name, but who also participate in injustice.
You cannot do the praising of Psalm 50:23 until you have done the lamenting and petitioning of Psalm 50:1-22. There is no shortcut to praise. It’s not that God doesn’t know about our pain unless we express it; it’s that by expressing our pain to Him, we give Him access to it so He can do His transformative work in and through it. God does not ask us to bypass our pain; the God Who Is With Us invites us to walk with Him through our pain. And while we still live in the now and not yet, in a world that is still broken and yearning to be made new, we continue to both lament and praise.
So back to the day when a speaker invited a room full of people to praise God for the promises that are coming: After the Spirit told me, âNo, you canât do this yet,â I broke into tears and lamented, giving voice to injustices I had seen and ways I had been wounded. And after I lamented and poured out my heart to God, I was able to praise.
âThere is power in bringing untold stories to light.â
âLament serves the purpose of providing a necessary step toward praise.â
âWhat would happen to our faith if we believed that God reigns sovereign over both our celebration and our suffering?â
âLamentations recognizes that individual voices from the full range of citizens must be heard. Lament requires the full and honest expression of suffering; that experience must encompass the full breadth of suffering. In contrast, American evangelical Christianity often presents only the story of the dominant culture. Often, the stories from the ethnic minority communities are not deemed worthyâŚThe power of Lamentations is that the voices of those who have actually suffered are not missing.â
âIn many of our justice endeavors, we often believe that our task is to speak for the voiceless. But maybe we need to follow the book of Lamentations and move the ones who suffer to front and center. The prophet-narrator has much to say, but the real movement and progress is that we hear the actual voice of those who suffer.â
Confession: I was supposed to publish this the week that this book launched into the world in October of 2022. I posted these words in a number of other places. But even though I had this post ready to go weeks in advance, when the day came, I forgot to hit the “publish” button. I actually didn’t realize this wasn’t already published until I opened up WordPress to write something else. So after months of being out in the world, let me tell you about a book:
In a society marked by hyper-individuality, a lack of real connection that leaves us lonely, and what feels like insurmountable division, we need Shannanâs words. Through her storytelling, she paints a picture of what our lives together as communities and a society can be. And through her practical wisdom, she gives us a path for how we can move in that direction. (One way she does that is by ending each chapter with âOne Simple Way to Move toward Each Other.â)
She ends with âA Neighborâs Blessing.â If any part of this blessing resonates with you, then this book is for you:
âMay you go out into this bewildering world warmed by the fire of possibility. May you come to see walking shoes, soup spoons, minivans, and wrinkled hands as worthy tools for connection. May your heart stay tender, your hands stay open, and your door stay easy on its hinges. May you find comfort in the moon, art in the clouds, and goodness in the faces around you. May you gather, listen, and hope relentlessly. And May you never give up on the living light if belonging, right where you are. Grace and peace and gumption be with you.â
One more thing about this book stands out: In addition to people who resemble herself as a white woman, Shannan Martin gleans wisdom from diverse voicesâincluding men and women who are Black, Asian, Latine, and Indigenous. This book is a demonstration of how learning from diverse voices makes our lived theology more robust.
A few weeks ago I started something on Instagram called, âGood Conversations.â The goal is to pursue good. Not easy answers, not destruction, not an echo chamber. And even when we talk about hard things and the conversation gets messy, itâs so we can pursue good.
Also, I want the name âGood Conversationsâ to define our rules of engagement. These aren’t debates with winners and losers. Weâre in this together. And this is a space where we treat othersâeven those with whom we disagreeâwith love, respect, empathy, compassion, etc. In other words, this is a space where we practice goodness. The feeling I have after a good conversationâthe feeling of being seen, heard, loved, encouraged, energized, challenged in a good wayâthatâs what I want this to be for everyone.
If youâre on Instagram, you can participate in these conversations simply by responding to my weekly polls and questions. (To follow me, click here.) Iâll be saving each conversation in a highlight reel. For those who arenât on Instagram, Iâll share some of these conversations here on my blog.
