Tag Archives: Jesus

Dreading Easter

by Lydia Floren

When I was little kid, I had very mixed emotions about Easter. I loved the part where I got to decorate eggs, eat chocolate, and dress up in a pretty new outfit. But, I dreaded going to church on Easter. They said the Easter story was good news, but it didn’t seem good to me. It was the story of how mean people made fun of Jesus, and beat Him up, and then killed Him, and that somehow, it was all my fault. What was good about that?

But I know something now that I didn’t know then: I didn’t kill Jesus.

Jesus made the decision to die entirely on His own. In fact, He could have changed His mind anywhere along the way. For example, I can easily imagine this scenario happening in the middle of Jesus’ torture:

Jesus lifts his chin and focuses straight ahead. Suddenly everything stops, suspended mid-motion. The roar of the crowd turns to silence. The razorlike whip, a mere 2 inches from His torn flesh, dangles in midair like strands of Spanish moss. He rips off His cruel crown and tosses it aside. In three long strides, He reaches the men stooped over his robe. He grabs the garment from frozen hands, donning it as He walks away, slicing through the stilled crowd like a hot knife through butter.

This could have happened. Jesus had plenty of power to do this and more. But He didn’t. Every single moment of His life, and every second leading up to His death, He made the same decision over and over again. To stay. To endure. I can almost see Him gazing at each person in that vicious crowd, and as their eyes met, His murmuring, “You are worth it.” He is still saying it to each of us. “I love you. You were worth it then, and you are worth it now. I have called you by name. You are mine.”

This Easter season, stop at the cross for a while, not to pile on guilt, but so you can be rid it. Let God banish those lies swirling around in your head: “You are worthless.” “You are a screw-up.” “You don’t deserve to be loved.” Ditch the lie I believed as a child, “I killed Jesus.” Stay at the cross for a while and absorb the truth: “Jesus chose to die because He loved me, and wanted me with Him forever. That’s how important I am to Him.” “I am totally worth it. He said so with His words, and by His actions.”

Shed the lies. Accept the truth. And then move on. Live your life in the freedom that Christ paid so dearly for. Freedom from condemnation and shame. Freedom in the knowledge that you are loved, valued, wanted, and worth dying for.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1

It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Gal 5:1

There is no dread in Easter. Only joy.

His joy is us.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:2 NASB

Our joy is Him.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. John 15:11

Focus

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by Lydia Floren

“O soul, are you weary and troubled? No light in the darkness you see?”

These are the first lines of a great old hymn. Even though Helen Lemmel wrote these questions decades ago, they are relevant today, aren’t they? Here’s what she says next:

“There’s a light for a look at the Savior, And life more abundant and free!

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”

We all feel overwhelmed at times. Lemmel simply reminds us, when we get discouraged, to take some time to focus on something—Someone—else. As we shift our attention to Jesus, our troubles don’t disappear. They just settle into a different perspective.

Turn your eyes away from your troubles, and look at Jesus.

Listen, as He says:

I love you in the mess of your life, and day by day I’m redeeming it and setting it right. It is beautiful now, and it is becoming more beautiful. You don’t have to fix anything. You just have to rest, and follow and let me work.

Live in the present, aware of God’s loving presence. The past is redeemed. The future is secure. The present is really all you have at any given time.

“Perfect love drives out fear.” 1 John 4:18

The Miracle

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“Whenever I have seen God’s wondrous work, …the thing that has always impressed me the most was the absolute quietness in which it was done.” -A.B. Simpson

When God drew His first breath as a human being, it wasn’t to great fanfare or a noisy celebration. His entrance into this world was a relatively quiet affair. It was eventful, yes, in the “Oh my gracious the baby is coming” sort of way. Painful. Messy. Joyful. It was an ordinary – albeit always extraordinary – birth.

And yet it was also miraculous. Jesus’ birth marked the first time that God lived within a person. As a Person.

Thirty-three or so years later, this extraordinary God-man named Jesus was murdered.

Jesus died, but He was not defeated. Jesus overcame the grave, and the power of evil in this world, and returned home. And then He sent back a gift to every person willing to accept it: the gift of Himself.

And so the miracle continues. Immanuel. God with us. God living within us, transforming our ordinary lives with His extraordinary presence.

Don’t miss a moment of it, obsessing about something you think you want, and then trying to figure out how to get it.

The truth is, all you or I ever truly want or need is right here with us, within us.
Loving us.
Healing us.
Guiding us.
Giving us the deep soul-satisfying life that can only come from Him.

