Uncategorized

On Dying to Yourself

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 0 Comment

I had a beautiful, very godly young woman ask me one time: “How do you die to yourself?”  She is a student in the college ministry I work for.  She truly desires to follow God and love Him with all that she has.  I explained to her that as I have grown (old) (-er), I have realized that this grand idea of dying to yourself is less about doing a grand thing, and more about doing the small things with grand purpose.  I explained that dying to yourself is cleaning the dishes for the one thousandth time, even if it is your roommate’s turn.  It’s doing these daily things with a good attitude.  I think she was disappointed.  I think she wanted more.

Don’t we all!?  We all have something inside us that desires to make some grand gesture of our love and appreciation to our Savior.  I mean, He died for us!  It seems that we could do more than just keep a good attitude.  We should do something big for Him!  Surely we could all move to third world countries, give up all our wealth, but would that even be enough? 

Living the Christian life is the difference between dating and being married.  When you are dating, there are many grand gestures to win the love of the other.  The grandest of all often being the engagement.  Although these days, it could be just being asked to prom!  I mean seriously, these boys are setting themselves up.  If they do this to ask a girl to prom, how in the world are they going to top it for an engagement???  But I digress…

Where was I?  Oh, yes, dying to yourself…dating.  The purpose of dating is to woo the other.  We so often say it is for the purpose of “getting to know the other person”.  I say…baloney! It’s wooing.  More on that another time.  In the process of wooing, there is a lot of dying to yourself.  The guys take the girls to the Nutcracker, and act interested.  You know the story.  It’s all done in effort to win the affection of the beloved.  Guess what, you already have God’s affection!  There is no need to woo Him with impressive gestures.  The grand gesture has already been done!  The engagement was made in blood over 2000 years ago.

If we are believers, we have said yes.  We are awaiting the wedding day.  That has yet to come.  We are in a loooooong engagement.  Which I never really suggest to anyone because it’s hard.  And yes, this life is hard!  We are in the long hard process of loving.  Of constantly dying to ourselves and living for Christ.  Here’s the part where we’ve gotten our theology of the cross mixed up with a theology of glory.  Because you see, there is a bit of glory seeking in our desires to make grand gestures of dying to ourselves.  But the two can never coincide.  We can not die to ourselves, and gain glory. The cross, ours, and the one in Galilee two thousand years ago can only give glory to one: Yahweh.  We give God the most glory, and show our love and appreciation most when we die to ourselves even when no one knows.  In the hidden places, where self-glorification is not an option.  It seems that this is the last thing we truly die to: our own glory.

Uncategorized

A Man of Peace

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 0 Comment

This past Sunday was the second Sunday of Advent.  (For a fun way to bring Advent home check out my post on Mentoring Moments.)  This Sunday we light the candle of Peace.  Jesus came to be our Peace.

In my last post, I lamented that we don’t know more of Joseph, the earthly (not) father of Jesus.  There is one thing I would say that we pretty well know for sure though.  Joseph was a peacemaker.  It is so clear in his decision to quietly dismiss Mary, that Joseph is a peacemaker.  He wasn’t into the drama of the town gossip.  He had no desire to be the subject of it either.  He wanted what was best for everyone.  He was attempting to make peace.

Peacemakers are consistently sought out by God to make a way for His kingdom.  When Jesus sends out His disciples to the surrounding towns to prepare for His coming, He directs them to find people of peace to stay with.  Jesus was directing His disciples to do what God had done when Jesus was born.  God sought out a man of peace to make room for His kingdom.  Jesus sends His disciples in the very way He Himself was sent.  He tells them not to bring a bag, or extra sandals, take nothing with them.  Jesus came with nothing: no robe, no sandals.  (I’m guessing it would have been a little too radical to tell His disciples to go robeless!)  He tells His disciples to eat and drink whatever was given to them.  Jesus came as a helpless babe.  He ate and drank whatever was given Him.  And He told them to seek out a person of peace, and stay with them.  Jesus learned from experience that a person of peace could be trusted.  God’s method has not changed.  Every time God looks to expand His kingdom, He will find a person of peace, not a person of fortune, or of fame.  A person of peace!

Perhaps this is one of the qualities that keeps us from knowing more about Joseph.  You know, peacemakers have a few things in common.  For one, peacemakers are rarely the kind of people who show up in magazines.  Peacemakers often fade into the background of whatever scenery they happen to be a part of.  That’s not to say they don’t make a difference!  Let there be a scene with no peacemaker present, and you can be sure their absence will be felt!  Oh, yes, peacemakers make a mark, it’s just done with such graceful strokes that no one really knows what has happened.

I know a little bit about peacemakers.  I married one, and through his genes, (certainly not my own!) I have given birth to one.  I have been frustrated as I have watched the world take advantage of my husband’s graceful ways.  His value is so much more than anyone will ever know.  He will never proclaim it.  He will not fight to make himself known.  He will die to himself for the sake of peace.