The topic of the first Good Conversation was a big oneâour feelings about the Supreme Courtâs decision to overturn Roe v Wade (which became official just a few days before this conversation). Here it is:
I went out for sushi with a friend. Sheâs the kind of friend I love talking with and who always leaves me feeling encouraged. During this particular conversation, I noticed something interesting:
Whenever sheâd say, âI know I shouldâŚ,â what followed would sound spiritual and âChristianââlike things I grew up hearing at church. But strangely, it wouldnât sound like anything Iâve read about Jesusâ life in the Gospels. And when sheâd apologetically say, âBut I decided toâŚ,â Iâd be reminded of passages throughout Scripture and Iâd see parallels between her life choices and the life Jesus modeled for us.
My friend is following Jesus. And in order to do that, she has to reject the patterns of this worldâincluding ways the Church has adopted and spiritualized these patterns.
Isnât that weird? At least, shouldnât it be? And shouldnât this be cause for alarm?
Weâre followers / disciples / apprentices of Jesus. Whatever terminology you like to use, weâre to strive to look more and more like Him. But sometimes we confuse the way of Jesus with church culture. Church culture doesnât always look and sound like Jesus. In fact, sometimes itâs conforming to church culture that prevents us from becoming more like Jesus. (What a brilliant way for the enemy to keep the Church from actually living like the Body of Christ! âMake it sound spiritual and put Jesusâ name on it, then theyâll accept it without question!â)
I want my heart to be aligned with Jesusâ heart, to look and sound like Him, to reflect Him every way I can. Unfortunately, that means there are times when I must make choices that go against the culture of the Church (or at least the American Church). And that means people who know church culture better than actual Jesus will accuse me of things that sound a lot like the things Jesus was accused of.
⢠What if we accepted Jesus’ invitation to learn from Him, diving deep into Scripture with humility in the fact that we donât always get everything right and we still have more to learn?
⢠What if we investigated whether or not each supposed truth we label “biblical” is actually in the Bible and in alignment with the heart of God?
⢠What if we chose to follow Jesusâactually follow the words He spoke and the way He lived as itâs revealed in Scripture rather than what some people or our church culture tells us is “biblical”?
So hereâs my challenge to you: The next time you find yourself thinking, âI feel like as a Christian I shouldâŚ,â ask these two questions:
1. Does this thing I feel I should believe/think/do/be resemble what Jesus lived and taught? (If you canât find it in Jesusâ life and teachings or anywhere else in Scripture, thatâs a big red flag. So be specific. Where is it in Scripture? And if you find a verse, zoom out and look at the context of the chapter, book, and whole of Scripture. Is that really what that passage is saying? Or has it been misunderstood or taken out of context?)
2. What is the Spirit saying to me? Could it be that what the Spirit is saying to me contradicts something Iâve been taught but is actually in alignment with the way of Jesus as revealed in Scripture?
One more thing: Live this out in community. Find people who will ask these questions with you, lovingly call you out when you donât live them, and aggressively encourage you when you do.
A couple weeks ago, I received an email from one of the pastors in my local church. He asked if I could lead a prayer at our upcoming evening worship and prayer service. (We have one of these every month.) The area he asked me to pray for is one I’m passionate about: the racial issues in our country. I was honored to be asked. But the overwhelming feeling I had when I responded with my âyesâ was fear and dread. Our church is predominantly white; the demographics of our congregation reflects the demographics of our city (which is statistically one of the whitest cities in America). Let me be clear: I LOVE my church! It’s a great church with wonderful people. But what was being asked of me was still terrifying. I voiced my fears to my husband:
“How on earth am I supposed to lead a congregation to pray as one about something in which weâre so divided?”
“How do Iâa woman of color in a predominantly white spaceâlead a prayer about racial issues in a way that won’t get labeled ‘divisive,’ but is still honest and genuine?”
“What happens if this doesnât go well?” (This was my biggest question/worry. Did I mention that my husband’s on pastoral staff at this church?)
I labored over the words I’d pray, crafting the words while whispering again and again, “God, I can’t do this. Please help me!” He gave me words. And I prayed them on my own each day leading up to the service. Alone in my living room, I felt the weight of the words. This is not a safe prayer, I thought. I felt something else, too. Something beautiful was happening.
