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1/2/2017 0 Comments FierceI recently celebrated my birthday. My family signed up with me to do the Savage Race, a 6 mile course over uneven terrain with 26 obstacles. Yes, we paid to do this. This race is no joke. It was harder than we thought, messier than we liked, and took longer than we planned.
I was telling some friends about it afterward and one said, “This sounds like your life—a Savage Race.” We laughed, but when I thought about it, I started to think she was not far off. My life has been harder than I hoped , it has been far far messier than I would have liked, and the obstacles have taken me longer to get through than I planned. Partly because I didn’t plan most of the obstacles I have encountered in my life. They just happened, and I had to decide how I was going to deal with them. I thought when I signed up that the name “Savage Race” was a description of the race. But now I believe it is a description of who is running the race. A synonym for savage is fierce. We need to be fierce to finish. I don’t believe we are to be brutal, cruel, or hard-hearted, but we do have to be fierce. We have to look at the obstacles this life throws at us and say, I don’t know why this is here, or how I’m going to get past it, but I do know this—it will not defeat me or define me. We must have a fierceness in how we look at the things the enemy uses to destroy us. Because as much as the enemy means to harm us, God means good for us. And I am putting my faith in God’s ability to use whatever this obstacle is for my good more than I am the in enemy’s ability to harm me. At one point in the race, I was swinging 10 feet above a muddy pool of water hanging from monkey bars wondering how I got there and how I was going to get down. Somehow I made it the rest of the way across without falling. All of a sudden I had done something I didn’t know I was capable of—an obstacle with the potential to stop me instead revealed something about me I didn’t know. There were other obstacles I tried and failed. I fell. But even in the falling, I knew I had tried. I knew I had attempted something rather than being defeated by the idea of it. Life throws us things we didn’t anticipate or prepare for, and we aren’t given a step-by-step guide on how to get through them. But we have The Guide. The Teacher. And when we fall down, because we will, we have The Comforter. And in these moments of falling or flying, we will find out things about ourselves we would never have known. If we invite Jesus into our process, into our daily life, into our obstacles then we will stop letting fear tell us what we can and cannot do. We will learn to stop letting the fear of failure and pain keep us from loving and daring and hoping. We will find our hearts, and we will come fully alive. Because that is what this race is really all about. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future. (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV) Prayer: Jesus, show me the fierceness You have placed in me to be an overcomer. Show Me what You want to do in me and through me with the obstacles that lie before me — the ones I know about and the ones yet to come. Replace dread and fear and fill me with a sense of excitement and anticipation for the adventure that lies ahead of me with You. You are good. You are faithful. I trust my life and my future to You. Amen. Author: Brooke Kireta
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12/14/2016 0 Comments Clean CupsI have a beautiful cup that has been sitting on my kitchen counter for a week now. It is deep purple—made of thick glass—the kind you can rarely find anymore. It is such thick glass and such a deep purple you cannot see inside the cup.
The glass belongs to a set that came from one of the grandmothers in my family. They are my favorites. I have picked it up several times to use it because it is out and within my reach. And every time I look inside I am surprised to find someone poured some kind of grease drippings into the cup. I guess I keep forgetting because from the outside you would never know. It looks as lovely as ever. But there it is—nasty grease. As of right now, the cup is unusable except as a container for grease, but not to drink from, which is the reason for which this lovely cup was created. Jesus talked about cleaning the outside of cups (Matthew 23:25-26). He told the Pharisees this is what was wrong with their religion. They had beautiful cups that were filthy inside. We can read this and feel so judgmental towards the Pharisees. Until we look at our own lives. Our own religions. Our own belief systems. We all want beautiful cups. We think pretty cups mean pretty lives and doesn’t Jesus want our lives to be pretty? Doesn’t Jesus want our families to be pictures of perfect love? Doesn’t He want our children to be successful and us to do well in our jobs? Surely He wants our homes to be lovely and our grass to be mowed. He needs us to represent Him well by serving faithfully in a local church and volunteering in our children’s schools. And we need to take care of ourselves physically, so we should be eating well and exercising since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. So now our jobs look good, our homes look good, our families look good, and our appearances are good. Everything is good. It is a beautiful cup. But what about when it isn’t? What about when the kids are struggling? The marriage is struggling? The home is falling into disrepair because the job isn’t going so great so there’s no money for repairs. What about when you are handling one crisis after another, and you pick up a nasty junk food habit and lose the gym habit? That cup takes some hits. The beautiful glass is dinged and chipped. It’s lost some of its shine. It’s actually not looking anywhere close to beautiful anymore. It’s looking rough. I have met these women. The ones whose lives are not picture perfect. I am one of these women. I did not set out to be. I set out to have a beautiful cup. But somewhere along the way, by the grace of God, I found out Jesus wasn’t looking for beautiful cups. He was looking to purify hearts and give us clean cups. These women I have met—they have