A miracle. THE Miracle. Immanuel—God with us.

Our Problems Are Not The Problem – Overcoming Series, Part II

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by Lydia Floren

In the last blog Learning to Fish, I said:

“It is so easy to forget who Jesus is, and what God can do. We have seen Him do amazing things yet when we face difficulties, we tend to focus on the problem instead of on The Solution. When we fixate on the problem, we might get to work trying to find a solution on our own. The busier we get “solving problems,” the harder it is to remember what—and Who—is important. “

In other words, our problems are not the problem.

As long as we are in this world, we will have problems. In fact, Jesus words are startlingly clear:

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

The problem is we forget these 2 key truths: problems are a part of life on earth, and Jesus has overcome the world.

Problems are a part of life on earth. “In this world you will have trouble.”

We all have problems. But no one wants them. We want a life of comfort, undisturbed by pain or distress. So one reaction we might have to difficulties is to deny that they exist. If we aren’t careful, avoidance or denial can become our primary modus operandi, and it is driven by fear. We are afraid of future problems, or that a difficulty won’t be resolved to our satisfaction. We try to please everybody. We smooth things over. We worry. We think that burying our heads in the sand will just make problems go away.

In order to truly overcome, we must first accept that we will have problems throughout our lives. No one escapes this reality. According to one study, in a person’s life the average time span between one problem and the next it is 2 weeks. 2 weeks! That means that, at best, we may have a 14 days reprieved after our last “issue” before we are faced with our next one. While that may sound depressing on the surface, it is really quite liberating, and here’s why: when we know that difficulties will come, we are less surprised by them. We can see them as part of the fabric of life, rather than a “detour” from the life we imagined.

The Eeyores among us

Now there are some “Eeyores” among us. Eeyore, the donkey from the Winnie the Pooh stories, was a cup-half-empty kind of guy. He always found something to worry about. Lest you become like—or more like– Eeyore, let me be clear: Accepting that there will be difficulties on our journey does not mean we are to anticipate trouble around every bend.

When we expect the worst, we live in a pretty dismal reality, and so we tend to cope with this by either enduring or escaping. Here’s what I mean:

Enduring. If we believe that life is no more than a long series of problems, we might decide that the best we can do is endure it. We may develop a victim mentality or become poisoned with self-pity.

Escaping. An alternative to enduring is to try to escape life—to check out, via our favorite addiction (food, social media, TV, games, work, thrills, sex, porn, substance abuse, etc.) But the distraction doesn’t cure our hopelessness.

Choose to accept problems as a part of life, but don’t stop there—also embrace the truth that Christ has overcome. The second half of Jesus’ statement is much more important than the first:

“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Jesus has overcome the world.

While it is important for us to accept troubles as a normal part of life, it is even more crucial to remember this: Jesus has overcome the world.

What exactly does “overcome the world” mean?

In Greek, “overcome” means “to conquer, or prevail”, and the literal translation for “the world” is “an ordered system.” Putting these together, Jesus said that He has conquered the ordered system we have been living in, a system riddled with evil and deception. His victory is far more profound than a political coup or a military conquest. His victory is over evil itself! His triumph spans generations and penetrates every willing soul.

So where does that leave us with our troubles?

Even though we have troubles, those troubles won’t defeat us.
Even better, every difficulty we encounter can be used by God for our good.
Here is something truly amazing: not only did Jesus overcome this system of evil, He gave each of His children this same power to overcome.
We can have peace in Him. Even in the middle of difficult circumstances, God can give us a profound sense of inner peace, a stillness deep within ourselves that no circumstance can touch.

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Next week: 4 Practical Steps In Overcoming Problems

Escaping the Twilight Zone of Anxiety

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by Lydia Floren

In the holiday season, it is easy to get stressed. Anxiety can slip up on you–or just slam you– but it always keeps you from enjoying life. When we are anxious, we are fretful, not fruitful. We frown. We are easily annoyed. With all the activity and stress this time of year, it’s doubly important to recognize the signs that you may be entering the Twilight Zone of Anxiety.

It starts with The Coulds.

I think we all have a little ADD; it’s hard not to get distracted, given the world we live in. And any tendency our minds might have to wander, will kick into overdrive at the holidays. We think about The Coulds.

