If you talk with anyone with a religious or spiritual background about grace, every person will likely be able to give you a definition of some sort (often learned long ago). They especially associate with the date they chose to believe in Christ and relate it to salvation. If you ask them how they apply it to their actual daily life, it may be harder for them to describe because too often they don’t have that clear in their understanding. As a result, a person can live with wounds of many kinds, as well as guilt and shame about all the times he or she has messed up since that monumental day. 

Stacey Pardoe’s new release today, Lean into Grace, takes the reader on an in-depth journey into all those untidy, messy corners of our lives where we have failed or been unable to live by the grace Christ offers through vulnerably sharing her own journey and the truth of scripture to apply grace to those places we may not talk about or try to forget or ignore.

Stacey describes it this way:

“This book is my story of learning to lay down self-effort, lean into God’s grace, and create more space for him to work in my life. Additionally, these pages are your invitation to stop striving in self-effort and let God do what you’ve been unable to do for yourself. We will create space to let God set us free from fear, worry, stress, shame, besetting sins, and more.”

Her words resonate with truth and gentle nudging to stop hiding those things we find in the topics she covers in sixteen chapters. These are chapters you will want to digest and read seeking what the Lord wants to show you rather reading them with the perspective that keeps those corners of your life messy. Questions at the end of each chapter are given for further reflection to go deeper into the theme of that chapter.

You may have read other books about grace. I know I have but this one strikes a different chord no matter where you are in your grace journey. Look at a sneak peek of some chapter titles: Grace for Your Hurting Heart, Grace for Fearful Circumstances, Grace for Your Fear of Failure, Grace for Grumpiness, Grace for the Daily Grind, Grace for the Wonder Woman Syndrome, Grace for Spiritual Boredom, and Grace for Overwhelming Moments. And those are just the first eight chapters.

Stacey nudges us as women who are perpetually drawn into trying to fix things that are broken whether toys, bodies, relationships or most anything and too often we use self-effort to do that before going to Jesus and what He wants to tell us about what is broken.

Culture has tried to persuade us we can do it all and should. If you have tried it, I am guessing you have found it exhausting on every level whether at work, home, or in ministry. Stacey gets it and confronts it in herself and encourages us to do so also.

“I’ve spent most of my life embracing the notion that I can say yes to every need surrounding me and be a hero for everyone in my life… I feel compelled to say yes to every friend’s request for assistance. I rarely set boundaries and don’t ask for help. As a result, I find myself  emotionally and physically exhausted.”  

Stacey Pardoe

But Stacey doesn’t stop there and shares how she stopped trying to be a wonder woman. 

As you read these words you may be thinking it is an inward look at ourselves and in part that is true but then you come to the chapter entitled Grace for Our Insecurities: Looking Outward Instead of Inward and Stacey challenges herself to not be so self-focused in ways most of us can relate to.

This book is available now on Amazon and I hope you will get it and explore not only these discerning chapters Appendix A listing 99 truths of who you are in Christ and Appendix B on foundational scriptures of how God sees us. 

As you read Stacey’s story and discoveries of applying grace to our actual lives, you’ll feel as if she has invited you to have a cup of your favorite brew in a cozy corner to share heart-to-heart.

Photo by Marco Trassini on Unsplash

What’s a “leerie?”

A “leerie” is the name used for lamplighters in the well-loved movie, “Mary Poppins Returns.”  And as I listened carefully to the lyrics while watching the movie, it became evident to me that if we are Christians we have a connection with the word “leerie.”

Photo by Philippe Mignot from Unsplash

One of the songs in the film entitled “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” has this line within it, “Leeries trip the lights and lead the way!”  In this case they are describing how lamplighters of another era would go from lamp to lamp throughout the city and light them each night to light the darkness and show the way for people. It may have seemed like a menial job, but it was vital to the city dwellers each night.

The metaphor becomes clear in Matthew 5:14-16 (MSG):

“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.”

There is no doubt in my mind as I read this that each of us who claim to be his are called to be light and lamplighters for the world. Luke writes about that in Acts 13:47 (NIV):

“For this is what the Lord has commanded us: ‘I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth’.”

The lyricist for the song in the movie refers to the process of the lamplighters lighting the lamps as “trip a little light fantastic”as they move up and down the streets lighting the lamps. That is a fun description indeed.