Last night, as I walked up the steps of the platform to lead our congregation in prayer, my heart raced and I unsuccessfully fought to stop shaking. In my fearâyes, I did it scared!âI kept my head down and my eyes on my iPad. As I prayed, I heard something I hoped for but didn’t expect: voices rising in agreement. There were only a couple times when I felt the crowd get quiet. My husband prepared me for this: “There will be moments when they’ll get quiet because they don’t know yet how to pray about some of these things. They’ll get quiet so they can listen and learn. It’s a good thing. Just keep going.” I remembered his words and kept going all the way to the “amen.” Something indeed happened last night. It felt as though something hard that needed to be broken was beginning to break. This is just a beginning. I wrote in my journal after I got home, “I feel itâreally feel it. Hope.”
After the service, a number of people asked if I could send them a copy of what I prayed. This morning, I got more messages with the same request. So here it is. What follows are the words I spoke and prayed (including a couple notes to myself to breathe) at Central Assembly in Springfield, Missouri on the evening of Sunday, February 6, 2022. May we continue to pray these words. And as we do, may we learn to live them.
Weâre going to pray about the racial issues in our country. [Take a breath.] And I know that as soon as I said those words, every single one of us felt something and our minds got loud with ideas and beliefs. And the range of thoughts is so wide that it can seem too insurmountable for us to be able to pray as one.
So hereâs what weâre going to do:
Everyone, hold out your hands in front of you, and clench your fists. (No hitting! Weâre not about to fight each other!) Prayerfully imagine that in your fists are all the things you think and feel when you hear the words, âracial issuesââŚbecause weâre not going to be able to pray as a unified voice until we deal with what weâre holding in our fists.
As I begin, I want you to pray, âGod, hereâs all my stuff. I want to give You access to all of it.â And when Youâre ready, I invite you to open your hands in surrender to Jesus. If you need more time before youâre ready, thatâs okay. The important thing is that we all move a little closer to God in this moment.
Letâs pray:
God, weâre symbolically holding in our fists
ways we believe weâre right and others are wrong,
ways weâve allowed ideologies to hinder us from loving well,
maybe feelings of apathy or annoyance,
or a desire for things to be better and exhaustion by the weight of it all,
maybe disillusionment, anger, or disappointment in our brothers and sisters in Christ,
maybe pain or even trauma.
Some of the things weâre holding are right in Your eyes and some are not. For most, what weâre holding is complicated. And all of it needs to be surrendered to Youâwhether for repentance, or so You can sanctify it to be used for Your glory, or so You can do Your miraculous healing work.
So God, hereâs all our stuff. Help us surrender it all to You.
If you feel ready, go ahead and open your hands and pray with me:
Jesus, we surrender it all to You. We give You access to all of it. Align our hearts to Yours and let Your will be done in and through us.
So now we lift up our church, our community, and our nation.
God, we lift up the Black community.
We lift up the Native American community.
We lift up the Latino community.
We lift up the Asian American and Pacific Islander community.
We lift up everyone whoâs part of the majority culture.
The needs are many.
We pray for demonic strongholds to be destroyed. Break the strongholds of racism and white supremacy in our country and even our churches. Disturb what needs to be disturbed and change hearts.
We pray for repentance to continue and to be thorough. Weâve come a long way, but still have far to go. Help us to repent and bear fruit in keeping with repentance. As Daniel, Nehemiah, and others repented for the communal sins of Israel, we repent of our nationâs sins as well as our own.
In commenting on MLKâs âI Have a Dream Speech,â Mrs. Coretta King said: âAt that moment it seemed as if the Kingdom of God appeared. But it only lasted for a moment.â God, there was a moment when it felt like we were on the brink of racial healing, but it only lasted for a moment, and too many returned to business as usual.
We repent of our prejudices, the ways weâve wrongly judged, painted groups of people with broad strokes, or turned people into demeaning caricatures. We repent of the actions and inaction that flowed from these ways of thinking.
We repent of disobeying your command to care for the foreigner and the ways weâve treated ethnic minorities like they are âotherâ and do not belong.
We repent of the ways weâve upheld or been complicit with unjust systems.
We repent of choosing to be colorblind when the dream of Your Kingdom is not one of ethnic erasure but one that envisions every nation, tribe, and language worshiping together before Your throne. Give us eyes to be color brave, to see the beauty of our ethnicities and the ways they reflect the image of God.
