These days, experiencing a (worldwide) pandemic feels like an excerpt from a novel, not our real lives. How are we supposed to cope? What do we do when the world goes crazy around us? Well, we can be like characters in a book, we can start where we are and realize we are on a journey. We will be building character, as we live each real-life day. Each new day can feel like a fresh new page to write on. We can use our words to paint beauty. We can use our experiences to create a pathway for us.

BE REAL
In a book, especially if the author uses the omniscient point of view, as a reader, you know exactly what the character is thinking, and what motivates them too. Being real is so understated. But by honestly accepting how we feel, we aren’t saying, we want to stay in a certain mood. We are just acknowledging feelings we probably need to address and process. But first of all, we have to be open and claim these feelings, before we can deal with them.

REALIZE WHAT OUR MAIN CONFLICT IS
In a story, the plot is driven by conflict. Usually it’s between the character and another character; between the character and a machine; between the character and a beast; or inside the character themselves. A crisis, puts a microphone to these conflicts we already have going on. For example, married couples often have conflicts based on differences, say he is very carefree and she is ultra careful… in this Pandemic situation, she may be highly concerned about all the face touching he is doing. Whereas, he may be amazed by her obsession to clean and disinfect everything. She may be a night owl, and he an early bird. Or, she may be health conscious, while he doesn’t care anything about fitness or eating healthy.

When crisis hits, these areas often light up; escalating potential conflict. Conflict can be a source of tremendous growth in a book, for it’s what drives the character to change. The contrast between characters can also create humor as well. Say she-Miss Tidy Bed, likes to make their bed super tight … and he-Mr. Fluffy/Tousled Bed comes along, after she makes it he grabs her around the waist and tackles her right in the middle of the freshly made bed! That clash can be the making of a war, or some of the best humor there is… if we let it. It’s all in how we choose to handle conflict.

WHAT MAKES YOU YOU
Writers spend hours creating character sketches. These consist of subconscious and conscious traits their characters possess. Writers create thick folders with details from the character’s eye color, talents, gifts, sports they play and watch, what church they go to, or if they go to church, favorite books, magazines—- to city of origin, experiences, and favorite past times. We get to see some of these aspects come through in the character by the way they speak to others, deal with situations, relate with superiors and those under their authority.

Crisis creates a magnifying glass to examine what makes us who we are. Often the answer is, we are what we repeatedly do. Or, we are often shaped by our habits. What are your habits? What makes you who you are? Are there areas you want to change, are there things we want to become? Then, it seems like the natural thing to develop that habit. I know playing an instrument isn’t easy. It’s not something you can just do, without some element of study and practice.

What are areas of character development you wish you had, areas that may be surfacing right now, like a festering splinter? It’s a pretty good time to examine these places, and look at habits we can develop in the future, to achieve these goals.

CREATE A SIZZLING STORYLINE
Fear is a real threat to the plot line of our lives. Often I’ve felt its’ presence, before attempting something new, or before a great opportunity emerges. If every character in a book gave fear its’ way, the resulting storyline would be stale… boring. But face the giant, and you have the story of David, a young boy, who eventually plays his music in front of the King of a country, and publishes his songs in an international bestseller; not to mention, becoming king himself. Imagine the world without the story of David and Goliath. Imagine your life without you facing your giants.

WRITE FROM THE CONCLUSION
What’s the best part of the book? The ending of course! It’s where the underdog team comes from behind and charges across the end zone. It’s where the heroine finally kisses her true love. It’s where all the intricate storylines converge into a satisfying climactic moment. So, that’s where we can start, in life… looking at what our goals are… where we want to finish. It creates a goal, a dangling carrot for us to follow. And even if that desired result doesn’t happen exactly like we hoped, we will, after all, have tried. Yes, we will have plot twists, and unexpected turns, and we have to adjust our goals, as our character develops and we start in new directions with new purpose, but knowing what we believe in, and directing our lives in that vein, helps to lead us through each day.

KEEP A SENSE OF ADVENTURE
In a book, adventure is vital, I think in life it is too. When we lose it, we get old and irrelevant. God help us all! I like the way a friend spoke of her greatest challenge. She said, I can’t wait to see what God does with this!

Right now this Pandemic may be one of the greatest challenges we ever face. I hope that I can keep a sense of adventure. I hope we can see the good all this can bring. I hope someday we each have a story worth reading. Keep believing the faith, hope in what is true, and love with all the love you got!

Flash back to the 1970s. I’m standing with my childhood friends at the front of the church. I’m nervous and excited with toes cramped into those shiny black Sunday shoes. There on the edge of the sanctuary stairs, our children’s choir sings the words from Nehemiah 8:10 about the joy of the Lord being our strength — but praise didn’t begin then. Praise predates the Free Methodist Church, McDonald’s and even the hymnal.

