christianity

If I Only…

Sanctification, Trusting God

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the LORD…” Jeremiah 29:13-14

If I only…can just get my workout completed before 7 a.m., I’ll be sure to have a productive day. If I only…can just get my Bible reading completed before I make my coffee, I’ll feel like I can enjoy my cup of coffee. If I only…can just get school completed with Abby for the day, I’ll feel like a good mom. If I only…can just get all of the laundry washed, dried and put away, my mind will be more freed up. If I only…can just get the floors swept and mopped, I’ll feel more accomplished. If I only…can just get the next chapter started on my writing project, I’ll feel like I’m doing something productive. If I only…can just get everything checked off my to-do list before everyone else gets home, I’ll feel better about myself. If I only…can just get dinner going, I’ll feel like I’m serving my family well. If I only…can just get the kitchen cleaned up, I’ll finally feel like I deserve to rest.

Task-oriented, list-checker, tight schedule-keeper… these are just a few ways I’m sure my family would describe my compulsion and desire to be productive and efficient. Though I’ve pretty much always been this way, I thought when I left my career in the middle of 2022, I would leave my notepads of lists in my desk drawer. I thought I’d begin a new chapter of life that didn’t include daily struggling with my over-working brain that is never satisfied or happy until every.single.thing.is.done.

But, the reality is… every single thing will never be done. I’m home all day, homeschooling my girl, working in ministry, co-teaching a weekly CO-OP class, taxi-driving my teens around, cooking for my family, keeping my home clean and inviting. And yet, daily I find myself seeking a meaningless relief and self-satisfaction by checking off my never-ending list of to-do’s.

Some days I get to the bottom of the list. I strategized all day, and never truly enjoyed any of it, just to get every box checked. Guess what? It still wasn’t enough. I still wasn’t satisfied. I still felt I could have produced more, “I should have added to the list,” I’ll silently tell myself. It can truly be madness.

Can you relate?

More recently I’ve realized how deep these notions of time-keeping and list-checking run. They’ve become mental idols. I’m consumed with them. I have a deeply rooted fear of appearing lazy to my family because I’m home now, so I never want to sit down until all of the laundry is completed, all of the meal is cooked, all of the mess is cleaned, and all the things in the house are perfect…. So I basically never sit down. Because I’m reaching for something that doesn’t exist. I’m exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically…exhausted.

If I only….

I want to be more like the women in the Bible who struggled for twelve years with a discharge of blood. I’ll pass on her physical ailment, but I want more of her heart set on Christ.

“For she said to herself, “If I only touch his garment, I will be made well” (Matthew 9:21 ESV).

Her eyes were set on Christ as her healer.

We’re the same, she and I. She needed something that only Christ could offer her. I need something that only Christ can offer me. Though hers was a physical illness that ailed her for over a decade, deeming her unclean for society—she knew she had to get to this man named Jesus. “If I only touch his garment…” She knew where the ultimate and true source of healing was…Jesus.

Don’t I know this, too? Why then do I not slow down, stop everything, put my notepad of lists away, and have the heart posture of… “If I only touch his garment…” And, I have something this woman didn’t have…she no doubt had to travel and weave her way through crowds surrounding the Messiah to draw near to Him. But, He’s already near to me. He lives on the inside of me! Because of His death on the cross by taking the wrath that you and I deserve from our Holy God because of sin, His burial, His glorious resurrection, and His ascension to heaven, He left us a gift… the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes and dwells inside of the believer! He is near, He is always near.  

Our perfect God left a beautiful promise to Jeremiah, “Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD…” (Jeremiah 29:12-14 ESV).

This promise is for the believer today, too.

If I seek Him with all my heart, He promises to be found. Though, I know I’m sealed for salvation, I never want to stop seeking my God, I never want to take a break in getting to know my God, I never want to halt falling deeper in love with my God, and I never want to cease trusting my God.

“…If I only touch his garment, I will be made well.” Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, “Take heart daughter; your faith has made you well.” And instantly the woman was made well” (Matthew 9:21-22 ESV).

