Easter and Passover have come and gone. Has life shifted with a sense of direction or are we much like the disciples walking along the Emmaus Road talking about the events of this season without shifting our priorities or recognizing the call on our lives? It can be easy to get right back at the things of this life without His life altering the course of our days or priorities.

We tend to be much more like those early disciples we read or hear about. Jesus invites us into the deep places with Him and the call He has for each of us and if we are listening to that at all, we might acknowledge that and keep walking along the dusty road we were on, distracted and weighed down with other things.

As I was listening to a recent podcast by author, John Eldredge, he referred to two areas that interrupt us often on the way to the deep places with Christ. One is what he calls the “shallow lands” known as the distractions bombarding us from moment to moment from dozens of sources. It’s the “white noise” we hardly even notice any more that shows up with our tendency to scan a page rather than read thoughtfully and reflect on the words we are reading. It’s that same stuff that causes us to listen to one another with only half an ear and find it difficult to attend for more than a few minutes to a message or the Bible in our laps. And when we do try to be with Him, we get into our routines and miss the intimacy with Him we long for.

Recently as I was having my devotional time with Him, I sensed Christ nudging me to lay down my journal and the Bible and pen as the Holy Spirit whispered, “Sit with me.” It seemed so unproductive, but clear that this wasn’t about praying or reading but rather just being in his presence, still before and with Him. How hard it can be to quiet my heart and just allow His presence to refresh and renew and repurpose my time. Yet that was how so many hours were spent by his disciples when Christ walked the earth. Study and reading the Bible is crucial to our foundation and praying for ourselves and others is as well, but He invites us into a deeper relationship with Him if we will just take time to move out of the “shallow lands.”

Eldredge describes the “midlands” as those areas that the Gospel of Mark describes as “the cares of this life.” It’s that passage about the soil that represents our own hearts and ends in the verse that reads as follows:

“…but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.”

Mark 4:19 (NIV)

How easy it is for that to apply to any one or all of us and never more so than in recent years where the life we thought of as “normal” has been upended by shifting values, increased crime and fear for safety, a pandemic that sought to destroy us and an uptick in other numerous illnesses and things that shifted us away from our dusty feet on the road to anxiety and fear that resisted our efforts to focus and still our hearts before Jesus.

How much differently we can be readied for the things that come at us if we are first laying aside even the trappings we bring into our times alone with Him by simply doing what Brother Lawrence reminds us of in his epic book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Do we really practice being in his presence? What would we hear if we did?

“Do not be discouraged by the resistance you will encounter from your human nature; you must go against your human inclinations. Often, in the beginning, you will think that you are wasting time, but you must go on, be determined, and persevere in it until death, despite all the difficulties.” 

Brother Lawrence

That solitude with Christ points us to the purpose of that day, our call, and the passion to move into it with a keen awareness of Him with us no matter what “the shallows” or “the midlands” throw at us. They remind us of what our focus is to be and after sitting with Him to get moving on that which He asks of us and be sure of what that is.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Matthew 11: 28-29 (NIV)

“In order to form a habit of conversing with GOD continually, and referring all we do to Him, we must at first apply to Him with some diligence: but that after a little care we should find His love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty.” 

Brother Lawrence

What happened after I took his request to “come sit with me”? Ah, that is for just the two of us, but the results were to be propelled into my day with a fresh awareness of Him and alertness to be drawn to focus where He directed my attention. Those are the times I not only hear the birds singing despite “the shallows” and “the midlands” but also drop a note to someone I just kept putting aside or pick up a bud vase to brighten the day of my doctor’s receptionist on a recent visit. I am not only in awe of Him but moving with Him. And those are the very BEST days!

One of the things that likely impacts how you and I respond to evil stems from how we define it. It can be easy in the current culture to call something or someone “evil” because we disagree with it or them or if it or they offend us. We need to consider our label carefully before we bandy it about as true.

Until we are clear on what evil is and its source, we will fall prey to its influence and our responses will be tepid, misguided, or absent.

Evil is defined as something that is “morally wrong or bad, immoral or wicked deeds, embodying or associated with the forces of the devil.” It is not an opinion or a preference. Scripture is undoubtedly the best source of clarification of when that label is appropriate.

Because evil is so reprehensible it would seem we should be able to call it for what it is and confront it for what it is. Yet history shows in every nation and culture we can be slow to do that very thing if it isn’t impacting us directly. It can almost appear we have accepted the inevitable since we know that until the Lord returns, and evil is judged once and for all that it will be present on the earth.