You see, that’s the thing.  Peace requires that we die to ourselves.  The last verse in James chapter 3 says “Peacemakers who sow in peace will make a harvest of righteousness.”  The very next verse, which is so unfortunately separated by a chapter break, asks this: “What causes fights and quarrels among you?  Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?”  Taking these two verses together as one whole thought as they were meant to be, shows that what hinders us from having and being peace, is the battle of our desires. Peace requires that we lose this battle for our desires.

The promise of the angels to the shepherds at that first Christmas was “Peace on earth”! Ironically, the first question we ask each Christmas is “What do you want for Christmas this year?”
No wonder there is a glaring absence of peace.

Lord may my heart’s desires this Christmas be for peace on earth! And I don’t mean Gracie Lou Freebush beauty queen “world peace”. I mean an in-breaking of God’s kingdom.  This kingdom that will bring peace on earth.  Lord help me be a person of peace through whom Your kingdom can be revealed in this world and in my home.

Uncategorized

Chosen, But Not Noticed

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 3 Comments

I’ve been thinking about Joseph’s role in the Christmas narrative lately.  I think Joseph gets a bad rap sometimes.  Most of our talks about Joseph center around the fact that he is NOT Jesus’ father, (said with a hand on an outset hip and a finger shaking) and that we really don’t hear much about him outside the birth stories.  It makes him sound really disrespected.  It sounds like we are saying he’s not good enough to be in Jesus’ blood line, and that he was an absentee father.  It is very important to understand that God was Jesus’ father.  Theologically, that is significant.  And it’s true that we don’t hear anything about him after that one time he lost Jesus when he was 12 years old (…really, really a bad rap.)  Some speculate that he died.   No one really knows.  But one thing is clear in the birth narrative: God chose Joseph as much as He chose Mary.Continue reading →

Progress is a myth

Short, Sweet, and Slightly Strange

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 1 Comment

Beware, in this post I may expose the total nerd I am.

So, through all this thinking about progress, I think I have determined my life’s mission statement.  Haha.  True story.  I know, I know, only organizations and corporations have mission statements right!  My husband already makes fun of me saying that I really should have been a CIO the way I’m always wanting to have a goal and measure progress.  Well, now you can join him if you’d like.  I would like to equally like to blame my work for this thought process.  We have been reevaluating our mission statement as a Christian non-profit.  The process has gotten me into this frame of mind.

As I think about progress, it makes me want to answer the question of what am I progressing towards?  What is the goal for my life?  So, here it is, as I understand it now:

My life’s mission is to live in and through the Holy Spirit, making and growing disciples of Jesus Christ, for the glory of God the Father.

It’s pretty generic really.  Any Christian could adopt this as their life mission.  But it gives me something to hang my hat on.  When I have to make decisions about how to spend my time or my money or my energy, I can look to this mission statement and ask myself, which decision would honor my life’s purpose?  This blog is no exception.  I hope that this blog will not turn into a bunch of ranting and rambling of my own.  I hope that it is a place (in the world wide web) where the Holy Spirit is able to use to use these black and white words to make and grow disciples of Jesus, for the glory of God the Father.

You may have noticed the Trinitarian nature of this statement.  That is very intentional!  My favorite book from my degreeless seminary days was hands down, Ministry in the Image of God by Steve Seamands.  It details the practical implications of the theology of the trinity.  I’m sure many of you just stopped believing me at that last sentence.  But YES, the trinity is a theology that has practical implications for the way we live our lives!  It’s not just a crazy way to explain something we aren’t sure we understand about God.  Please read this book!  Even if you are not in ministry in a formal way, read it.  How many of you reading this meet needs?  How about filling sippy cups?  Or wiping bottoms?  Or cooking dinner?  You are a minister!  Read it!!

So, back to the mission statement.  As I have learned, no mission statement is complete without a set of measurable outcomes.  For me, this would include the fruits of the Spirit being produced in my life, as well as discipleship happening inside and outside my home.  Still haven’t figured out how to measure glory.  If you have any thoughts, I’d be happy to hear them!

Well, now it’s your turn!  Get nerdy!  Write a mission statement for your life.  Leave it in the comments on this blog.  I’d love to read them.  We are in this together people!  Let’s live intentionally, not just good intentioned.

Progress is a myth

Progress amidst laundry

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 1 Comment

So, as I mentioned, all these thoughts I’ve had on progress have come over loads and loads, and loads of laundry.  So about that laundry…it’s daily, it’s constant, it’s the opposite of progress!  So, while I can have all these great, lofty  (and often cynical) thoughts about progress.  It all means nothing if I can’t apply it to my daily life. I have decided that progress is ultimately God’s glory, so what does giving God glory look like in my daily life?  Perhaps it means that I’m supposed to quit everything I’m doing now and go be a missionary in some third world country.  Or at least I should spend most of my time doing something meaningful here in my city.   But each time I try, I find that I am loosing something valuable right here in my own home.