There are so many things we COULD do. We COULD entertain like Southern Living, decorate our homes like Architectural Digest, create gifts like Martha Stewart, dress like Vogue, bake cookies like Good Housekeeping. We COULD attend the office party, the theatre production, the carol sing, the sleigh ride. We COULD do all the things we didn’t do last year, that we promised ourselves we would do “next year, for sure.” These “coulds” don’t order themselves into a neat list; they swirl around in our heads like a thick fog on a stormy night.

Then come The Shoulds

Once The Coulds are established, The Shoulds creep in. We SHOULD make this gift. We SHOULD call so-and-so. We SHOULD attend that event, buy this present, send that special card, call that person, volunteer for this cause. SHOULDS go very deep in our psychy. Beneath the layer of things we SHOULD DO, is the even more corrosive layer of the things we SHOULD BE. We SHOULD BE more loving, and patient, and thoughtful, and organized, and disciplined. Between the Coulds and the Shoulds, everything in our heads becomes a muddled mess.

The Abyss of Never Enough

Eventually, we are forced to face the fact that we don’t have enough—of anything. We don’t have enough time, or energy, or resources, or even compassion–to do what we think we SHOULD do, much less what we COULD do. At first we might complain (whine) “if I just had more _______.” Or we might try whipping those around us into action (usually less-than-enthusiastic family members), to help us get some of those Shoulds off our backs. Finally we admit to ourselves: “There is never enough, and there is never going to be enough, of me to do all these Shoulds, no matter how hard I try.”

While this truth should be freeing, it is not. Not yet. We aren’t finished sliding down into the pit, and we do this by saying to ourselves, “Somehow this is all my fault. I SHOULD have done this, I SHOULD have planned that.” We get frustrated, depressed, and twice as stressed, beating ourselves up for every missed opportunity, every less-than-perfect outcome. When we reach the SHOULDS of REGRET, we have tumbled headlong into the Abyss of NEVER ENOUGH. Here, we are truly at a standstill.

Escaping the Twilight Zone of Anxiety

The way to freedom from all this anxiety and stress is 180 dgrees opposite the busy road we have been traveling. Our freedom comes when we decide to quit focusing on ourselves, and our little corner of the universe, and turn our eyes to Jesus. Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” When we spend our efforts connecting with the Maker of the Universe we get to know Truth—in Person. That Person also said “You shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.”

I find when I choose to make time with God my top priority, everything changes. The fog clears. I start to see the world more from His perspective. The things I was worried about don’t seem as important. And other things—things that weren’t even on my radar before—take precedence. The hymnist Helen H. Lemmel expressed it this way:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.

The psalmist David said it another way:

…I waited patiently for the LORD; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God… Isaiah 40:1-3

What ways has God freed you? We’d love to hear from you!

For more reflections about the holidays, check out Perfect Holidays, Shine your Heart, or Crunch Time.

What Makes You Valuable?

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By Lydia Floren

When I meet someone new, I do my best to avoid the fact that I am a physician. (Outside of work, of course. Hard to avoid that fact with a white coat and stethoscope!) I am not ashamed of my profession – far from it – but sometimes, that “MD” can really be a barrier when I am getting to know someone. For example, I can meet a person for the first time, we will be having a wonderful conversation, discovering mutual interests and telling funny stories, but that all changes if, somehow, it gets out that I am a doctor. It’s like a bomb goes off. My new friend will get this look on her face, and then maybe say, “Oh. You’re a doctor?” I’ll nod. “A medical doctor?” I’ll nod again. Silence. Then the questions: “Where do you practice? What kind of doctor are you? How long have you been doing this?”, and so on. In the space of a few moments, I have stopped being a person. I have become a stereotype.

We all identify one other by our roles, and may value each other based on achievement. But what makes you valuable? Secretly, at our core we each long to be understood and appreciated for who we are, not what we do,or who we know, or how much we possess.

This is exactly the way God values us. We don’t have to posture or pretend. He already knows the “real” us – our essence, our core identity. He values us – loves us – not because of our performance, but simply because we are. What a relief! We can finally come in from the cold of competition, and warm our hearts with His loving acceptance. His presence within us enables us to be fully alive, fully ourselves. And full of joy.

In Your presence is fullness of Joy. Psalm 16:11

I have come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly. John 10:10

Man looks at the outward things, but God looks at the heart. 1 Samuel 16:7

I am fearfully and wonderfully made and my soul knows it very well. Psalm 139:14

How about you? Do you feel sometimes that your value is based on your achievements or title? Or, the things our culture tells us are valuable? Leave a comment below.