We may feel powerless in the face of it despite the power of the Holy Spirit within us if we are God’s children. Perhaps we tremble in fear. The key is whether we seek His counsel and direction at such a time.

Two books I have read have brought evil sharply into focus. One focuses on the brave men and women in the Underground Railroad who risked death, fines, and imprisonment to help American slaves flee to Canada for freedom before the American Civil War. The other looks at men and women who risked similar consequences for trying to protect Jews less than a hundred years later.

Today despite our “instant” access to news we can forget nearly 215 million Christians face high persecution for their faith. We don’t hear much about that on the news and sometimes not in our churches.

When I consider how I might respond to evil I am drawn to the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 as well as others who responded with courage, wisdom, and discernment. Here are quotes from just a few of those who stood against evil.

William Wilberforce faced evil head on and wrote these words:

“A private faith that does not act in the face of oppression is no faith at all.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced difficult choices without compromise when he wrote and spoke. Here is one of numerous examples:

“We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

Elisabeth Elliot in the face of the grievous loss of her husband faced the evil that took him with love and forgiveness. Listen to her wisdom for us:

“We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.”

Solzhenitsyn left this powerful challenge to consider in The Gulag Archipelago:

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are replanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

How do we respond to evil?

We start by defining it for what it is and its true source and then seek the Lord for guidance on our response to it when we are faced with it. Above all, we must consider the words of Isaiah.

Isaiah admonishes us about the need to discern rightly what is evil and what is good:

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”

Isaiah 5:20-21 (ESV)

Jennifer Dukes Lee’s new release, How to Love Your Morning, gives a new perspective on mornings whether you typically love them or not. It can be easy to say you’re a morning person, a night owl, or somewhere in between but this book presents a persuasive argument that we are all really morning people and page by page Jennifer sets out to prove it to you.

I never considered myself a morning person even though I am not the night owl that I once was. To me, a morning person woke up energized by the early hours of the day and jumped right into whatever his or her vibe was. I could say I was convinced I was not when I compared myself to my mother, a farmer’s wife, who was up by 5:00 AM and by 8:00 AM had accomplished more than many of us do by noon.

Maybe the best place to advocate for being a morning person is to share Jennifer’s definition of a morning person:

“1. Someone who has learned to approach morning with hope and intention, not defined by the hour she wakes up, but by how she wakes up. 2. Someone who sees the first moments of the day as a sacred threshold in which to love God with her heart, soul, mind, and strength.”

She goes on to add: “It’s not about when you wake up. It’s about who you wake up to be.”

If you really don’t see yourself as a morning person, don’t hesitate to pick up this book and read page by page. You’ll find no guilt or shaming here. Whether you drag yourself out of bed or take an hour to wake up over your coffee, there’s a lot to discover about mornings in How to Love Your Morning. And that includes the truth that we are not all the same and each season there are likely shifts in your morning and how you view them.

Loving your morning starts with embracing your personal rhythm, not trying to be someone you believe a morning person should look like. Our circadian rhythms vary and I think they get impacted by seasons. Although I used to call myself a “night owl,” I never met the rhythm my mother declared I was as an infant who reportedly had her days and nights mixed up.

This book introduces you to four different morning archetypes (a set of personality categories based on personal traits and interests). You’ll want to learn more about each one and take a quiz to discover where you fit: Daybreak Doer, Morning Mover, Meditative Mind, or Social Seeker.

Once you do that, you’ll discover how to create a morning ritual that fits best for you and allows you to thrive as a morning person and grow in your relationship with God. Jennifer will help you see various rituals whatever your season of life with morning guides for different life stages: college girl, (non-mom) working professional, office mom, stay-at-home mom, empty nester, retiree, or widow.

Throughout this book you’ll hear about Jennifer’s own journey through various seasons and her mornings. (No, she wasn’t someone who saw herself as a morning person at the outset.) That journey includes looking at how mornings are highlighted throughout the Bible and their significance time and time again.

For me, I discovered at one season that my mornings were so overwhelming that if I didn’t have at least a few minutes with scripture and a journal to go with my coffee that I would never really manage the day very well at all. Finding my ritual back then when I was working full-time meant planning in advance and then discovering that no matter how tough the day ahead was there was a sense I was not alone in the midst of it. Retirement changed how I viewed the ritual I had while working and over time I was aware that nothing was going as well as I needed it to go and I needed to go back to the drawing board and create a new ritual with some of the foundation of the old one.