Photo by Brian Huynah from Unsplash

Since the Lord calls us to be light and light the way for others, what kind of “leerie” am I?  Are you?

As shadows fall across the earth in many different places and some have lost hope, are we lighting the way for the hope that is within us? Pointing the direction to the path they cannot see?

Listen to some of the things the song suggests a “leerie” can do:

“Let’s say you’re lost in a park, sure You can give in to the dark or You can trip a little light fantastic with me When you’re alone in your room Your choices just embrace the gloom Or you can trip a little light fantastic with me

For if you hide under the covers You might never see the day But if a spark can start inside your heart Then you can always find the way So when life is getting dreary Just pretend that you’re a leerie As you trip a little light fantastic with me”

Some of you may be shaking your head that I would compare being called to be light in a dark world with the lyrics of this song about “leeries” from the movie, but consider even the words noted above…

Photo by Landon Martin on Unsplash

If we are lost physically or spiritually, are we to give in to the dark?

If we are alone and lonely, feeling down and gloomy, do we choose to “embrace the gloom” or search out the light?

Is the light within our lamps burning brightly with fresh oil that allows “a spark” to “start inside your heart?”

Paul exhorts us in Ephesians 5:8-10 (MSG) by reminding us of what we were and now what we are to be:

“You groped your way through that murk once, but no longer. You’re out in the open now. The bright light of Christ makes your way plain. So no more stumbling around. Get on with it! The good, the right, the true—these are the actions appropriate for daylight hours. Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.”

We were once groping around without light, stumbling as we went. But now that the Lord has lit the way for us and called us to be light in the world, we are to be lighting the way for others who are stumbling in the dark, alone, lost and without hope.

Photo by Pam Ecrement

There is no qualifier that suggests this role, as a “leerie” is optional. Whatever season we are in, we are to keep fresh oil in our lamps and light the way for others.

What kind of “leerie” are you?

“Now when you’re stuck in the mist, sure You can struggle and resist or You can trip a little light fantastic with me”

Photo by Severin Horio from Unsplash

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

You may be thinking you are not in an apprenticeship. The term and reality are not possibly as common as they once were. From the earliest times in Egypt and Babylon training was set up and organized for craftsmen of all types to teach the next generation the skills and crafts that would be needed. In the Roman Empire many of these skilled artisans were slaves. 

Later in the 13^th century the same idea led to the formation of craft guilds and master craftsmen sought recruits to work closely with them for a training period for seven years after which the recruit could join the guild. Even lawyers served in apprenticeships earlier in history.

Apprenticeships were fairly common in the American colonies and Benjamin Franklin served as an apprentice to his brother in the printing trade. Over many centuries apprenticeships evolved and continued in various forms.

When our son followed my husband around as a young boy, one fun moment was when he learned he could jack up our little 1965 VW like his dad. Then later as a teen he learned how to handle tools and car repairs, we didn’t call it an apprenticeship and yet it was in many ways as he became an adult and then passed them along to his son.

“I did it!”

When our daughter learned about cooking and the art of making a good homemade pie crust ( a legacy in my family), it might have been much the same. A great memory for me is a few years ago when she came home with her two daughters so I could share how to can and preserve peaches the way my mother did.

What stirred my thinking was when our pastor said in a recent sermon, “Life is an apprenticeship.”  We tend to not think much about it as we continue into adulthood and have most of the common skills needed to be on our own. But we are missing a bigger picture I think. If we call ourselves Christians are we being discipled by someone more mature than we are in our faith and understanding? Is this life an apprenticeship for eternity perhaps?

If so then beyond any human mentors or disciplers we know or have known, would it not be Christ who would be the best master to apprentice under? He is the only one who does it perfectly and can accomplish the best in and through us.

“We think we know what is best for us, but we don’t. We think we are able to rule our own lives, but we aren’t. We think we can defend ourselves against temptation,  but by ourselves we can’t. Every human being is in need of a king. All human beings need rescue, forgiveness, justice, mercy, refuge, and protection that they are unable to give themselves.” 

Paul Tripp

No matter how independent we want to be or think we are, we need a “Master” at life to show us how to live it and walk it out moment by moment. Who better than Jesus? But that means we broaden what we think it means beyond our usual understanding of being an apprentice. It isn’t so much about the doing of those things we see Jesus did although that can be part of it. It’s first and foremost about being like Him. Then what He can do through us flows out from being like Him.

