Bo Stern

Psalm 11 I’ve already run for dear life straight into the arms of God. So why would I run away now when you say, “Run to the mountains; the evil bows are bent, the wicked arrows aimed to shoot under cover of darkness at every heart open to God. The bottom’s dropped out of the country; good people don’t have a chance!” But God hasn’t moved to the mountains; His holy address hasn’t changed. He’s in charge, as always, His eyes taking everything in, His eyelids unblinking…not missing a thing.

This was a tough week. But one morning before sunrise this little scripture showed its face and it was brilliant and beautiful in about a million ways. Here’s a bit from my journal:

In hard times, people will say: Run! Get away from the trouble! Flee and save yourself! The problem with that plan? God hasn’t gone to the mountains. He doesn’t flee. He doesn’t hide from trouble – in fact, He uses trouble as His most wonderful window display. And when I run from the hard thing or the the tough relationship or the difficult situation, I may actually be running from God.

And in related news…

I Samuel 18:30 Whenever the Philistine warlords came out to battle, David was there to meet them – and beat them – upstaging Saul’s men. David’s name was on everyone’s lips.

Saul – in his frantic attempts to kill David – actually keeps unwittingly positioning him for victory, increased strength and wild acclaim. Wow. Saul would have been smarter to just closet David away in a safe, quiet spot in the kingdom, away from the battlefield that would prove his strength and his God.

Many people will say “pick your battles”. I’m learning that as long as I’m hidden in Christ, my battles can pick me and I’m still going to be right where He wants me. And right where He wants me – no matter how dangerous – is always safe.

So, here’s my decision for the coming week and I empower you to hold me accountable: no matter what, no matter who, no matter how hot the battle – I will not run to the mountains or the mall or to Food Network (my favorite place of escape). I will not lose heart or shrink back or let fear nibble away at my faith. I will stand and believe and say “Bring it on, Saul! If God is for me, who can…who possibly would dare…to be against me?”

With beauty in sight,

Bo

P.S. Food network? While not a worthy escape is still a remarkable achievement of television genius.

“When Saul and his troops heard the Philistine’s challenge, they were terrified and lost all hope.” I Samuel 17:11

“God, who delivered me from the teeth of the lion and the claws of the bear, will deliver me from this Philistine.” I Samuel 17:37

Whether we realize it or not, stories are almost always playing out inside our heads and they’re usually about ten minutes ahead of the moment we’re actually living in. We’re cautious with our kids around water, because the story in our mind rolls out to a place where they fall in and can’t get out. We race on our way to work because these mind-pictures move rapidly ahead of real time to the moment we get confronted or fired for being late….and some people would even let that picture keep playing to the point where they lose their house and car because they now have no job and can’t pay the bills. And then they REALLY step on the gas to get to work! It’s not so much the immediate or the absolute that moves us to do what we do, but rather the possibility of what could be as it unfolds in our imagination. And those perceived possibilities are created by fear or by faith…and nothing in between.

Saul & his troops heard the words of the giant and their heads were filled with fast-moving, technicolor pictures of all that could happen in the next ten minutes. Fear poked it’s spiny fingers into the corner of their brains where the future lives and penciled in the possibilities of what-could-be.

Enter David. His picture of the next 10 minutes was FILLED with faith and – dare I say – EAGER anticipation to rumble with that giant! What made the difference? He relied on what he had seen God do in the past and how he had experienced His presence in the heat of battle. I’m sure he rewound and replayed the miraculous moment when he wrestled that bear to the ground as supernatural faith rippled through his memory and into his muscles.

He just knew.

He didn’t know his own strength or his own courage. He just knew his own God, and that gave him everything else he needed. I betcha he could even imagine the feeling of carrying Goliath’s head through the camp and was already planning where he would hang the big guy’s weapons when he took them back to his tent. David let his knowledge of God’s faithfulness fill in all the missing details so that he could clearly envision the exact events of the next few minutes in which a very small rock would to catapult a very large giant into eternity.

When faith paints our picture of the future as it forms in our imagination, anything is possible. When we are able to pull up a fresh awareness of the victories of the past, God becomes bigger than every other giant we’re facing. And that lets us be the size that we are. And that’s just about the best gift ever.

So, how about you? What do the next ten minutes or ten months or ten years look like in your head? Who would you guess is painting that picture?

Believing for the heads of giants,

Bo

Slight temperature inflation. Brave buds break through on the giant lilac trees around my house. Tulips push green stems through the still-resistant earth. Strawberries in the produce section… anemic looking, but still strawberries I think. Winter coats fade, flip flops emerge (woo – flip flops!) Summer movie previews. Bulbs and plants and fertilizer and hoses come out of hiding at Costco. Bikinis huddle together for warmth at Target. Six emails from my husband remind me of summer vacation. The grill sheds it’s winter clothes. CLC students want to date.

Signs of Spring.

Ready, ready, ready,

Bo

Over the weekend, Steve and I went to hear Corey and Whitney play at Makahna’s and something remakable happened. Truth be told, we were just going to do what good parents do: support our kids at their gig. But when we got there we found the restaurant was filled with friends from Whit’s work, people from our church and from the young adults group that Corey leads. Throughout the evening, everyone moved from table to table, hugging and talking and trying each other’s food. I caught little audio scraps of conversations going on all around me…people talking about life and work and friends and the God that holds all of it together. I shared an incredible antipasti plate with the person I love the most in the whole world while we listened to music about love and loss, sung by people we adore.

And then this moment happened. This miraculous moment. I sat there in the swirling goodness of it all, fighting tears, as I realized: “This is God. I can feel His heart beat, His love of relationship, His longing to be with us as we are with each other.” I kept hearing the beautiful words “where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Why is He there? Not out of obligation to the verse, but because – just like me at that moment – He wouldn’t want to miss it for the world. I’m discovering that Jesus really loves to have dinner with friends.

For too long, I have kept God framed inside the halls and walls of a building and haven’t accurately recognized His presence moving through the moments outside of the meeting we traditionally call “church”. Church absolutely is gathering to worship at a specified location…because there we find Him and love Him and grow in Him. But church is more. More real and more simple and more messy than that.

And it’s also less.

Less defined, less intimidating, less linear than that.

I don’t think we should worship or fear the dichotomy in it all, I think we should just go ahead and let God leak out of our meetings and into our restaurants and houses and streets. I suspect that it’s exactly this kind of pervasive and powerful force that will overrun the gates of hell.

Believing for more and less,

Bo

Judges 4:21 But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent peg and a hammer and went quietly to Sisera while he lay fast asleep, exhausted. She drove the tent peg through his temple and into the ground, and he died.

Um, wow. Jael’s a little bit passionate here. She doesn’t just kill him, she totally pins him to the ground with a tent peg. The powerful, evil Sisera doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving his encounter with this little Hebrew woman. Do you ever wonder how she pulled it off?

I think she knows she’s only got one shot at this. She knows she can’t take him in a fight, so she’s got to get him while he’s sleeping and then she has to make her one move count. Brilliant.

If women would treat their enemies like this more often, they would be unstoppable. Honestly, I think that women are often slaves to their own mercy gift and need-to-nurture tendencies, when sometimes they just need to stinkin’ throw a spear or a rock or a fist at the face of the thing that keeps trying to hold them back, shut them down, and take their purity, passion and hope.

God, may an army of Jael’s rise up and demolish the plans of darkness in their lives and – by consequence – save another, or a nation, or a generation. May they understand the strategy of the enemy towards women and refuse to bend or bow or shrink back.

Hoping to be like Jael when I grow up,

Bo