Pride and Joy

I never really appreciated Stevie Ray Vaughn until after his tragic death in a helicopter crash in August, 1990.  He played a mean blues guitar; I'm talking wicked mean.  Not many folks could make a Fender sing like Stevie Ray, not even his brother Jimmy. 

One of my fave SRV tunes is Pride and Joy.  The last verse of this song is

Yeah I love my baby....heart and soul
Love like ours wont never grow old
Shes my sweet little thang....shes my pride and joy
Shes my sweet little baby....Im her little lover boy

Man, Stevie is proud of his girl!  The lyrics lead you to believe that she is, in return proud of him.  As much as Stevie and his girl love each other, though, they got nothin' on God and His love for us.  

You might think that I'm stretching here but did you know that God wants to be our pride and joy?  Isaiah 28:5 (NLT) tells us that after God's children have been exiled and returned to Him that

 

Then at last the Lord of Heaven’s Armies
      will himself be Israel’s glorious crown.
   He will be the pride and joy
      of the remnant of his people

 

God desires to be my pride and joy, your pride and joy?  He wants me to want Him more than I want any other person or thing in my world.  He wants to be my One desire, the One place where I place my hopes and dreams, more so in Him  than in my husband, my children, my friends, my job, or any other thing.  He wants me to take pride in Him, in being His child, in having the Creator of the Universe as my Father, and in knowing that all things come through Him and by Him.  

 

Don't be shy!  Let the whole world know that God is your pride and joy.  Let Him reign supreme in your life and watch others notice the change that is evident in your life.  Maybe you'll get to break out your blues guitar and put a little rhythm to your praise.  Something tells me that God (the ultimate creator of the Fender Stratocaster) loves a good blues guitar, too! 

Living with Abandon

Sunday Pastor Jeff talked about living with Abandon.  Abandon.  Merriam Webster describes the verb of abandon as to give up to the control or influence of another person or agent; to give oneself (over) unrestrainedly.  This definition brings to mind the following things:  

• To let go
• To forget that people are watching
• To live life fully according to my faith in God
  

Before you go and pass judgment on me or think that I'm too crazy with these ideas, try these scenarios on for size.  

• At the local knitting bee you let your cardigan drop carelessly to the floor, wave your yarn wildly over head, and chant "CA-BLE-NEED-LE! CA-BLE NEED-LE!"  
• At your child's school performance you run to the front of the auditorium with the video camera, knocking other parents out of the way to film your child while screaming "No one have ever been that good of a rock before!  You're gonna be a star!  Mama loves you, baby!!!"  
• On the front lines of the 0400 crowd at the after Thanksgiving sale you take your buggy (yes, buggy!) and plow over shoppers in front of you to get the very last $99.99 item.  

Those are all instances of living with abandon.  Absurd, maybe, but Abandon.  Jesus wants nothing less than having us live with Abandon for Him.  He did likewise for us.  He died a horrible death for our sins; He was perfection in the form of broken humanity, hanging on a cross, in humility, to save us.  He deserves at the minimum is for me to live each day for Him with Abandon and let the world see.  

The Scars of My Past

If you know me or have met me you have probably noticed that I have a tattoo on my chest.  Actually, I have a rather large tattoo bat emblazoned across my chest.  The "battoo" (as I am fond of calling it) comes from another lifetime, a part of my life that is so distant that I seem to recall reading about it in a book and that the life belonged to someone else, not me. 

Me & My Silly Husband & the Bat

Alas, when I look in the mirror in the mornings, the bat looks back.  He has not moved over the last 11 years.  His eye is still fixed unseeing on the same object that he has been looking at for quite some time.  And there are days when I see him and I hate him.  I resent the time that brought such a scar to my life.  I loathe the reminder of who I was.

On these days, Satan is whispering fiercely and steadily into my ear, "Look who you are, Michelle.  Look at your life.  No one can change who you are.  Did you think you could really change?"

If I'm not careful, I'll buy these lies of the enemy, these subtle words so carefully crafted and made personal for me.  If left to stand on my own I will fall prey to these horrible things that Satan says. 

Thank God, though, that He sent the cavalry in the form of His Son, Jesus Christ.  I am not left to my own.  And God loves me enough to have written His truths down for me so that I can combat the enemies lies.  The scripture below is one that I cling to regularly: 

2 Corinthians 5:17 (Amplified Bible) Therefore if any person is [ingrafted] in Christ (the Messiah) he is a new creation (a new creature altogether); the old [previous moral and spiritual condition] has passed away. Behold, the fresh and new has come!

God has transformed me into a new creature and He calls me His daughter.  I am His own.  I am different than that girl that sat in a tattoo chair a long time ago. And God, in all of His goodness and wisdom, has taken the battoo and made it something beautiful.  Romans 8:28 (NLT) tells us, "And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them."

The battoo has made me easy to relate to for teenagers.  It has made other adults feel at ease because they see it and see that no one around me judges me because of it; they are possibly more comfortable with the scars of their own past.  Little children are curious and want to ask questions.  My bat opens conversations with strangers when they comment on it. 

I'll take the scars of my past and offer them up to Jesus every day.  He can use them to do great things! 

The Faberge Organic Effect

Does anybody besides me remember Faberge Organic shampoo and conditioner?  You know, Joe Namath did television ads for them for a while and the girls had the most beautiful (and almost impossible to achieve) Farrah-Fawcett-esque hair.  The tag line from the while commercials:  "I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on . . . " would play while the images on your television multiplied by twos until the screen was full of small squares of people.  The idea was that this stuff was so good that you had to tell everyone else about it and that they were going to love it.  This is the Faberge Organic Effect.

Fast forward to August 11, 2010, at  Stockbridge Community Church.  We were taking prayer requests in our Wednesday night group and someone was mentioned and we started trying to figure out how theses folks got invited to SCC.   Do you know what we determined?  They were invited via the Faberge Organic Effect. Someone else came to SCC, felt loved, belonged, and told someone else.  What they found was so good that they couldn't keep it to themselves.  They had to tell others.  I did it.  I know plenty of people who have done it. 

We have to tell other people about Jesus.  That's the only way that they are likely to know about Him.  Romans 10:14 says "and how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?" 

It's our job to tell the people that we encounter about Jesus.  It's our place to show Him to others by the way that we live. 

Put the Faberge Organic Effect into play in your life and let me know the outcome.  I can't wait to hear what happens when you tell two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on . . .