We repent of choosing comfort over bravery.
We repent of participating in racial jokes or degrading comments, whether we were the one speaking the words or were complicit with our laughter or silence.
We repent of being silent when we should have spoken up in either correction or encouragement.
We repent of getting so caught up in ideologies and partisan talking points that weâve allowed ourselves to treat peopleâfellow bearers of the image of Godâas though theyâre the enemy.
We repent of getting so caught up in debate that we fail to listen, show empathy, compassion, and love.
We repent of treating racial issues as though theyâre problems âout thereâ and neglecting to care for those among us who are hurting.
We repent of the times weâve prayed without action and the times weâve acted without prayer.
I pray for us to not settle for superficial peace, but to be agents of healing and justice.
Give our lawmakers the wisdom to correct unjust laws and systems.
Raise up more Christians like Bryan Stevenson to advocate for the victims of our unjust laws and systems and work towards equity.
I pray for the violence against Black and brown bodies to stop. Oh, God, we denounce violence in all its forms. We denounce violence thatâs inflicted on anyone. This week, with the start of Black History Month, at least 13 Historically Black Colleges and Universities were forced to close due to bomb threats. Oh God, we cry out for true peace in our land. As we often pray for a shield of protection when we travel, we pray for a shield of protection around ethnic minorities.
In âLetter from Birmingham Jail,â Martin Luther King lamented, âSo here we are moving toward the exit of the twentieth century with a religious community largely adjusted to the status quo, standing as a taillight behind other community agencies rather than a headlight leading men to higher levels of justice.â Oh God, may we be a headlight leading people to higher levels of justice! Give Your Churchâhere at Central and throughout our countryâthe wisdom and anointing to be brave in calling out unjust attitudes and systems, to be brave in doing the work of racial reconciliation, and to be brave in praying for and working towards shalom in our land. Holy Spirit, lead us and help us lead the way.
[Take a breath.]
Since the start of the pandemic, thereâs been a drastic rise in Anti-Asian violence. Asian Americans have been bombarded with videos of people who look like us and our parents being attacked and murdered. A couple months ago, there was news of an Asian man who was shot multiple times. He was about my fatherâs age and was killed in Chicagoâs Chinatown, a place my father frequents. So when I saw the news headline, without thinking, I instinctually looked up the details of the story to make sure it wasnât my father. This is a glimpse of what racial trauma looks like.
Jesus, we lift up those who are hurting and suffering racial trauma.
Weâre hurting. And sometimes the pain is too heavy and hope feels impossible. Oh Jesus, You understand wounds. So we welcome You into our pain and we bring You our lament. We bring You all our anger and frustration, all our why-s and how longs.
We pray for every BIPOC person who is carrying trauma in their bodies and their spirit. God of all comfort, I beg You to heal us.
Help us as we absorb yet another insensitive comment, dirty look, or hurtful action. Keep our hearts soft and our armors strong. May we forgive and, at the same time, not internalize the racism we experience.
Help us when the news of another assault or murder triggers our trauma and fear.
Our Father, thereâs so much brokenness. But You are the Lord of righteousness and justice, God of miracles and infinite possibility. Heal our land. Amen.
The following is a message I shared in a Drury University chapel service this week. This semester, the theme many of the speakers are exploring is “One Another.” And for anyone reading this who has taken a homiletics class (or four), yes, I realize this message isn’t “balanced” in that it’s extremely heavy on application. On the other end of the spectrum, I hate that I ended up with three points! (I typically go for a more story-like structure that takes you from point A to point B.) Moral of the story: Say the thing God wants you to say through whatever structure communicates it best!
Thereâs a phrase we often use when we talk about what being a Christian is: âpersonal relationship with Jesus.â But what does that really mean?
It means we can know Jesusânot just know about Jesus, but we can know Himâpersonally. We donât need someone to mediate for us. Heâs not distant. He is the God who is with us. One of Jesusâ last words to the disciples before He ascended to Heaven is, âBehold, I am with you, even to the end of the age.â Heâs not just with us in an ethereal sense; we have the freedom to approach Him and talk to Him whenever we want. The idea that we can have a personal relationship with God is a distinctive of Christianity.Â
The problem with the phrase, âpersonal relationship with Jesus,â is that we live in an individualist and consumerist culture. And it becomes easy for us to look at our personal relationship with Jesus with me-centered eyes.