My God has made me well by the gift of His salvation and the grace He continues to pour out on me. He never stops drawing me deeper into sanctification, making me more holy like Him. He even pursues me in the midst of my meaningless battles of attempting to control the day by lists. He is near, He is always near.

Next time I write a to do list, I vow to begin with, “If I only touch his garment…” meaning if all I do is abide in Him, walk in step with His Holy Spirit, and I don’t mark anything else of my self-gratifying list…I will have been made well…

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God

Ardently His,

Jess

2024 Reflection

Sanctification, Trusting God

“But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:16-18, ESV)

The end of a year and the beginning of a new—It’s as if most of us have “reflection time” marked on our calendars on these end of the year days leading to what we all hope to be a fresh start as a new year dawns, forcing our brains to overpower our hand as we begin the task of writing the numbers of a new year. My mental make-up is one of constant reflection. I feel blessed to have a desire for consistent growth, crushing goals of all kinds, and being in competition with my best competitor—myself. It’s no surprise that reflection time saturates my mind even more on these last days of the year. So reflection time it is.

As a Christ follower—my reflection is centered on my growth and walk toward Christ’s image in all the details of my life.

In reflection of this year, words like; order, acceptance, surrender, obedience, love, and joy invade my mind. My flesh has experienced a slaying to an extent I had not yet experienced, reaching deeply to matters of the heart. My God has orchestrated my life in such a way that His order has been despised in the trenches of warring with my flesh. But my God didn’t leave me there in the trenches, resenting where He ordered me. No, no, not my good Father, who loves, claims, and corrects. And for that, my soul soars in absolute praise to My God. My God in whom my flesh wars to steal His glory in my life, but because of the work of my Savior at the cross and the continued work of the Holy Spirit inside of me, I am engulfed with strength to endure and persevere.

“For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For, “Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and preserve their souls” (Hebrews 10:36-39).

There was a season not long ago, I screamed in anger and anguish at so many uncontrollable things happening in my daily life. The hatred and contempt from another my life was experiencing was enough for me to want to flee. I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I wanted to escape. I wanted to un-commit to what I committed to. I wanted to fashion my flesh in a sweater of self-pity. I wanted to parade my pride in the streets rather than punish it. My reactions to this internal trial were ones of voicing my rendered anger that teetered toward hatred. But wait, I’m a Christian. Shouldn’t I react in love? Shouldn’t I react in righteousness? Shouldn’t I be ready to obey the words I claim I’d die for? But here was my opportunity to die to myself and to live in the way my God instructs and I was choosing to drop my sword of the spirit and pick up my pride and hold it all too close. Comforting it with the milk this fatal world offers. Have you been there? My sister-in-Christ, we don’t have to stay there. We don’t! Christ took this with Him to His death on the wooden cross for all who were established as children of God before the foundations of the world. As Christ-followers we are no longer bound to sin, nor are we controlled by our flesh.

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:1-4).

During this deep and dark internal battle sparked from an external circumstance, my sweet husband—full of the love and wisdom of the Lord—asked me something that awakened truth inside of me to new heights. “Is God sovereign? Or is He not? Is God good? Or is He not?” In my self-centered, pride-adorning, flesh-flexing, temper-tantrum, I shuddered at his question. He rose up to defend a sovereign, good, righteous, loving God, while I melted in a whirlwind of immature selfishness. Can I just take a second and praise my God for allowing me to do life with a man who stands on these truths in love and gentleness, but with a boldness only empowered by the Holy Spirit!

I go back to this moment often. It has been a pivotal mark in this specific sanctification journey. Of course my God is sovereign! Of course my God is good! Just because we don’t understand something or are being wronged by another, doesn’t mean our God isn’t sovereignly in control and continually expressing His goodness through each and every ordered circumstance our lives experience. Okay, so this light-bulb moment set me on a journey of accepting what my God had ordered for my life in this season. But it wasn’t enough to just accept a circumstance that I couldn’t control. I had to surrender to the sanctification journey my God prepared for me.

