Tag: church

Planning 2015: A Beautiful Life

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha Katz4 Comments

The resolution hoopla is about to begin.  My first resolution email came today (but I actually loved it, feel free to check it out Real Change Starts with You by Dr. Nicholas Jenner).  The chatter comes from every direction.  Weight.  Toxic Relationships.  Bad Habits of all sorts.  I think it’s the balanced life that most of us seek.  The truth is that some of us make resolutions and don’t keep them.  Some of us refuse to make them because we know we never keep them.  My mom tends to think they’re stupid because you should be seeking positive change year round.  A lot of resolutions will be made and some will be kept.  Just like in the years past.

I’ve taken my mom’s lead on resolutions. I don’t normally have them just once a year.  Sometimes I have the smaller ones daily or weekly, but I try to reassess everything every three to six months.  I looked back on my general list from last year.  I planned to be flexible, intentional and supportive.  It’s hard to let yourself be the judge of that, but I think I sought after those characteristics and reached success in some areas of my life.  I had a few financial goals.  I don’t feel comfortable saying that I passed, but I don’t think I completely failed either. I had a charitable goal in regard to giving and becoming a voice for a handful of organizations.  As the year comes to a close, I think I did that.  Not perfectly, room for improvement and change this year, but I can half smile about that part of my list.

Ministry and parenting were on my list this year.  I committed to my ministry plans and I think I accomplished them.  Although in the larger scheme of things, I am not a parenting fail (as my son would say), but I am seeking the most improvement in this area.  Really praying for the Lord to keep my kids small voices in balance with my work life’s loud voice.  (I have a lot more to say on this later.)  And, the truth is, wife to my husband was not even on my list!  (Shame on me, I think?)

Today, I have had the pleasure of being home alone for the last several hours with my thoughts and plans for 2015.  Somewhere between The Eisenhower Matrix, a weekly graph from The 7 Habits of a Highly Effective Person and my desire to serve God with the time He has given me, I am half way to being where I want to be in 2015.  Meaning the first few months of the year.

One of the neat practices I recently adopted when planning my time is to keep my roles in tact.  The order of them changes with the different callings of each week.  But I keep them at the forefront of my planning.  Business partner, Writer/Reader, Wife, Mother, Churchgoer.  It’s fairly easy to see if I am neglecting the Lord’s calling on my life if one of these areas is hogging all of the time.  Given the thoughtful woman that I know you are, I am sharing with you what I have come up with in one area of my life – WIFE.  In the days to come, before we hit January 1, I plan to share with you all of my revelations and resolutions.  I hope that you do the same as we walk together this beautiful life that God has given us.

Wife

I have been trying to figure out how to date my husband since September.  It sounds simple, but for me, it hasn’t been.  Do we take the morning off of work to spend some time together?  Do we plan on the weekend and pay a babysitter?  Do I offer another couple to watch their kids once a month if they watch mine?  Do we pack them up for the weekend at the grandparents?  I was obviously frozen by the options for the last three months.  And, then, what do we do?  I was lucky enough to chat with another backstage mom at my daughter’s Nutcracker show to get some great ideas.  I concluded that we haven’t been having nearly as much fun as we could be.  So . . . in January, we are going on a touristy river boat ride we have been talking about since we got married. (This is the Jungle Queen that honked its horn as it passed my wedding ceremony on the river shore.)  In February, we are going to the SoBe Food and Wine Festival (that we also have been talking about for years).  Both were holiday gifts to him, my beloved.  And in March, I think we’ll take a cooking lesson at Sur La Table.  There you have it . . . working on being a more fun wife.

I Am Thankful For One More Song

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha KatzLeave a comment

Falling short is a habit for humanity.  For me included.  I don’t always get it all done.  I forget sometimes.  I write lists and end up ignoring some stuff and putting off other stuff.  I have the smart thing to say to my kids, but it comes out pretty stupid.  I have big thoughts for my marriage one day that seem way too transparent the next.  I am on top of my principles and then I fumble around with my time.

I run late – – twenty minutes to be exact, a whole lot of the time.  I run late for church too.  I walk into the end of the last song of worship. Or better yet, the prayer taking place while the music is fading.  I don’t skip a beat and join in wherever I land, but late in any case.  Running late for church feels like running late for God.