Being a follower of Jesus is bigger than âme and Jesus.â Being a follower of Jesus means being part of something bigger than ourselves.
So here are a couple questions Iâd like you to consider: Do people know you have a personal relationship with Jesus? And if they do, how do they know?
Because you told them youâre a Christian?
Because you post Christian things on social media?
Because you go to church or pray before you eat a meal?
Or because when they think of you, they think of someone who loves well?
In John 13:34-35, Jesus said:
I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
In Matthew 22: 35-40, Jesus articulated the two greatest commandments:
…an expert in the law, asked a question to test him: âTeacher, which command in the law is the greatest?â
He said to him, âLove the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.â
Isnât it interesting that these two commands that all of Godâs other commands depend on are both relational and social?
In Matthew 5:43-45, Jesus went so far as to say:
You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
Later, in Galatians 5:22, Paul described the fruit of the Spiritâone fruit with nine qualities. And whatâs the first quality of the fruit of the Spirit? Love.
What marks us as Christians isnât our piety, how often we go to church, or even our spiritual disciplines. Those things are important and have their place, but theyâre not what marks us as Christians. The mark of being a follower of Jesus is love.
And as followers of Jesus, love is the thing out of which everything we do flows.
So I want to spend the rest of this time exploring this question: What does loving one another look like?
This isnât going to be exhaustive, but I hope to give you a glimpse of what loving one another can look like and to challenge you to love others more deeply.
Loving one another looks like empathy and presence.
The Bible uses a lot of metaphors to describe the Church and one of them is the concept of family. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He taught them to open with the words, âOur Father.â He could have taught them to say, âMy Father,â but a personal relationship with God isnât just, âMe and God.â Like I said earlier, having a personal relationship with God means that we can know God personally, but it means more than that. It means that we are members of Godâs family.
This past month, my husband and I were in Alabama to mourn the loss of my father-in-law. Because Alabama is farther along in the vaccine rollout, we were able to hold a service that people were actually able to attend. And it was beautiful to see what kind of people came.
There were people who lived locally whom my mother-in-law hadnât seen in decadesâpeople who had worked with my father-in-law at the first company he worked at after college. They showed their love just by being there.
And then there was one of my husbandâs cousins. To give you some context, my father-in-law was one of twelve, so my husband has a LOT of cousins! Weâve been married for almost 18 years and I still canât keep them all straight. In fact, there are cousins I havenât even met yet! Of the cousins my husband actually has a relationship with, there were a number of them we expected to see because they live in the area. But there were a couple that came that were a complete surprise because they had to travel (in a pandemic!) to be there. As we spoke with one of them, he told us what compelled him to make the trip to be there: âThese are the cousins I know.â I met this same cousin when Daniel and I got married. He had to travel a far distance to come to that, too. So he has both celebrated with us and mourned with us.
Loving one another means seeing people where theyâre at and choosing to be with them, rejoicing with them when they rejoice and mourning with them when they mourn. Loving one another looks like empathy and presence.
Loving one another looks like living for something bigger than ourselves.
How do we do that? Through our choices.
The choices we make arenât just about us. Thereâs no, âIâm making this choice for me.â Our choices impact those around us.
Are there choices we make that donât matter? Sure! A few weeks ago I bought a purse and had to choose whether I wanted the brown one or the black one. Neither one of those choices make a difference in how well I love.
Now I will say, there was another purse Iâd been eyeing for monthsâstay with me hereâbut it was way out of my budget. So if I would have bought that other purse, it would have meant less money in the bank. The purse I ended up buying was almost exactly the same as the one I was eyeing except it was a different color and it was 75% off, so I could make it work within our budget. And why does it matter that I made a choice to work within our budget? Because Iâve been wanting to live more generously. And staying within our budget gives us more room to be generous and to love others better.
A completely unspiritual choice can open up possibilities for spiritual things!