With the daily surrender to let go of what my flesh craved came the hard work of obedience in daily details and matters of the heart. But, not an un-biblical, righteous, pharisaical, fulfilling of rules or laws to “stay saved” kind of obedience—no, no, it went much deeper. My spirit was awakened to the beauty of obedience and the joy that erupts in our souls from walking in obedience to our sovereign and Holy God.

“For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:3-5).

My God loves me—though there is nothing lovable about me accept Christ’s atoning work at the cross—Because of God’s love and mercy abounding in my life, I want to honor Him. I want to please Him with my life. This brings forth an out of this world understanding of God’s love, followed by a radiating joy that is only culminated with a genuine relationship with Jesus.

This year I began pursuing the joy of my salvation again. Though the joy was never taken away—I just stopped relishing in it. I stopped meditating on the truth of my eternal status. I stopped holding it close and centering the gospel in my every-second-of-the-day moments. I experienced a renewed love flourishing in my soul that only comes from obeying the Word of God and delighting in Biblical truth.

The hidden sin, the wrong motives, and the matters of the heart that the Holy Spirit revealed to me through meditating on God’s Word this year have become treasures that have nursed my hurting soul and crushed spirit. These jewels of truth have slain my perfectionist tendencies. These gems laced in glory have demolished the handcuffs I’ve strutted for years. My God is worthy of EVERY area of my life. My God is worthy of EVERY area of my mind. My God is worthy of EVERY area of my heart. Not just the crumbs of what I sinfully give Him at times…just enough to ‘look’ the part. I am nothing without my sweet Savior. His merciful and continued correction marks the believer with His love.

“My son, do not despise the LORD’S discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights” (Proverbs 3:11-12).

I want to encourage you to have a 2024 reflection time if you haven’t already. Ponder the matters of the heart. Those deep places where wrong motives root, deceit rises, jealousy grows, sinful thoughts fester, and miniscule manipulations come to life. Those secret places that no one knows about, except you and our Holy God, are still to be put to death with the help from the Holy Spirit.   

My prayer for you and I—is that right now and as we enter into a new year—we have a hunger for God’s Word like we’ve never experienced before. Lord, I pray you give us an unearthly craving to be sanctified and stand firm against every detail of sin in our lives. Lord, help us not to be satisfied in conversations that reek of gossip and slanderous speech. I pray Lord, that You make us detest every utterance of complaints that leaves our lips. Give us a great yearning to chase after holiness in every area of our lives. Father, God, I pray You give us a longing to honor You and this longing takes precedence over any other New Year’s goals we may have. Encourage us with Your Holy Spirit as we are being transformed into the image of Your Son, Jesus. Help us to find a never-ending joy in the eternal salvation You’ve gifted us with through Jesus’ sacrifice. Lord I pray you embed a deep desire in us to spread the gospel to all who will listen. May we continually find profound hope in the waiting for Your second coming our Lord and Savior, in Jesus Name. Amen.

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God.

Ardently His,

Jess Dennis

Somewhere Between Answered Prayers & Internal Wars

Sanctification, Trusting God

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

(Galatians 2:20)

Though, I’ve all but patented the words…I Trust my God…I haven’t lately…trusted my God. In fact, I’ve been plagued with worry, anxiousness, and self-consumed with what I want in this momentary life. I’ve tainted my answered prayers…the prayers nesting and manifesting all around me. My current state can become distorted and lost somewhere between the myth of a rainbow and butterfly life and the reality of a life filled with dying to self, pushing me in the trenches of my sanctification journey—cutting and burning my sin, self-centeredness, and worldly desires—leaving more purified places that took a lot of pain to reflect my Jesus even just a little bit. Then in my weakness and self-centeredness I find myself picking up the cut and burned pieces of darkness and my flesh aches and I want to put the pieces back into their familiar places.

But they don’t quite fit anymore.

And I’m sad, and I’m thankful at the same time. My flesh craves those pieces back where they’ve camped for years. But my spirit knows they don’t belong there anymore. And it’s a war, a never-ending war on this side of glory. Battles come and battles go. Victories are celebrated with praises to My Lord for strengthening me for my journey. But battles are lost too. At the end of some days I am met with defeat, exhaustion, tears, and fear of the unknown.