dirt under their fingernails. They have wrinkles on their faces. They have tear stains on their pillows. And their cups pour forth some of the clearest, purest love of Jesus you will ever experience. Because somewhere along the way, they realized the beautiful cup was only good for looking at. It was a mirage. An ideal. A fantasy. But a clean cup? This was useful. This mattered. Because people are thirsty. They need a drink of something real and pure and hopeful. What’s even better about a clean cup? It comes from Jesus. Only He can clean the inside of our cups. We don’t have to do it. Maintaining a beautiful exterior is hard work. Exhausting work. Sometimes that’s the only reason some of us give up on it. We finally get too tired. But then Jesus. He meets us in the tired. He meets us in the hard. He says, Let me take over from here. And He takes the dirty greasy mess we are carrying around, and He cleans it. He wipes away the grime and the heaviness and all the residue from walking through this world, and He fills our cup up with something of value. Himself. Living Water. And now we see that our cups may not be as beautiful on the outside as we had wanted. They may have chips and imperfections. They may be a little warped and lean too far in one direction – but they are full of Jesus. And Jesus is what every person we will ever meet needs. He is what our kids need, our husbands need, our homes need, our workplaces need, our churches need, our schools need. And you get to be full of Him. You get to stop working so hard to have a put together life, and you get to just start living life. Abundantly. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. (John 10:10, NIV) Prayer: Jesus, we give You our cups—the beautiful and the broken. We ask You to purify our hearts, purify our motives that Your life may flow through a clean vessel to a thirsty world. Help us lay down the images we hold so dear, the things that become idols before we even realize it. Set us gloriously free to live and not just try to hold everything together. Breathe over us with Your breath of life. We love you. We need you. Amen. Author: Brooke Kireta 12/12/2016 0 Comments Let It BeMary has an incredible story; I think we would all agree. To be chosen to be the mother of Jesus, the Savior of the world, is quite an honor. But honestly, when it comes to Christmas I don’t usually think too much about her—my focus is mostly on Jesus and all He came to do for me. But this year the Lord really highlighted something in her story that has changed the way I am praying.
I have had a hard year. I am actually really ready for it to be over, except that unfortunately the changing of the calendar does not instantaneously change my life. I have poured my heart out to God this year: I have prayed, cried, screamed, accused, cried, fought, declared, cried some more. Did I mention I have cried? My daughter told me one day my eyes were so puffy she thought I must be allergic to my eye cream. I didn’t have the heart to tell her no, I just cry all the time right now. And now I have come to a place I don’t even know what to pray anymore. I’m out of words. I’m out of direction. I’m at the end of myself. And here in this place the Lord directed me to the most gloriously simple, beautiful prayer that I have never noticed before. I’ve read it. But I’ve never seen it. You know how that is— something so common that you’ve heard or seen a million times – but then one day you really see it for the first time. That is what happened with this prayer from Luke Chapter 1. The angel appears to Mary to tell her she will be the mother of the Messiah Israel has long awaited. She doesn’t really understand how this will happen, and she definitely doesn’t comprehend what it means for her life, but in the most beautifully simple but incredibly profound way she says, “Let it be done to me exactly as You have said.” And this is where the Lord stopped me and told me, Here in this place where you don’t know what to pray, where you don’t know what to believe, simply say with all the faith you can muster, “Let it be done to me exactly as You have said.” And with that simple prayer I line my life up with God’s perfect will, I say yes to whatever He has for me. I say no to my plans, the enemy’s plans, and to the accusations and lies I have believed that try to lay claim to my life. I say yes to what God says about me. I say yes to all the good He has for me, all the hope He has for me, all the promises He has declared over my life. Because the even more beautiful thing is what came right before Mary’s statement. The angel said to her, “For the word of God will never fail.” Could you just cry? You know I am because that’s all I do these days.God will never make a promise He cannot keep. His word will never fail. His words will never be proven untrue. It’s impossible. He cannot lie; He cannot exaggerate; He cannot stretch the truth. He is truth. There is no shadow of turning in Him. He supplies His words, or promises, with the power needed to make it happen. Mary did not have to figure out how to become the virgin mother of Jesus. She just agreed with what God promised and waited. What if we just stood as Christmas approaches, as 2016 comes to an end, and we look towards 2017 and together we say to Jesus, “Let it be done to me (and my family, my community, my nation) exactly as You have said.” For the word of God will never fail. Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” (Luke 1:37-38, NLT) Prayer: Father, I line myself up with everything You say about me, all the thoughts You have for me, all the plans You have for me… and I say, yes. I say I not only want what You want, I will believe what You say more than my feelings or my circumstances or my past. All Your promises are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. So flood my heart with the hope that comes from believing You, no matter how this year is ending or what next year holds. You are good, and You have me. Your Word is the final say over my life. Author: Brooke Kireta 11/30/2016 0 Comments Fatherhood It is fall in Georgia, which means pumpkin everything is everywhere much to my oldest daughter’s great pleasure, and high school football is in full swing.