The pages of history show God interacting with and revealing Himself to ancient Bible characters like Moses, Mary, Miriam and David. What is their response to God’s revelation? It’s praise!

Through the centuries, praise rises from catacombs of the early persecuted church to the cathedrals and the birthplace of modern religion. Today people of every nationality, tongue and class continue lifting praise to God’s heart — from members of the persecuted church, who may mouth the words only (lest they be heard), to star-studded concerts with thousands of cheering fans, smoke machines, light shows and sub-woofers — praise rises.

Yet, it’s more than this.

Praise Is a Weapon of Warfare

An entry in my “First Years Journal” tells me I first made a confession of Christ at age 3. But until life falls apart, we may not realize how faith works. Times of trial help head knowledge become heart knowledge.

Four years into marriage, my husband Jeff loses his 13-year career position as a health-care computer programmer. We mail countless résumé packets. Trips to the empty mailbox deepen our hopelessness. Despair hangs thick in the atmosphere of our lives.

Jeff sits motionless in a chair. A loud silence hangs over him. I see depression stealing the fire from his eyes. In its place shadows lurk. In my mind’s eye, I see him as I knew him before. He’s throwing himself into a constant pursuit of life, enjoying recreational logic, playing every sport or game he can. Now he just sits.

As I watch him. I think of that meal I made, when I was trying to cheer him up with his favorite food. I see the dark circles under his eyes, the ashen color of his face. His words echo in my mind: “I just want to die.”

Those words trigger an alarm from somewhere inside me. I take Jeff’s hand, feeling the weight of his athletic frame working against my efforts.

“What are you doing?”

“We have to fight!”

“Huh?” Jeff looks at me puzzled and a little miffed.

Finally, he lets me pull him up.

We stumble to the furnace room, the place which, through our toughest years, we refer to as the “prayer room.”

I rearrange the pillows on the ground and shut the door.

“Now let’s get on our knees and praise God.”

Jeff looks at me as though I am crazy.

“This is what I do when I feel like I’m about to lose my grip. We have to do this. We have to fight!”

I reach for Jeff’s hand. He interlaces his fingers in mine. We lift our clasped hands upward, aligning our physical posture with our desperate need for God.

“Lord, we praise you. We praise you even though we don’t feel it. Honestly, it’s the last thing we want to do. But we choose to praise you. Help us God! Show us, Lord, the discipline of Paul and Silas. If they could do this in a real-life prison, we can praise you right here in the midst of our circumstances” (Act 16:16-40).

Jeff and I continue holding hands as we hear the furnace cycle. He rests his head on my shoulder as we keep our praise vigil — “God You are all-powerful. You are our Creator. You are our Rock. You know us. You know the number of hairs on our heads. You understand us. You love us. We feel letdown, yet we are your children. Nothing can separate us from your love—not trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, or danger” (Romans 8:35-39).

We continue, “God you own everything. You know everything. You have all power to do anything, to change every situation, to transform any life. You healed the sick of their diseases. You spoke to the storm and made it quiet. Your timing is perfect. We know You will cause all things to work together for our good, and You use the fire of tribulation to refine our character. We long to be all You desire. We lay our lives down at Your feet. We know You see us, and hear us, and that You care.”

As we praise God in that furnace room, or should I say, the prayer room, it happens, like it has so many times before. God honors our act of faith we call praise. Our focus shifts our hearts away from circumstances and toward God. It tells our fear who God is. It quenches doubts which threaten to uproot everything we believe about God.

I love the real-life account found in 2 Chronicles 20. King Jehoshaphat’s army goes out to battle. I imagine these warriors marching to the battle lines, clenching their teeth, gritting their gizzards to fight the enemy or die trying. They grasp spears and javelins; they’re girded in body armor. But instead of fighting physically, God instructs them to sing praises. I can imagine the looks of astonishment on their faces and the dropped jaws as they adjust their tactics. God sees their act of faith and wipes out the enemy!Praising God is still as powerful a weapon today.

Praise is a Practice You Work at

I’m a singer. Through the years, I’ve sung in churches and auditoriums, touring across parts of Europe, Canada and America. Now I mostly sing in my local church, helping as a worship leader. It takes preparation — practicing the timing, the intros and outros, the vocal technique and the blend (if singing harmony). I learn the words — and music — and visualize them. It’s hard work to put a program together.

Often people come up afterward and say, “I appreciate how you praise God up there on the stage.”