Our choicesâeven some that we think donât really matterâimpact those around us.
Last Friday, I got my second vaccine shot. As I was getting it, I started tearing up and said to the nurse, âIâm getting emotional!â And she said, âThatâs understandable! Youâve never lived through anything like this before.â And then she said something that made me tear up even more: âJust think about the difference youâre making!â
As weâve navigated the pandemic over the past year, weâve seen a lot of opinions about wearing masks, whether or not we should get the vaccine, and a gajillion other things. Iâm not here to make a partisan argument. Science is important. The Constitution is important. And itâs okay if we have convictions about those things. Itâs okay for science or the Constitution to be a reason why you advocate for something. But as Christians, the thing that should be our primary, core motivation, the motivation that trumps all others, the thing that most compels our actions…is love.
You see, if we advocate for science but without love, or if we advocate for the Constitution but without love, we can cause a lot of destruction.
If you study history, it doesnât take long to see ways that both science and the Constitution have produced some bad fruit and have been used (and at times, manipulated) to justify some awful things, from slavery to the use of atomic bombs.
But when our core motivation is love:
instead of destruction, we create;
instead of despair, we bring hope;
and in a world that is broken, we bring healing.
Loving one another looks like empathy and presence. It looks like living for something bigger than ourselves. And…
Loving one another looks like allowing God to transform us when itâs hard to love.
Our world is divided. And one of the things that has broken my heart over the past year is to see all the ways that the Church is divided, too.
Thereâs so much fear, anger, and hate. And Iâm gonna to be honest: as a woman of color, it has been a struggle to love. People I disagree with who arenât Christian? I can love themâeasy. But Christians who post racist or misogynistic things on social media, people who marginalize me within Christian spaces and force me to defend the dignity and worth of myself and others who look like me, people for whom I think, âTheyâre Christians! They should know better and do better!â Not easy.
I donât know who you struggle to love, but know that your struggle doesnât make you a bad Christianâit makes you human. Opening our hearts to love people also means opening our hearts to be hurt by people. And unfortunately, some people do a lot of damage and never repent, never try to be better, never try to fix what they broke, never even say sorry.
So what do we do about people who are hard to love? We canât will ourselves to love better! We canât love our enemies or the people whoâve hurt us without Godâs help.
Start by bringing your honest, unfiltered feelings to God. Donât hold anything back from Him. If you want to learn how to do that, the Psalms are a great place to start. Thereâs no human emotion that isnât expressed somewhere in the pages of the Psalms. God gave space for celebration, joy, and hopefulness. But He also gave space for lament, sadness, discouragement, depression, anger. And if God gave space for those emotions in the Bible, we can know that God gives space for those emotions in us as well. Our emotionsâeven the dark ones we try to hide from other peopleâare safe with God. Sometimes we think, âI donât want to have this emotion, so Iâm going to ignore it and pretend itâs not there.â But thereâs a better way. You donât have to hide those things from God.
When you give God access to those parts of yourself, you also give space for Him to heal and transform youânot with a neat and tidy bandaid, but with true healing. And when we experience Godâs healing and transformation, we can truly love.
So what does this look like? We can pray, âGod, I really wish this person or these people would [insert all the dark stuff you donât want to wish on them but deep down you really do].â And feel safe in the knowledge that God wonât be surprised by any of those thoughts or feelings because He already knows you have them! Itâs not about telling God so He can see them. Itâs about telling God so you can give Him access to every single part of your heart. And when youâve laid it all before God, ask Him to do His work in and through those painful thoughts and emotions.
As you pray for people who are hard to love, you might need to start by praying for God to help you to be able to pray for them!
And then over time, you can try praying for God to change their heartâfor them to see the harm theyâve caused and to come to a place of repentance. And maybe one day, you can even come to a place where you can pray for their well-being and flourishing wherever they are.
And even if they never change, you want God to have access to heal and transform the part of your heart that was hurt by themânot to excuse what theyâve done, but so the hurt they caused doesnât hold you back from being able to love others and to also be able to receive love from others.
Because love is our purpose and calling as followers of Jesus. Itâs even our birthright as children of God because weâre not just meant to give it but to also receive it.
SoâŚ
Letâs love one another with empathy and presence.