This past week, as service was coming to a close, there came one more song.  And, I thought to myself, despite everything, God still plays one more song for us.  We walk in late to our appointments with Him.  We pick stupid times to talk to Him and end up drifting off in the middle of a conversation.  We forget to read His book.  We smear His name a multitude of times in our life.  We fall off the really good life He planned for us.  Even with our best intentions in place, we fall short.

God’s spirit, somehow, because of who He is, takes all of us into account, and comes out playing one more song.  I imagine the size of His heart and it makes sense to me.  I imagine the size of His heart and it feels powerfully possible to me, that no matter what, He always has a song for us.

FF Oct 14

The Power of Impossibility

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha Katz1 Comment

By Sasha Katz

If you think about all of the times in your life that you were down, crushed, broken or hopeless, there is always a strain, grain or thread of impossibility.  Even when you force your hurt or beat up self to be practical, problem solving or option seeking, impossibility eventually strikes your potential plan and you are back to square one.  Like a deer in headlights, you stop when you come against impossibility.  There are circumstances in this life where change feels impossible.

We all have been there.  Impossibility comes in the form of lack of funds.  When I was heading back to law school for year two, my grandma wasn’t able to help me out anymore.  I had no ideas and no funds to cover the deficiency.  I was already working and my loans were maxed.  I had no more human capacity to make up the difference.  I sat with the financial aid counselor (who I had no idea was a believer) and she said that a man had left a trust fund to my school for scenarios like mine and she had the authority to give me what I needed for the year.  And, then she said – – Your Father knows what you need.  God blew out what I viewed as impossibility.

Impossibility comes in the form of relationships.  It was not that long ago that I determined that my husband and I would not see eye to eye on tithing to our church.  We had been fighting about it for more than a year.  My prayers seemed useless because our battle just heightened each time we went to war on the issue.  I think it was in the middle of one of our furious matches on the issue, that I was sitting at the dining room table, and a resolution occurred to me.  I probably yelled the resolution instead of suggested it the way the Holy Spirit had gently put it into my mind.  But, in any case, my husband yelled back, FINE (or whatever form his agreement came in).  Resolved.  Years of fighting pretty much resolved in one Holy Spirit moment.

Impossibility comes in the form of loss.  I didn’t know this pain until my dad died just before Christmas of 2009.  We spent some time talking about legacy at our couples bible study this week.  It brought me right back to my dad and my memories of losing him.  Right now, I see his clear blues eyes looking into my eyes of the same color, not just on the day he walked home to the Lord, but on every intimate occasion throughout my life.  There were moments during the first year after his arrival to heaven that stopping the radical tears and pain seemed to be an impossibility.  His blue eyes and the healing of the loss of them took the gentle hand of the Lord washing over me, the wise counsel of my mom and time.

I don’t know exactly what impossibility looks like for you.  I have impossibility even right now.  It stops us in our tracks and pushes back the mind and heart as you search for ways around and through impossibility.  I also don’t know what your break through looks like.  I don’t know what mine looks like either.  However, I have learned that it is beyond me to know how it is that the Lord plans to make possible what is humanly impossible.  And, really, it doesn’t matter how many times in a life that we face impossibility – – when it appears, it is real.

We certainly have the option to believe that He does impossible things rather than the hopeless alternative.  We have the option to let those close to us pray for us and minister to us.  We have the alternative to talk to the God of impossible things.  And, even if our prayer seems feeble, useless or powerless, if our prayers sound insufficient, small minded or limited, they are worthwhile and received by the God who planned from the beginning of time to take you to the other side of impossible.

lucado 2

 

Check Yourself

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha KatzLeave a comment

By Sasha Katz

I’ve been thinking about what my church means to me. In the believer’s life, meeting together in the presence of God matters. The happenings that take place, together, in His house, form our faith, cleanse and wash us. We are encouraged in the place called church. Whether love and good deeds are poured out on to you in His house or whether you are drawn to act yourself, this is the place where we are genuinely motivated to do God’s work. This is the ideal description of church and truly defines, for me, my church experience.

If I could add to the definition of church, I would include the word refuge. I think about my dad dying and how impossible it initially felt to grieve in the midst of my regular schedule. For weeks, there were only two places I could cry – – as I lay in bed at night or during Pastor Clay’s worship on Sunday morning. Only two places. I needed the church to be my grieving place and it was there for me.