I say thank you. It feels great to know my preparation helps others encounter God. Then I share some of my story and say something like, “God has been challenging me. Sunday is — well —practice. He’s training me on how to praise Him during the Monday through Saturday parts of life. It’s changing my life.”

I share about the 13 very tough years through which Jeff and I have lived. Two and a half years of Jeff’s debilitated depression — joblessness, 10 years of trying to start a company with a friend — the business failing, and Jeff’s current job as a janitor. These aren’t natural places of happiness. But praising God brings us to the place of being overwhelmed with God, instead of circumstances. Like a photographer works a zoom lens, when we habitually choose to focus on God, God becomes the big picture and our troubles become the background.

I believe praising God is how King David encourages himself in the Lord in 1 Samuel 30:6, Paul and Silas’ prison chains were broken in Act 16 and how we triumph over any circumstance life brings us.

Praise Is a Fire to Refine Us

As I am worshiping privately, God surrounds me with his reassuring presence. God also confronts me with counterfeits — things in my life I thought I couldn’t live without, “stuff” to which I didn’t realize I had assigned such worth.

Idols take the shape of all kinds of things. We idolize successful people, cars, houses, clothing, and comfort. Intangibles can also be idols.

I think back to painful moments, when my life felt needy for the material provisions I was used to. God uses all that as an opportunity. He shows me how even the seemingly innocent American dream of a secure life can be an idol. God is faithfully helping me rid myself of it by the practice of redirecting my focus to Him.

Through the toppling of my world, and the upheaval of my dreams and expectations, God shows up, teaching me how building my life on anything else but Him is like putting foundations in the sand.

Praise enables us to let go of the things we don’t really need, so we can hold on to what’s most important. Like the Apostle Paul learned, it teaches us how to be content whether we’re in plenty or in want, whether feasting or in famine, because all we need comes from God’s strength working in and through us. Praise enables us to say, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Philippians 4:12-13).

Praise Is a Gift from the Giver

Praise leaps from the pages of the Bible. In Job 38, God speaks of the stars singing at creation and angels shouting for joy! God who created everything also ordained praise and worship.

Creation itself points to and speaks of God’s greatness — from the snow-covered Swiss Alps, to ocean waves crashing on tropical shores; from microscopic strands of DNA, to galaxies viewed through telescopes. God puts the fragrance in roses, the play in puppies, and the heat in jalapenos.

The act of leading our heart to ponder God’s works amazes me. In the midst of a frustrating day, I can take a moment and look out the window to watch a sparrow. As I watch, I ponder the scientific know-how of a God who designed these creatures so they fly. I ponder the blind faith of that little wild bird — she leaps into the air—launching into seemingly nothing, expecting it will work. Praise is like that. I have to smile at our God who says that he watches the sparrow. He says we are worth so much more (Matthew 10:29-31).

In the process of praising God, I get stuck in wonder, awe and humility. I feel small. Yet feeling small in the presence of God is just what we need. Psalm 19:1 says “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” I’m hushed by the God who created sunsets and the universe while bringing fresh mercy everyday with each new sunrise.

Praise Transcends Time and Traditions

I love to imagine what the Psalms sound like. As a songwriter myself, I long to hear the music of these lyrics. I imagine trumpets, lyres, tambourines, stringed instruments, flutes and harps!

As I experience holy moments, music often interweaves with these moments. Music is like that. It is God’s idea our minds are wired in such a way music takes us places emotionally. The challenge is to continue — to grow and experience more and more of who God is.

I remember moments as a teenager at a camp when a college group sang a song, and I felt as if angels were all around. But I don’t want to get so trapped there I limit my limitless God to a moment in history. I don’t want to constrain my worship and praise to just music or a style.

Praise and worship means the child and the elder coming together in harmony. It means quiet times of reverence and drums rolling, trumpets sounding, guitars screeching.

It is a gift and a practice; a weapon and a sacrificial offering. It can take the mundane to miraculous; change the sour to sublime. It is for the church and for the individual, for corporate times and private silence. Through it, God breaks prison bars, reveals hidden idolatry and sets us free.

Praise is hands reaching up to God. It is our Son-lit faces lifted heavenward. It is a heart learning how to wean itself from earthly expectations. It can be a quiet “Amen,” a shout, or a cheer. Praise is as tender as a tear rolling down our face. As holy as a sigh as we watch a sunset. It is our heartbeat. It is a garment we put on (Isaiah 61:3). It is the music of our faith. In it, we find the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10).

Tammy Bovee is a Spring Arbor University graduate, a songwriter and a freelance author for newspapers and magazines. She’s currently working on a book sharing priceless lessons God has taught her and her husband, Jeff Bovee, through their marriage.

