Marissa Henley

Encouraging weary women to hope in Christ alone

Forgiveness

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As I picked up an old issue of R.C. Sproul’s “Tabletalk” magazine last night, I looked at the topic–The Freedom of Forgiveness–and expected a nice reminder of how I’ve been forgiven by God in Christ. I’ve never thought that forgiving others was something I struggled with. I haven’t been sinned against or betrayed in any major way, and I generally live at peace with people close to me. (Or so I thought.)

As I read the words of various authors in the magazine, God brought this thought to my mind: Have I truly forgiven the people living in my home as I should? I realized that I have not forgiven Christopher for exasperating me, disobeying me, and generally making my life difficult by being a stubborn 3-year-old who requires almost constant training and instruction. The familiar verses from Matthew 18:21-22 took on new meaning when seen in this light: “Then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.'”

I’ve never thought that there was anyone in my life who would require this kind of extravagant forgiveness. But now that I think about, 70 times 7 sounds just about like the number of times my kids make me want to pull my hair out on any given day. And I realized that the way I respond to Christopher when he disobeys is usually as though it is the 489th time he has disobeyed me, and my frustration and resentment has been building with each infraction.

What would it look like to truly forgive Christopher for each act of obedience? It would mean that my response would be as though it was the first time he had EVER disobeyed. All previous offenses would be completely forgotten. I believe that response would look very different from the one I typically display. The same applies to my marriage–what if I responded to Noel as if it were the first time he had ever let me down or failed to meet my needs? What if I didn’t just roll over all the previous hurt and bitterness and apply it to every new time he offends me?

How can I possibly do this? In Matthew 18, Jesus goes on to tell the parable of the servant who had been forgiven a massive debt, but failed to forgive another person who owed him a much small debt. I can forgive my kids and husband seven times seventy times because I have offended God infinitely more times than that. In fact, I was an enemy of God, and He still loved me, pursued me, redeemed me, and adopted me as His daughter, all because of the blood of His Son shed on the cross for me. This amazing truth frees me to forgive and requires me to forgive.

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"Don’t Make Me Count to Three!"

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I can’t believe it has been a month since my last post. Two weeks of our entire family being sick, immediately followed by a 600-mile move . . . in the midst of the chaos, I’ve barely had a coherent thought in my brain to speak to new people I’m meeting, let alone several to form into a blog post! 🙂

As I was moving in, a friend of mine here in Arkansas invited me to a book discussion group. I thought, “I certainly don’t have time to read a book, but I could use some friends, so why not?” Little did I know that God didn’t only bring this opportunity along for the new friends (although that is a nice by-product) but for the wisdom that is found in the book we’re discussing–Don’t Make Me Count to Three by Ginger Plowman. If you’ve read Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp, it is a similar parenting philosophy (she actually quotes him quite a bit), but she also provides lots of practical suggestions on how to discuss disobedience with your child and Scripture passages to use in instructing them in obedience. This will probably be the first of multiple posts I’ll write about this book as I finish reading and work on applying what God is teaching me.

This quote from the book summarizes it well: “Biblical disciple gets to the heart of the problem. After all, if you can reach the heart, the behavior will take care of itself. In order for us to reach the hearts of our children we must realize that there is far more to parenting than getting our children to act right. We have to get them to think right . . . We do this by training them in righteousness. Righteous training can only come from the Word of God” (p. 26).

It seems that so many times, I can only muster the energy and time to punish Christopher for what he’s done wrong. This book has shown me the importance of delving into the heart issues behind Christopher’s disobedience and then training him to do what is right and, as Plowman puts it, “think like a Christian” about his behavior. And as she says in the quote above, this can only be accomplished with God’s Word playing an integral role. I’m hoping my new routine will look like this: 1. punishment for disobedience, 2. discussion about the heart issue behind it, 3. instruction from God’s Word about what he should have done instead, and even role-playing how to do it differently.

I Corinthians 10:13 says: “God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” In reference to this verse, Plowman writes: “When we correct our children for wrong behavior but fail to train them in righteous behavior, we will exasperate them because we are not providing them with a way of escape” (p. 48). I’ve never thought of it this way before, but now I see the importance in providing Christopher a way out, and it makes so much sense. How could he possibly be expected to figure it out for himself?

A few days ago, this actually worked. I woke up Christopher that morning, and when I told him it was time to go potty, he stated in a very whiny voice that he wanted to wake up Will before going potty. I told him that I could not say “yes” because he was whining, and then I walked him through how he could ask me correctly the next time. I had completely forgotten about it the next morning, when I woke Christopher up and said it was time to go potty, and just like we had practiced the day before, he said, “Mommy, can we wake up Will first, please?” I was shocked!

I’ve been very convicted by this book that I need to know Scripture better to truly train my children in righteousness. As 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The other moms in the discussion group and I are all planning to make notecards with Scripture references pertaining to different situations we encounter with our kids . . . if anyone has some great verses to share, please leave a comment. So far, I’ve just been reading I Corinthians 13 with Christopher and talking about what it means to love his brother. This gets applied many, many times, every single day. “Love is not rude! Love does not seek its own interest! LOVE IS KIND!!!! STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER!!!!” (Is it training in righteousness if you are yelling Scripture at them? Probably not.)

More to come . . .

