Monthly Archives: June 2013

Strength in the Lord

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The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped;
my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.
(Psalm 28:7)

Here in Cherokee we continue the ongoing work of Flood Relief, now in the middle of our third week.  We are making progress, moving houses off the clean-up list, but there is still a lot to do.  The community has really come together to provide financial relief to the flood victims, and we are doing our best to meet the needs that we know about.  The need is great, but our God is greater still, and by His grace we will continue to help those in need.

Still, in the middle of helping others, I thought it might be good to take a moment to write about helping the helpers.  After three weeks of blood, sweat, and tears, our volunteers are exhausted, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  How do you nurture your own spirit when day in and day out you are nurturing others?  How do you keep your love of neighbor from drying up like the caked mud we’ve been mucking out of basements?

Here are a few thoughts to encourage the encouragers:

You are not the Savior

When you show up to help someone in need, the gratitude and kindness you receive can often be payment enough.  But it can also go to your head.  You are providing something that they cannot do for themselves, you are a much needed kindness, you are a light in a time of darkness, but you are not the Light, you are not their Savior.

The desire to help those in need is good, the longing to give in love as Christ has given to you is beautiful, but you must always remember, you cannot meet their greatest need.  You can give everything you have, but they will still need more.  You can even lay down your life, but there is only one life that was sufficient to meet the needs of a hungry and broken world.

Remind yourself of this: “The people don’t need me, they need Christ.”  Your work should ultimately show others his goodness, his strength, the sufficiency of his care and provision

You are not strong enough

Okay, so that may not sound very encouraging, but bear with me for a moment.

In whatever you do, it is good to know your limitations.  Trying to do more than you are able can lead to disaster, both for you and for those you are trying to help.  The fact of the matter is, on your own you are not strong enough to carry the load of those around you.  If you try you will be crushed under their burden.  On your own you are not wise enough to sort out all the problems of those you are trying to help.  On your own you are inadequate for the situation at hand.

But you are not on your own.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, “Such is the confidence we have through Christ toward God.  Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent, to be ministers of a new covenant” (2 Cor 3:4-5).  He is the one who makes you adequate.  He is the one who makes you strong.

When God called Moses to deliver Israel from slavery, Moses was quick to point out his inadequacies for the job, saying, “Who am I that I should go?”  But God reminded him, “I will be with you…” (Exodus 3:11-12).

When you walk with the Lord and serve one another, the very presence of God is your strength and your shield.  His shoulders are strong enough for the burdens you carry, His wisdom is great enough for the problems you face, His arms reach to the farthest corners of the world, His hands have never failed.

Psalm 118:14  The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.

Find your joy in the Lord

I think it is safe to say that if you don’t have joy in what you are doing, you won’t do it for very long.  No one willing stays at a job that makes him miserable.  When you are wading through the rubble of people’s lives, crying with them as you realize the magnitude of their loss, all joy can quickly fade.  Love in action hurts, and it can often rob you of your joy.

Don’t let it.  Keep your eyes on Christ, and remember all that He has done for you.  He sought you out when you were lost.  He love you when you were unlovable.  He was faithful to you when you rebelled against Him.  He bore the weight of God’s wrath for your sins though He was sinless.  He died the death that was meant for you, and rose from the dead to give you eternal life.  You couldn’t ask for a greater friend, a greater love, a stronger Savior.

When you consider the “breadth and length and height and depth… the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” such a love will fill you with joy; joy overflowing into the lives of those around you.  Keep your eyes on Jesus, keep your mind on his love, his grace, his mercy; and let that be the foundation of yours.

SDG

Flotsam, Jetsam, and Grace

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“And, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”
(Matthew 28:20)

This last week I’ve had several opportunities to roll up my sleeves and help out those whose homes were hit hardest by the recent flood in Cherokee. Mucking basements, gutting a house; it’s hard work, but good work. It’s sad, wading through the ruins of someone else’s life; but it’s also uplifting, joining with friends to help a neighbor in need. The truly fascinating thing is what you can discover while mucking out a basement. Here are some discoveries that I have made in the last week:

I Want to Travel Light

At the first house I went to, water had filled the basement all the way up to the door to the main floor. By the time we got there, four days later, the water had receded, but the basement had to be emptied. The problem was, the basement was filled, wall to wall, with debris. Boxes of VHS tapes, bags of clothes, piles of old children’s books and toys – a lifetime of belongings coated in muck, beyond any hope for salvage. I can’t imagine the pain and heartbreak the homeowner felt, she couldn’t watch as we hauled everything in the basement to the curb for disposal – these were here memories, sacred relics of her life, each with meaning and significance; now they were unrecognizable piles of waste, ready to be hauled away.

The pastor in me, always seeing things from a Gospel angle, couldn’t help but see my own heart in the poor basement. As I was hauling water logged boxes out of the basement, the thought came to me, “Is your heart any better than all of this?” There is clutter in my heart: divisions of loyalty and love that clamor for my attention; the bitterness and resentment from hurts and heartbreaks long ago that keep me from freely loving and forgiving others; the pride and conceit that I carry with me, thinking that I am somehow better or above all the rest, immune to the problems that others face.

I want, I need, to travel light. All of this clutter in my heart, I need to let it go. All it is doing is weighing me down, keeping me from running the race that is set before me, preventing me from loving the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind and strength.

That sort of leads me to my second point.

Grace is Found in the Least Likely Places

In amongst the flotsam and jetsam, I found a cross. A simple ordinary wooden cross, buried among the muck and destruction of that basement. Laying there among the ruins, in the shambles of a broken life, was the reminder of God’s grace and forgiveness in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

It was a surprising discovery; I never expected to find it there. But isn’t that how grace works? Grace is, after all, the unexpected and undeserved gift of God’s favor for those who could never have hoped to find it. And when you find it, when you stumble upon the surprising and surpassing greatness of God’s grace in Christ, the clutter seems to disappear, the load is lighter, and the burden is easier.

I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised to find God’s grace in the middle of the mess; isn’t that usually were we find it? When the night is at its darkest, we our strength is completely gone, when hope seems to fail, when we finally realize there is nothing we can do to save ourselves; that is when grace breaks through with saving power.

Remember, there is still a lot of work to be done to help those in need. For the next couple of weeks, every Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday will be clean up days with various types of work to be done – from mucking out basements to demolition and reconstruction. And while the clean up will be over soon, the emotional and spiritual recovery will be with us for a while. Please keep praying for those who have lost their homes and their possessions in the flood, and asking God to show us how we can help.

SDG