Letâs love one another by living for something bigger than ourselves.
And letâs even allow God to transform us when itâs hard to love.
There are SO MANY Bible study tools available. And among them are a lot of great resources as well as a lot of…um…not so great ones. So if you don’t know what you’re looking for (or maybe even if you do), navigating the sea of accessible Bible study tools can be overwhelming. So I thought I’d let you see some of my go-tos. Please note that even though I tried to keep this list short and simple, it can still seem like a lot if you’re just getting started. So after getting a Bible, if you want to start with just one thing, skip to the very end!
My Go-To Bibles:
First things first. The most important tool when you’re studying the Bible is…a Bible.
She Reads Truth Bible – There are a lot of Bibles in my home in a vast array of translations, languages, and editions. But when I’m sitting down to spend time with Jesus, this is the first one I grab. It has helpful resources in it (devotionals, charts, timelines, etc.) but not so much that I get bogged down in overthinking mode. In other words, it has a clean design and doesn’t look like a textbook. It also has wide margins, so it’s a great journaling Bible. (Random fun fact: one of the devotional writers is Jill McDaniel. Who’s Jill McDaniel? She goes to my church and she’s my friend. Also, she’s awesome.)
He Reads Truth Bible – I love my SRT Bible so much that I bought my husband the HRT Bible when it came out. Unlike the SRT Bible, the HRT Bible doesn’t have any devotionals in it. BUT, it does contain more resources (charts and such) that they developed after making the She Reads Truth Bible. Because of that, it’s not uncommon for me to borrow my husband’s Bible.
ESV Study Bible – This is pretty much the gold standard of study Bibles! It’s what I go to when I want to get into the nitty gritty. Its pages contain a wealth of diagrams, charts, notes, and a whole lot more. (Something to keep in consideration is that many of the notes in this study Bible are written from a more Reformed perspective. If that’s a turnoff for you, I list another great study Bible below.)
Digital Bibles:
Bible.com – This is a free digital Bible website and app. I mostly use this when I’m on the go or when I’m looking up passages in multiple versions. (I also link to Bible.com whenever I quote passages in my blog. đ ) The She Reads Truth app and He Reads Truth app are also great digital Bible options.
Since wordsâespecially words in the Bibleâdon’t always mean what we think they mean, here are a couple websites where you can click/tap on a word in a passage and find out what it means: NetBible.org and BibleWebApp.com.
Bible Background Resources:
Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible – I didn’t list this under the “My Go-To Bibles” category because I only have this Bible in Kindle format, so I mostly use it for the articles. If you don’t already have a study Bible, I highly recommend this one! (I link the NIV below, but it also comes in NKJV and NRSV.)
To be honest, I don’t use the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible as much because the following two books are my go-to for historical and cultural background deep dives.
John Walton and Craig Keener, the writers for the notes in the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, are the same people who wrote these commentaries. When I read these commentaries, I often find myself exclaiming out loud, “What?! This passage makes so much more sense now!”
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament
A note about commentaries for Biblical studies and ministerial students: I use a lot more commentaries than what I list here. I’m not going to list any of them here, because the point of this post is to give people who are beginning to study the Bible a starting point. Which commentaries are best? It depends on which book of the Bible you’re studying and what you’re looking for in a commentary. So when you’re picking commentaries, do your research and use more than one source when you can (libraries can help!).
If I Had to Pick Just One to Get Started:
BibleProject.com – From the BibleProject website: “BibleProject is a nonprofit animation studio that produces short-form, fully animated Bible videos and other Bible resources to make the biblical story accessible to everyone, everywhere. We create 100% free Bible videos, podcasts, and Bible resources to help people experience the story of the Bible.”
I love BibleProject so much that I got their ginormous coffee table book that has all the diagrams and summaries from the videos for each book of the Bible.
Honestly, I could spend hours just sitting and watching BibleProject videos. They have so much to explore! But when it comes to my regular Bible study, what do I do with these BibleProject resources? Before I begin reading a book of the Bible, I like to watch the corresponding video that “outlines its structure and design and how it fits into the entire biblical story.” And then I like to keep the coffee table book open close by so that if I feel like I’ve lost where I am in the larger storyâespecially when I’m reading a particularly lengthy bookâI can glance up and get my bearings.