This is my first fall in seven years that I am not watching my son play football. Bittersweet. There are so many things that while you are doing them you cannot wait for them to end, but then once they do, you are a little sad. I never thought driving car pool for sweaty teenage football players would be one of those things, but it is. I don’t so much miss the hours spent hauling everyone around, but I miss being privy to their conversations on the way to and from practices and games. I could write a book called Football Conversations - True Confessions of Aspiring Athletes Who Really Want To Be Football Stars But Still Want To Have Forty Hours A Week To Play Video Games. Not that catchy - I’m not sure it would be a best-seller. I do have some moments that are burned in my memory because of the lessons I learned from these boys, and though they may not be book worthy, they are worth sharing. One night driving home from JV football practice, talk turned to the previous season when the boys were on the middle school team. They discussed in-depth how awesome they each were at their respective positions. I would give anything to have had this recorded - male bonding at its finest. “You were great...True, but you were great, too...Yes I was.” No one was struggling with false humility. But then one of the boys said something that, besides being ridiculously funny, was actually quite profound. While discussing different plays from the previous season - incredible interceptions, unbelievable touchdowns, amazing tackles (there was no shortage of confidence in this car) - my son’s friend, Connor, says “Yeah, the best play of the season for me was in that game, and only me and my dad remember it.” Now we were all dying laughing, thinking - if it was so incredible - how come you two are the only ones who remember it? But Connor is dead serious and goes on to explain how even in the Hi-Light video you see Brandt, my son, running the ball for this awesome touchdown, and off to the side you can see a giant kid coming to take Brandt out - but instead the big kid gets tackled. You can’t see on the video who tackles him or how, but the tackle is made, and Brandt breezes into the endzone unobstructed. Then you hear the crowd, the team, the coaches all yelling, “Way to go, Brandt!” But the kid who made that touchdown possible was Connor and nobody noticed...except his dad. This story has stuck with me for years. Connor laughed as he told us the story, and we laughed with him because, frankly, it was funny especially when Connor told it. I am amazed by the whole thing, though, considering how much we are all longing for affirmation and recognition. I’m sure Connor would have loved for everyone to notice what he did , but it was enough for his heart that his dad saw it and they could relive that moment together: “Do you remember, Connor, when you took out that kid that was twice your size to save the touchdown and win the game? Man, that was awesome. I’ll never forget that moment!” Some of us don’t have those kind of dad moments from childhood, and we envy Connor because he does. But what’s worse than missing out on those past moments is living your entire life and missing out on these moments with your Abba Father. He sees everything you do that seems to be overlooked and unnoticed. He says, “Do you remember when you did more than was asked of you, loved the unlovely, forgave when no one was sorry, gave more than you had to give? That was so awesome! I will never forget those moments.” He sees. He knows. He loves us so much. He is a dad like no other, and He never misses out on the moments of our lives. We can say with confidence, “My best moment of the season and only me and my Dad remember it!” and like Connor, if we have really experienced in our hearts our Father’s love for us, it will be more than enough. Isaiah 63:16 “...You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old…” Author: Brooke Kireta 11/28/2016 0 Comments Lost A few years ago, I went on a weekend training intensive with a couple of friends. We were in a very small town in south Georgia and none of us were familiar with the area.
We ate dinner at a local restaurant near our hotel before heading to the church for the first session. We were told the church was a straight shot and about 5 minutes away. It was 6:50 when we left the restaurant. We arrived at church at 7:40. Almost an hour. What happened, you ask? Did we break down? Did we stop to help someone? Did we see the Krispy Kreme hot donuts sign and get sidetracked? No, to all of these. We got lost. Going in a straight line. With two GPS systems. Wow. I am sure that is what you’re thinking. Rightfully so. This is totally deserving of a, wow. Not the “wow - that’s impressive” but rather “wow - how is that even possible?” I actually would not have believed it were possible myself had I not been in the car. How can you get lost driving in a straight line? Well, first, you don’t go in a straight line. You arbitrarily turn and then turn again and then turn around. Then you ask people walking around town for directions, and they tell you they don’t live there. (Really?? Who goes to Moultrie, Georgia, for vacation?) Then you drive and turn some more. You re-enter the address into the GPS another 20 times. Then you ask someone else for directions. It really all just came down to bad intel. For most of us when we start our walk with Christ, it sounds like a simple thing. Stay on the straight and narrow, keep your eyes on Jesus, and follow His Word. We hear sermons and teachings on following God, and we leave convinced we can do it. We want to do it. But then we make some wrong turns. We start listening to our internal GPS system and hearing things from other people that point us in the wrong direction and before we know it, we are lost. Not lost as in unbelieving, just lost in our journey. We keep going in circles and can’t figure out why we can’t just go in a simple straight line. What’s wrong with us? Bad intel. This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16 Let’s ask the Father to show us this week the areas where we are operating from bad intel. Verse of the Week: Jeremiah 6:16 This is what the Lord says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Prayer: Father God, we look to you as our Guide. Sometimes we don’t even know when we are heading in the wrong direction until we are hopelessly lost! Please show us where we are following the wrong intel and direct our steps in the ancient paths, so we may follow you with our whole hearts for our whole lives. Author: Brooke Kireta |
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