I don’t want to give up some things in the way I know the Lord is calling me to do.  

I.don’t.want.to. 

But I know I have to. 

I crave to be understood by those around me. I crave to be different. I crave to be more Christ-like in all circumstances. And I fail, over, and over, again. I fail. 

But God.

You know Who doesn’t fail? My God.

And He’s doing something. He’s so personal, He’s so near. The Creator of the universe is doing something in me. He’s working and rearranging all of the things that don’t align with His truth, His Word, His goodness. And it hurts. It’s as if a limb is being dismembered. I don’t care if that queues the dramatics curtain. It hurts. The cutting, the burning, the dismembering of a sin nature so masked that it didn’t even feel like sin until it’s exposed and held to the light of truth illuminated through God’s Holy Word. 

It hurts. I hurt. And it’s time to say goodbye to things I’ve held so close, idolized, and found temporal peace in for far too long. 

My time.

An uninterrupted schedule. 

A life of order.

A perfect home.

A surface reaching peace. 

A facade of control.

Cut it off. Burn it to pieces. Dismember it. 

Whatever it is the Holy Spirit is leading you to kill, stop fighting it. Surrender. Draw your sword and slay it with help from the Holy Spirit.

As Christ followers our individual journey is different—but has one goal—to reflect the image of Jesus. The moral standard of right and wrong and revelation of “big” sins should be blindingly clear—but sin and darkness comes in many forms—All-consuming, reeking of death, but also slow and subtle. Sin can sneak in and disguises itself as good and peaceful, but slowly becomes poison that screams to be poured first as our day begins. 

What is your slow and subtle poison? What is creeping to the center of your worship?

Or, maybe it’s just me struggling to lay aside these subtle—unknowing to anyone else sins—that are stealing my joy, peace, and creating a false reality of a life that doesn’t exist.

In Romans chapter 7, the apostle Paul writes about being freed from the law through Christ.

“…You also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the writing code.

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Romans 7:4-12 ESV).

I’ve read this passage dozens of times through the years. But in the more recent years, these words have come to life to me. Paul describes the war of flesh and spirit so perfectly. Though we are freed from the law of just following these religious rules—the law is necessary, but apart from Christ the law leads to death.

Have you ever found yourself in a season of knowing all the right answers, knowing all the right Bible verses to turn to, but yet the discipline of surrendering to the Holy Spirit is left dusty on the top shelf?

Paul continues with, “Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Romans 7:13-20 ESV).

When we are in Christ—sin in our lives will be revealed to us, even sins that are masked with good intentions, but are still a form of idolatry since we’re seeking peace from those things rather than our Lord and Savior.

It hurts our flesh and natural depraved nature knowing we have to lay these sins down over and over daily until our final day on this earth. But, what a gift the Lord has given us as one who He has mercifully gifted salvation to—the gift of Himself. We know through God’s Word that He won’t abandon, forsake, tire of, push aside, or leave us to fight our fleshly battles alone. NO! His Word PROMISES Himself to the believer in Jesus Christ.

In Deuteronomy 31:18, Moses summons Joshua and says, “It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Then in verse 23 of the same chapter, the Lord Himself commissions Joshua saying, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall bring the people of Israel into the land that I swore to give them. I will be with you.”

The Psalmist pens in Psalm 9:10, “And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.”

I don’t want to covet, idolize, or submit to my own comforts in my daily life any longer. I want what my God wants for my life—which is to look more and more like my Jesus. Regardless of the pain it causes my flesh. The pain won’t matter in eternity. The obsessiveness with time, perfection of space, and resentfulness of chaotic schedules won’t matter.

…And if those things won’t matter in eternity, why should they consume me now?

Rather, I want to be consumed with God’s Word. I want to be consumed in growing in knowledge of the holiness and goodness of God. I want to be consumed with God’s love and learning to love others with the love of Christ.

No matter the battles we face in this fallen world, no matter the difficulty we endure from the daily slaying of our flesh, no matter the deep submission to sufferings beyond our control in this momentary life… no matter… God is with us until the end…and for eternity… Emmanuel.

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God.

Ardently His,

Jess Dennis