Okay, so I told you some of my go-tos. What are some of yours?
As I share my stories, people tell me theirs. And they tell me how my story made them feel seen, or gave them hope in the midst of something hard, or even inspired them to pray a courageous prayer…”because I know you went through this.” My favorite is when someone tells me how a story I shared however many years ago is helping them through something they’re going through now.
Stories are like seeds. When they’re told, they’re buried in minds and hearts. And one dayâmaybe even years laterâthey bear fruit.
I’m 38 years old. I’ve been married for 17 years. And I have no children. This is not the story I would’ve chosen for myself, but it’s the one I’m living. And though it’s not an easy story to live, I love it. After all, who wants to read a story where the characters are always happy and never experience anything hard? Give me the stories with adventure, surprises, and conflict, the ones that end with the characters completely transformed.
So here I am in my wonderful, messy story. And as I type these words, I’m sitting on my couch with a heating pad on my belly as I recover from a total hysterectomy.
A number of years ago, a dear friend of mine (who’s only a few years older than me) walked the road of infertility, multiple surgeries, and then ultimately a hysterectomy. She chose to be open about her struggles and anguish. She poured out her heart in the beautiful, dissonant words she typed on social media. I don’t think she had any idea what kind of seed she was planting in my heart as I silently read her posts. Neither of us knew I would live her words several years later. The difference for me is I had less to discover on my own. Her wrestling emboldened my battle. And her hope in God became kindling for mine.
When it was my turn to get a hysterectomy, I knew it was a good thing, that my life would still be abundant and beautiful. I knew because I saw her go through this. And in the moments when I felt afraid or discouraged, her story gave me courage. After my surgery, I texted her, “I remember when you walked this road. Knowing you went through this made it less scary for me!”
The surgery is over, but I’m suddenly in another chapter. My surgery thrust me into menopause, no transition to ease me into it. And I find I’m completely clueless. I grappled with questions about my womanhood when I came to grips with my barrenness, and now I’m asking questions about my womanhood again as I take my first steps in the sea of menopause. I don’t know how to swim in these waters.
Menopause is one of those things in our culture we don’t discuss beyond a few jokes here and there. And because of that, I grew up believing menopause was something to be dreaded, something that carried all sorts of horribleness and no possible good. I don’t quite know what the truth is about menopause or how to discover it. Generations of women have walked this path before me, yet I feel like I’m clearing the path for myself all alone.
The areas we choose to make taboo are the areas where we rob the next generation from flourishing. I wish I could have entered this new phase of life armed with the stories of women who have gone before me. I can’t change what was. But I can change things for those who will come after me.
So here’s my challenge to all of us:
Whatever our stories are, it’s time to bring them to the light. And let’s create a culture that cherishes these stories and celebrates their telling, no matter how mundane or painful or joyous. Let’s plant these seeds so those who come after us can eat of their fruit and flourish!
When I’m embarking on something new, my default is to search for a book. Here’s the first book I got on my new adventure with menopause. I approached each book my Google search yielded with hesitancy and skepticism. What made me decide this book was for me? The endorsements on the back cover from Sarah Bessey and Christine Caine.
***Some words of caution about sharing your story that I added later:
While I believe we could powerfully impact the generations that come after us by giving space to tell stories about things that were once taboo, I’m not advocating we share every detail about everything. We need wisdom and care with the stories we share.
I consider whether or not a story is one I’m willing to be vulnerable about. Being vulnerable means opening ourselves to the possibility of being hurt. So when I’m considering whether or not I’m willing to share something, I ask myself, Can I handle someone saying something mean or insensitive about this right now? I don’t believe we should open up everything in our lives to that, especially areas where we’re still in the process of healing.
When a story involves other people, I consider whether or not a story is completely mine to tell. There are stories I’ll never blog about because even though I feel comfortable sharing my part of the story, it’s not my place to decide when other people will be vulnerable with their part.
One last thing: some stories can be shared openly and publicly. But there are some stories that should be reserved for spaces where we feel safe, whether that’s a small group or a one-on-one conversation with someone we trust.
Esther Guy 