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Smelling like crap

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I have a friend, Sarah, who recently adopted her son from Ethiopia. That sentence makes it sound like such a simple thing, but it was far from simple. Sarah and her husband spent two years trying to adopt a son–hitting dead ends at every turn and having to start over countless times. As the long, difficult months turned into years, they kept pursuing their son. Finally, last month, they brought him home. And he has diarrhea. The crazy diarrhea that most of us would only encounter in our worst nightmares. The covered-in-poop needing-a-bath-at-2-a.m. variety that I think should earn Sarah the Mom’s Medal of Honor.

Sarah said something to me last week that I loved. (And don’t worry, friends, I’ll always get your permission before quoting you by name on my blog.) Of course, Sarah is thrilled to have her son with her and loves him immensely in spite of their poop-filled nights. And she said that this experience with her son is a great illustration of the love that God our Father has for us. We smell like crap to Him, and He still pursues us and loves us as His children.

It might seem a little shocking that Sarah thinks we smell like crap to God. (Or smelled like crap, if we are in Christ.) But this passage from Romans backs up her statement:

Romans 8:6-11 (emphasis mine):

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.”

I’ve never noticed before how in this passage, it seems that Paul has to ease us into the truth of our relationship to God before Christ. We don’t want to hear this, do we? But we can get used to the idea that we were weak without Christ. Although we were weak, Christ died for us. But then Paul says we were a little worse than that–we were sinners. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Then Paul hits us with this: we were enemies of God. Enemies?!? What could I have possibly done to be called an enemy of God? And yet, while we were enemies of God, Christ died for us.

If the only thing separating me from God was a little gossip and a dash of impatience with my children, maybe I could work that out on my own–somehow making myself righteous in God’s sight. But if I’m an enemy of God, how do I start to fix that? I can’t. It can only be done by the blood of Christ shed for me, reconciling me to God.

How does this apply to my struggles as a mom? Although it’s been awhile since we’ve had diarrhea around here, I often feel disgusted by my kids’ selfishness, exasperated by their disobedience, and exhausted by their constant neediness. However, I am called to love them as God has loved me. That is, I am called to love them when there is nothing about them that is lovely. I am called to love them sacrificially and lavish grace on them even though they have done nothing to deserve it.

How amazing that God would pursue me, reconcile me to Himself through the death of His own Son, and adopt me as His daughter when all I have to bring to the table is my status as an enemy of God who smells like crap.

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Contentment

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This is one of the biggest things I’ve been learning lately. I’m excited to write about it, embarrassed that I am just now understanding these things at 30, and humbled to realize that I’ll surely have to learn it over and over again.

I’ve always struggled with contentment. (Can I get an “Amen”?) I’m in an unusual situation when it comes to contentment with money and material things, because I’ve had to go without for a long time, but I’ve always known that a date was coming (Summer 2007) when things would change dramatically, and I could have at least some of the things I’d been lacking and desiring for so long. During all these struggles, I have defined contentment as being content with what I have right now because I know it is temporary, and someday I’ll have nice things and I won’t have to be discontent anymore. I wouldn’t have come out and said it that way, but that’s definitely the way I was looking at things. A temporary lesson in contentment. Because materialism is where I struggle the most with contentment, and of course, we all know that once you have more money, you are also more content with your marriage, kids, etc., right?!? (I hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm there.)

So the magic date when all my dreams come true is approaching–really, it is here. Several months ago, I sat down to do a budget for our new life with a “real doctor” paycheck. To be honest, I was excited to see how much more I’d get to spend on myself. Eating out, not buying the kids’ clothes at Once Upon A Child–the whole big dream world. I was devastated to find out that once we paid taxes, tithed, and had a slightly larger house, the rest of the budget pretty much the same as it always has. It’s embarrassing to admit, but it took me a couple of weeks to get over it. I was reading a book at the time, loaned to me by my friend Amy about 4 years ago (yup, she knew 4 years ago I should read it, and I stashed it in my nightstand because I didn’t want to), called God and Your Stuff. The title says it all. One thing God taught me through that book is that if I’m not content right now (at the time, that meant being content with very little), then I would never be content with more. I got the fact that I couldn’t just keep looking to the future to solve my contentment problems, because the future never would. So I tried to just keep mustering up contentment for the present.

Now, several months later, I think I’ve finally figured out why my attempts to be content weren’t truly working. I could muster up some contentment for awhile, try to be thankful for what I have because so many people have less, know God wants to teach me lessons about how to handle money, blah, blah, blah. But it wouldn’t last, and soon enough, I’d be envying someone else’s furniture and being certain that I’d be so much happier if the only designer in my closet wasn’t the guy from Target.

Recently, I was searching God’s Word on a totally unrelated subject, and I still don’t know how it happened, but I came across a series of verses that totally changed my perspective on contentment. The verses were:

Psalm 27:4–One thing have I asked of the LORD, that I will seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.

Psalm 16:11–You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Philippians 4:19–And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

I realized that I was discontent because I am seeking after the wrong things. Instead of trying to be content with less stuff, I need to take my eyes off the stuff and put them on Christ. I’m seeking comfort, approval from others, an easy life, beautiful things, less worry about money. Those things will never be enough, no matter how much money we have. But if I’m seeking the Lord, a more intimate relationship with Him, a greater knowledge of my heavenly Father, to see His beauty as I worship Him–He has promised to give me all of these things with a fullness of joy I’ve never imagined. If I desire Him, that desire will be fulfilled–completely and eternally. That is true contentment.

This is a work-in-progress in my life. I’m still way too excited about that first “real” paycheck, and it is hard to not get caught up in my new house and all the great things I’m getting to put in it. Please pray for me that I will be seeking Christ, and Him alone, and that the stuff that He gives us will be used for His glory and not my own.

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