To become like someone else we need to spend time with them in all different settings. In ancient times some apprentices lived with the one they hoped to become like. Have you noticed how much the disciples of Jesus learned by being with Him. They were with Him when He was out walking, eating, hanging out with friends, and visiting family. They got to see how He noticed and took time for people others shunned or scorned – lepers, blind men, cripples, adulteresses, and more. Yes, He taught them things but his most powerful venue was showing them because they were with Him nearly all the time during his public ministry unless He sent them somewhere on his behalf.

If we are going to be in a life apprenticeship it doesn’t mean we skip quiet times of devotion, church activities, corporate worship, and all we get involved with doing, but I think it does mean we don’t leave Him there when we leave those places of activity. It means we look for and want Him to be with us in all those ordinary moments of our lives as we shop, do laundry, cook, clean, and dozens of other things so He can help us see life through his eyes instead of our own. Then we might notice our neighbor doesn’t seem as chipper, the clerk at the store seems discouraged, our children’s teacher seems worn out, and in the noticing we can be a means of grace to them. We miss them if we leave Him in church, Bible study, or in our chair time with Him.

We are called to be like Him, represent Him on this earth and if we aren’t sure what that looks like, maybe we need to get to know Him better. Maybe we should sit in silence with Him versus having prayer that is a one-sided monologue. Maybe we should slow down and see how He lived when He walked the earth.

Maybe our pastor spoke more significant words than we recognized when he said, “Life is an apprenticeship.” 

How is your apprenticeship going?

Photo by Pam Ecrement

It can be easy to think we have gotten beyond unbelief when we have known the Lord for a while. Most of us have a basis for our relationship with the Lord and a sense of the tenets that form that foundation. Some of us have done enough reading in the Word to have some muscle attached to those beliefs and we would likely deny there are any issues of unbelief in our lives.

Maybe we have not examined ourselves closely enough to discover there can be remnants of it still attached.

Before disagreeing with that statement, I wonder if a passage in Genesis 18 would challenge us? Few would question the faith and faithfulness of Abraham and Sarah and yet this issue of Sarah’s barrenness reveals how unbelief influenced them and set in motion a long list of consequences.

One of the obvious ones is when Sarah offers Hagar to Abraham so an heir can be born through her with Sarah thinking that resolves things. At the outset her unbelief is evident, but since Abraham agrees it seems he was not sure God would complete his promises to him either.

When we get to Genesis 18 the story is continuing and Sarah is caught laughing when she overhears God’s messengers to Abraham that a son would be born to this elderly couple in a year. Unbelief couldn’t be more obvious. Ouch!!

The messengers pose the question to Abraham, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”

How simple it can be to read these great Bible stories and never see the application to our own lives.

As hopes and dreams lay in a corner of our lives without coming to fruition, what goes through our mind?  That’s especially true if we thought those hopes and dreams were something God had placed in our hearts. Time goes by and years pass. We doubt ourselves; doubt the hopes and dreams, and sometimes God for his silence or refusal to act for us.

As each decade creeps up, the doubt and unbelief can grow. We stop talking or praying about those faded hopes and dreams. We can despair of hope and start to think life with its hopes and dreams has passed us by (not unlike Sarah). We decide we are happy enough, blessed enough, but in the corner of our hearts the hopes and dreams aren’t really dead.  When someone else realizes fulfillment of something similar to ours, we feel a prick of “what might have been.”

We may be tempted to review our mistakes and sins and determine we stopped God from working in our lives as a result of those things.

How often we can forget that God’s purposes of grace are not thwarted by our sins or failures. He actually specializes in working through ordinary (often weak and flawed) men and women despite all that and sometimes because of all that.

Even a casual reading of the Bible will find sins, flaws, and weakness in those we commonly refer to as “heroes of the faith.” Such things did not halt God’s purposes and plans. What causes us to think it would be different for any one of us?

Paul addresses this in 2 Corinthians 4:7 (ESV) as follows:

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

Am I saying those hopes and dreams may still come to pass?

Yes….especially if the Lord birthed them in us.

That passage in Genesis 18:14 that asks if anything is too hard for the Lord goes on with a key element. The Lord says, “at the appointed time…”

In other words those hopes and dreams, purposes and plans (if they are from the Lord) are set in his time to bring Him the most glory and do the most to build up the Kingdom. It matters not to Him if you are 20 or 30, 40 or 50, or even 70, 80, or beyond.