I was blessed to be on the book launch team for How to Love Your Morning which means I got to read an advanced copy before the book was released April 7. It captured my heart with the insights and openness Jennifer shared and if this review has tempted you to consider finding out more about how to love your morning in whatever season you find yourself you can find this book as an audio book, Kindle, or hardcover at your favorite bookstore or library. To add to the resources there is also a Bible Study Guide you can get as well. You won’t be disappointed as you walk with Jennifer page by page.

Each chapter ends with a little morsel called “Morning Manna” and a Liturgy that fits the theme of the chapter.

Let me close with one such “Morning Manna:”

“When I meet with God at the first of my day, the rest of my day automatically has to level up to meet God.”

It can be so easy to forget the powerhouse that sits above our neck encased in our skull can grow and change throughout our lifetimes. This powerhouse is often a field of battle between negative and positive thoughts that are often whispering quietly without our notice or at other times loudly screaming at us. Those thoughts have created a mindset that began developing from our earliest years of life. Unfortunately, not everything that goes into the brew is truth, but we didn’t realize it and took some of those lies as facts. Their impact can affect us for years to come.

Perhaps that is why so many books have been written about how to improve or change the habits of our minds, to spiritually war against the enemy’s taunts that he plays out there. Psychology also seeks to help us with cognitive-behavioral techniques that help us identify negative self-defeating thoughts and tools to help us replace them with truth. No quick fix appears to be listed in any of the resources available.

One of the challenges for us is that our mindset ultimately gravitates into one of two types. These affect how we view every mistake, disappointment, setback, and failure and either move us forward toward hope or cause us to halt forward movement and give up.

Angela Duckworth in her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, identifies these two mindsets as a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.

If we have a growth mindset, we believe we can do better, that it’s possible if we work harder, get additional support, and receive encouragement that we can get smarter and do better. And guess what? We get up and try again! Research shows that if you have a growth mindset, you’ll be more likely to do better in school, enjoy better emotional and physical health, and have stronger, more positive social relationships with other people. It doesn’t mean we don’t fail or face challenges. What matters is our response to those defeats.

If we have a fixed mindset, we believe that those failures, setbacks, disappointments, and mistakes mean we don’t have the “right stuff”, aren’t good enough. And guess what? We give up. That belief can be so strong that we don’t ask for support, we don’t risk trying, we become resolved to a sense of our inadequate performances. We decide we don’t have what it takes!

One of the keys to determining which mindset we develop is how those around us respond when we slip up and make mistakes. The more powerful the position of authority the person has in our lives, the greater the impact not just of what they say or don’t say but also by the facial expressions they exhibit.

If we struggle with a fixed mindset about our spiritual lives, the enemy is gleeful because he knows that he can defeat our hope over and over again as soon as we get up from praying or reading in the Bible. Too often our spiritual lives also get stalled because of how our brothers and sisters around us respond to our struggle. Instead of real encouragement, we might experience quite the opposite for any number of reasons. Sometimes the person isn’t really accurately listening to us to hear the nature of the struggle. Sometimes the person doesn’t know enough of our story to understand why we were defeated….again!!

All of this reminds me of what I love about Paul’s words to the Corinthians:

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and  take every thought captive to obey Christ,” 2 Cor. 10:5 ESV

2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV)

What we don’t always recognize is that eliminating negative patterns of thinking will not automatically bring about positive, “can do” patterns of thinking. We need to deliberately replace them with positive truth that we affirm to ourselves.

Archilbald Hart has written seven paraphrases of such truth based on scripture that gives a picture of what I mean so let me share them with you:

• “God loves me more than I can ever imagine, and I can never travel beyond the reach of this great love.” (Rom. 8:39)

• “No matter what my sin, God forgives me if I repent, confess, and return to Him.” (1 John 1:9)

• “There is nothing I can do that will cause God to turn away from me.” (Heb. 13:5)

• “Whatever I attempt to do, if it is God’s will for me He will give me the strength and wisdom I need to accomplish the task.” (Phil. 4:13)

• “If I seem to fail because circumstances are against me. God will always give me another opportunity if I return to the starting point.” ((Psa. 37:24)

• “God never wants me to give up. Never, never, never, never.” (Josh. 1:5,7,9)

• “Hating myself doesn’t make God love me more; it just makes it harder for me to see his love.” (Psa. 103:10-12)

God has created our powerhouse brains to be resilient and adaptable. If we have had a fixed mindset, replacing lies and negativity with truth from God’s Word can change it. We also can choose to spend time with those who encourage us and believe in us even when we don’t believe in ourselves and remember that it is those very struggles that God can and does use to produce more endurance and resilience in us.