When have you praised God in the midst of difficult circumstances?

Share your comments here or on https://www.facebook.com/Repurposedwife/

Article by Tammy Bovee first appeared on:

http://fmcusa.org/lightandlifemag/more-than-a-song/

 

“Your statutes are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart.” Psalm 119:11

Imagine how dark the world would be without light? Imagine how meaningless it would be? God’s Word is a light that defines and gives life meaning.  The Bible expresses God’s heart. A little earlier in Psalm 111:105 we read, Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

Let’s explore Psalm 119:11 and what it implies, remembering that God’s Word is light in the darkness.

In Psalm 119:11, the word “statute”, means law. The idea behind “heritage” means inheritance. Why would the Psalmist say that having God’s laws as his inheritance brings joy?

If someone left us an inheritance what would we think of first? If we were honest, it wouldn’t be a set of rules. Honestly, we wouldn’t really see the value in it. Unless of course it was a set of rules, or directions to a treasure.

The Psalmist here is hinting at a sense of uncommon values. He treasures God’s way of life. He knows God. He has acquainted himself with the ways that seem right to man, but in the end lead to death. He knows that God’s ways lead to the very best kind of life.

He understands God who created human life has laid down statutes to live by. And these are very good. They lead to a tremendous treasure, character, and delight of being pleasing to God.

Imagine for a moment, if God didn’t reveal his ways of holy living to us. Imagine how frustrated we would be trying to figure out the way we should live! What is right? What is wrong? How would we live in family? How would we function as a church? How would we please God? If we didn’t know God’s laws.

So the Psalmist is rejoicing that not only has God revealed how best to live, but I believe, he is also rejoicing in the relationship aspect this reveals. God loves us enough to communicate with us the best ways and practices.

Imagine for a moment, how meaningless a game would be without rules. Imagine how chaotic and unsafe our streets and highways would prove, without rules. It is not a stretch to realize how meaningless our lives are without knowing God’s ways, without understanding the best practices for life.

What a reason to rejoice. We know how to live in a way that God says is best. We know the God who created these statutes created them for for us to reach our best in life.

We are not “saved” by obeying God’s ways and means to the best life. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus. Yet, our salvation is based on a vibrant, active, communicative relationship with God. If we love God, we will desire, seek out, and follow through with his directions for how to live.

I love the truth in John 10:10 that describes God as a God who seeks and desires the very best for us; that we live abundant lives.

When God warned us to:

Have no other gods before him; not make idols in the form of anything in heaven or on earth or in the waters, not to bow down or worship them; To not misuse God’s name; to remember to keep the Sabbath day; to honor our parents; to not murder; to not commit adultery; to not steal; to not give false testimony; to not covet

He did so for the benefit of us.

How much addiction and unrest, and strife, and wickedness and sleeplessness, and lack of God’s favor we forfeit when we forget to live by God’s ways?

Some of us grew up memorizing these 10 ways to live, yet, do we really know them by heart? Do we understand the importance Jesus placed on them? That God’s desire was that we not only observe them, but that we take them into our hearts and apply the intent behind them to our everyday life?

God not only gave these commands, he enables us to follow them, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let us eagerly desire to find the joy of the living lives in greater dependence and obedience to God!

Prayer: God, you know that these commands aren’t always easy. Help us know how to live. Show us how to value what you value and love you. Show us how to be in the world but not of it. Show us God how to enjoy your pathway, and to run in it, and experience the freedom of the life you always intended us to live. In Jesus name, Amen.

Day 8

“Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews through the provinces of King Xerxes, near and far, to have them celebrate annually the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar as the time when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration. He wrote them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor.” Esther 9:20-22

Have you experienced a moment where your sorrow was turned to joy, and completely lifted from your heart?

The Israelites had a very close call. A strong enemy wanted them annihilated. But God intervened in unlikely ways. Now Esther was queen, and Mordecai was elevated to honor and position. He declared a holiday, and had the people give of their resources to one another and to the poor.

What has God done in your life? How has he blessed you?

When you are blessed, it multiplies your blessing, when you give to others. Who might God want you to bless today?

Prayer: God the week is coming to an end. We feel tired, but we are blessed. We think of the many ways you have helped us recently. We also remember, the ways you have seen us through difficult times as we think back over our lives. We feel great joy, for all you have done for us!

Gifts come in all shapes and sizes. God, some of us have the gift of helps, the gift of encouragement; some of us have money someone might benefit from. Some have a super servant heart and want to serve someone who cannot do for themselves. God show us what your desire is for us, in giving to others, to multiply our joy by giving to someone else. In Jesus’s name, Amen.