Seniors are not necessarily sedentary and many are on the move in more ways than you might think. A few years ago, at 74, I published my first book after dreaming of writing a book since high school. In the recent release of the movie, “Mary Poppins Returns,” Dick Van Dyke (now 93) does a cameo reprise of his role from the original Mary Poppins movie from 54 years ago and does all the dance moves himself.

We can challenge our unbelief if we leave the hopes and dreams in the Lord’s trusting care for his timetable.

We also can challenge our unbelief if we keep in mind that big hopes and dreams can never be accomplished without Him so we know when it is “the appointed time” He will do “exceedingly, abundantly above all we can ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).

He loves us best and knows us better than anyone.

Photo by ivan samkov from Pexels

The words wish, wishes, and wishing come into our lives early. Even at age one we may hear someone tell us to  “make a wish” before blowing out the candle on our cake despite no clue of what that means at that point. Not much after that we will have someone reading fairy tales that speak of making a wish or watch Disney movies with songs about wishing. 

If I were to start the lines of one of them that goes like this:

“A dream is a wish your heart makes
When you’re fast asleep
In dreams you will lose your heartaches
Whatever you wish for, you keep

Have faith in your dreams and someday
Your rainbow will come smiling through
No matter how your heart is grieving
If you keep on believing
The dream that you wish will come true…”

Many of you would be humming the tune that we see and hear in the movie Cinderella. We would hear about three wishes many times and magic lamps in Aladdin or the song “When You Wish Upon a Star” from Pinocchio. The Disney of decades ago filled our thoughts, populated our songs, and encouraged us often to wish. Sometimes they gave us the idea that if we wished hard enough and long enough those wishes would come true. We certainly wanted that to be the case without any awareness of how that might happen.

One dictionary says this about wish: “a strong desire or hope for something that is not easily attainable; want something that cannot or probably will not happen.”  Little wonder that from the beginning of our acquisition of vocabulary we mix up the words “wish” with “hope” and can start to believe they are synonymous.

That becomes especially problematic when we apply them to spiritual matters. It’s not that wishing is a bad thing but it is not truly synonymous with hoping. That became clearer still as I was reading some wise words by Paul Tripp:

“You and I are on a constant quest for hope. We all want a reason to get up in the morning and motivation to continue.”

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

How true His words speak of something more than wishing. We want something to bank on, count on, and rely on versus something unattainable. Tripp goes on to clarify some things to distinguish hope in this list:

1. God hardwired human beings for hope.
2. What you place your hope in will set the direction of your life.
3. Hope always includes an expectation and an object.
4. Hope, to be hope, has to fix what is broken.
5. You always preach to yourself a gospel of some kind of hope.

But do we grasp what he is saying and is that how we apply the gospel to our lives? Are we using the word “hope” but actually living out “wish?”

The Bible gives us more than one or two verses about hope that put hope in context but I will share two.

“Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.” 

Hebrews 11:1 (NLT)

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice^[ in hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” 

Romans 5:2-5 (ESV)

Photo by Anna LLine from Pexels

One way to check on how you may be viewing the words “wish” and “hope” in your spiritual life is to look at how you routinely use the word hope and then consider whether underneath you are using it with the sense of “wish.”

“Hope is not a situation. Hope is not a location. Hope is not a possession. Hope is not an experience. Hope is not an insight or truism. Hope is a person and his name is Jesus!” 

Paul Tripp

When you tell someone you hope they feel better, it’s not just a wish as a believer, but rather the hope in the One who can heal that person and restore their health. When you speak to someone of the “hope of heaven” you aren’t just wishing but are speaking of an assurance for those who believe in Him of a life in eternity with Jesus who is our hope and promise to those who believe. Jesus never made a “piecrust promise” (easily made and easily broken). His promises were based on his own sacrifice on a cross that no one ever required Him to do but He chose so that we who have been broken could be not simply fixed to be broken again but to be made whole “like Him.”

Robert Critchley says it well in an old hymn I used to sing with my parents in the church where I grew up. Here’s only a sample but the lyrics are rich to consider in hope:

“My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness

I dare not trust the sweetest frame 

But wholly lean on Jesus’ name

One Christ the solid rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

All other ground is sinking sand.”

When life comes at you upside down and backwards, don’t forget what hope is and who it is in!