I clearly remember reading a book called “Desperate” by author Sarah Mae (who stole my name btw).  In it she said that God is not disappointed in us for spending our days changing diapers (or doing laundry).  He isn’t wishing we were doing something greater, which is often the feeling I have and transfer onto my image of God.  Someone has to do these daily  things, and it is our duty.

Another dear friend enlightened it differently for me.  She was telling me about taking her grandmother grocery shopping and how she had something of a sour attitude about it.  Then she realized that if she were volunteering her time to take some old lady from the nursing home shopping, she would have left that event feeling on top of the world like she had just done some grand thing for the kingdom.  What self sacrifice!  But since it was her own grandmother, it seemed more like duty than sacrifice.  I thought to myself as she was telling me this, woah, I do the same with my kids.  If I spent a day taking care of the needs of some orphans in a remote place, I would feel like I had just done a great thing for the kingdom.  I will have shown them God’s love. (cue angelic music here) That’s what missionaries do right?  But because it is MY kids, it’s just my duty, not a sacrifice that should be celebrated.  But really, if I didn’t do these things for my kids, they would be orphans!  So now, in my mind I consider myself a missionary to these poor Parham orphans.  It brings meaning to the mundane.  Why do we do that?  Why do we separate duty and sacrifice?  Our ‘duty’ can be our sacrifice when done for the glory of God.

The only other place we see duty and sacrifice put together in this way is in military terms.  The idea is that these people have given up their lives to serve something greater.  Now it is their duty to follow their new leader, not their own agenda.  We as Christians have given up our lives to follow God, to live for His glory.  It is a great sacrifice!  God never said it is not a sacrifice.  In fact, Jesus tells us to count the cost of following him.  There is a cost. But there’s a reason we chose to follow Him.  We know there is nothing greater.  There is nothing else worth living for.  Only God’s glory!

This same principle applies to any area of life.  Are you a nurse?  Care for your people as if you were working in a clinic in Africa.  Do it for God’s glory, not for the paycheck!  Are you a teacher?  Again, do it for God’s glory, not for the paycheck.  Give glory to God!  Whether you work, or stay at home, whether it feels meaningful or not, do it as unto the Lord!  It is all for His glory!!

Progress is a myth

Progress is aimless

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 5 Comments

When I claim that progress is a myth, I think that the first rebuttal would be “what about science?”  And this is a fair question.

Since science is so closely associated with progress, especially in today’s technological world, I want to understand: what is the goal of science?  I mentioned in my last post that our goal as humans since the fall has been to gain reentry to the garden of Eden.  It would seem to me that science is the tool that humans are using to fight our way back into the garden.Continue reading →

Progress is a myth

Progress is a myth

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 2 Comments

For much of my life I have idolized progress.  I lived asking myself if every moment were taking me somewhere.  I have recently surrendered all belief in the idea of progress!  I have slowly lost my grip on the notion over loads and loads and loads of laundry.  This task takes me no where, yet we still must do it!  I mean seriously, if progress were true, then surely someone somewhere would have figured out a way for these clothes to fold themselves and get into my children’s dressers!  Continue reading →

Psalms from a Woman's Heart

Psalms from a Woman’s Heart – Psalm 86

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 0 Comment

It is not good enough for me to vent to the ceiling!  I need you to

Hear, O Lord, and answer me,

My children want more, my family wants more, my work wants more, but

I am poor and needy.

I have nothing left to give!
Show me God how to spend my time, my energy, my love.  Lord, I need you to speak to me, show me where I allow the enemy (or even just other good things) steal from my limited resources.

Guard my life, for I am devoted to you,
You are my God; save your servant who trusts in you.

I don’t want to waste my energy doing work you aren’t calling me to!  I want to serve you in everything I do, whether that’s laundry, kissing boo boos, or soul searching talks with young girls.  Let me work as unto you!  And when I fail, when I ponder too long on the things I want to get done, when I see your gifts as a burden, when I allow trivial things to steal from the life I give to others,

Have mercy on me, O Lord,
for I call to you all day long.

Lord, don’t tire of my voice, my requests, even when I fail to heed yours.  You are the only one I can come to, all day long.  You’re the only one who will always be there for me, no matter what.  You are the only one who won’t be overwhelmed by me and my needs.
Thank you that you always forgive me.  Father, you are so GOOD!  As I am consciously in communion with you all day long, you change me.  You don’t change my tasks, or my challenges, but you shape my soul, and it feels good!  God, in the midst of my day, you

Bring joy to your servant,
for to you, O Lord,
I lift up my soul.

 

Uncategorized

God is not a Grandpa

Posted on by Sarah Parham / 2 Comments

I can not wait to be a grandma!  I have a little ways to go considering my oldest is only 5 years old, haha.  But I think the dream for it comes right about now.  As a mother, you get to see the way your parents enjoy your children without abandon.  They aren’t worried about raising them (and well they shouldn’t be), they just get to enjoy them!  I can’t wait for that. Continue reading →