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ² 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 5:1-5 (ESV)

These days it seems that more and more things we consume or use are filtered or need to be. From our water to our coffee, our air to our oil, and beyond and more, we use filters of every size, shape, and design. When I order coffee beans to take home at one of our local roasters, I am always asked what kind of filter I have so the beans are ground to match that filter. This was certainly not the case when my husband and I were first married and used an electric percolator to make our coffee.

We have filters for our digital cameras (if we use them much). There are filters for sound on nearly any device where it is needed as well. We seem to be on a quest for purity and yet most of us find our culture to be moving away from purity on every level of society.

Why use filters? Because we believe we need a porous device for removing impurities or solid particles from nearly any liquid or gas passed through it. But do we wonder if those impurities are just increasing in recent years or if we never noticed them in the past and they were just as numerous as they are now? Maybe there are some we notice the need of more than others such as having good gas, air, and oil filters means our cars run more smoothly and for longer periods of time.

Are there other filters that you can think of?

Do we filter our speech?

The answer to that last one about our speech might be “yes” or “no” depending on who we are, where we live, our personality, and more. Sometimes it seems our speech hurls through the air or onto a page without much thought about who is hit by it or how it impacts them. Days of being careful with our words seem to be out of fashion except on subjects that are currently taboo or too controversial to voice without fear of reprisal or censorship. The days where we considered the impact of our words on others has somehow slipped away in recent decades as we have fallen in love with the idea that freedom means we can say or do anything we please no matter the consequences to others.

We seem to have forgotten this axiom written some time ago by someone with more wisdom than we sometimes use. But have we turned this whole idea around in another context and used a filter where we perhaps should not have tried to make everything sound polished and more perfected?

Do we have the habit of filtering our words in religious or spiritual contexts to present a picture that we may be better than we are? Are we open and honest when we should be about our struggles?

Moving from Palm Sunday to Good Friday or celebrating Passover to Easter is a time we are encouraged to reflect on our own sins and confess them to God as the only One who can redeem us and help us to be better than we are.

Are our prayers filtered?

Most of us are familiar with many of the Psalms and recognize the ones written by David, that earthy man who faltered and failed and yet became a king and was called “a man after God’s own heart.” What were his prayers like?

“Most of us in suffering stop praying or put up a brief petition for help. Here the psalmist nearly shouts his pain, frustration and even anger to God, but the significance is that he does so before God, processing his grief in sustained prayer. God understands us so well that he permits, even encourages, us to speak to him with uncensored hearts.”

Tim Keller

Do our prayers sound like the psalmist who lays out his whole heart and mind over and over again in psalm after psalm or have we fallen into more ritualistic patterns and language that fail to acknowledge the condition of our own hearts, thoughts, and struggles praying with filtered words?

What might be different about us and the condition of our hearts if we prayed unfiltered prayers?

Do we forget that what is going on within us is something God already knows but He wants us to see it and acknowledge it to Him so He can work in us what only He can do?

Our lives are a story unfolding day by day. Stories are made up of more than one theme (especially the good ones we enjoy.)

“But we’re in a story in which everything eventually comes together, a narrative in which all the puzzling parts finally fit, about which years later we exclaim, ‘Oh, so that’s what that meant!’ But being in a story means we mustn’t attempt to get ahead of the plot – skip the hard parts, erase the painful parts, detour the disappointment.”

Eugene Peterson

And guess what? David wasn’t the only model for unfiltered prayers.

This Holy Week just ended reminds us of how Jesus knew He was in the midst of his story not only on Palm Sunday but each day before that and each day after that as He approached the cross and the agonizing death, He knew was waiting for Him. And the night before He was to be crucified, scripture shows us He is kneeling in agonizing prayer, unfiltered prayer before Father God.

“Then Jesus went with them to a garden called Gethsemane and told his disciples, “Stay here while I go over there and pray.” Taking along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he plunged into an agonizing sorrow. Then he said, “This sorrow is crushing my life out. Stay here and keep vigil with me.”

Going a little ahead, he fell on his face, praying, “My Father, if there is any way, get me out of this. But please, not what I want. You, what do you want?”

Matthew 26:36-39 (MSG)

“He then left them a second time. Again he prayed, “My Father, if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I’m ready. Do it your way.”

Matthew 26:42 (MSG)