I also think about the early days of my marriage and the downright spiritual attack I was beat up under by some of our extended family. If you’ve ever felt you may not be able to fully hold on to yourself, that was me. At my worst times, I sat in church holding onto my arms debating with myself if I could keep soundness of mind. Time after time, He built me up in His house. His strength empowered me to grow up in Him. It is occurring to me right now that if I hadn’t chosen Him as my pillar of strength at that time, I would not be the woman I am now.

Another time in my life, I did not want to give up my dream to be a stay at home mom. Through a turn of events, God allowed for me to be a full time working mom. There was only one place that I was able to entrust the daily care of my kids – – that is my church. I remember feeling like the church was an umbrella that I could remain safely under while the storms and showers of life come down.

I hope you catch my sentiment for the church. I hope you catch the meaning for me and, I desperately hope for all of us, that we can hitch our lives upon a Rock.  But, because we are human, God’s wonderfully perfect institutions, including the church, suffer sometimes. Mostly, or only, because of us. What has prompted me to think about what my church means to me comes by means of a self check.  Just a few months ago, our pastor resigned as a result of multiple affairs and numerous acts of sexual immorality (via pornography).  As the dust settles, there currently exists for me a sadness.  The subtle sadness is kind of like an envelope wrapped around a letter that holds really good news.  You’d like to open and throw away that envelope once and for all, so you can go on sharing the good news . . . but that darn envelope.

The upside of my self check is that I am glad to know that my love for my church was not wrapped around my former pastor.  It wasn’t wrapped around the popularity of his person or sermons.  God made Himself self-evident through the pulpit.  I am thankful that God is God.  I don’t feel lost under the loss because of that.

Self check yourself.  Wherever you meet with other believers under the umbrella of God, check your heart.  Why do you love His house?   Is it because your faith is built?  Are you washed by the word?  Are you encouraged to love and do good deeds?  What is your definition of church?  We are all prompted in times of change to check our self, but I think it’s better to check ourselves in the normal course of life.  What human heart could not use a check anyway?

July 19 FF Hebrews

 

Another Sex Scandal-Part II

On By femmefuelIn FemmeFeatures by JMathis, June 2011 (Men and Boys)Leave a comment

By JMathis

There was a time in medical schools everywhere, that instructors would scare future medical students by telling them the following: “Look to the student to your left. Look to the student to your right. Of the three of you, one of you will drop out before the year is over.”

I am told that in seminaries and Bible colleges nowadays, they employ a similar scare tactic, except it sounds something more like this: “Look to the student to your left. Look to the student to your right. Of the three of you, one of you will be affected by a sex scandal that will destroy your ministry.”

When my seminary student friend told me this, I was rocked to the core and suddenly felt like my eyes had been opened.

Sex scandals are not just a case of guys (and girls) behaving badly. They are a systematic tool by Satan to rip the foundations of families, churches and even political institutions.

Think about it. No one goes into seminary with the intention to cheat on his spouse and to bring his life-saving ministry to a screeching halt. No one goes into a marriage thinking that she will betray the one person who has sworn to remain committed through sickness and health, for richer or for poorer. No young victim of child molestation goes into life thinking that he will one day be a child rapist. 

But it happens. Everyday. Day after day. Satan uses sex—something so beautiful, sacred and divine—to kill, steal and destroy. Kill marriages, steal the minds of functioning members of society, and to destroy ministries that have the capability of bringing billions to Christ.

Women: pray for your future and current husbands. They are on the spiritual frontlines of your family, and Satan will do everything in his power to ensure that your family is destined for hell. He starts with the enticement of an innocent Facebook or Twitter flirtation, and in no matter of time, his plan is accomplished: a dissipation of trust, crushed dreams, fractured relationships, and more importantly—a family that has turned their backs on God due to pain, despair, humiliation and a host of unanswered “Why me’s? 

Churches: pray for your pastors and spiritual mentors. They are on the spiritual frontlines of cities, counties, states and now, with the far-reaching power of the Internet, even global web audiences. Satan will do everything in his power to ensure that the tens, hundreds, thousands and millions touched by these ministries are destined for hell. How many Catholic men are disillusioned and angered by God and the church due to a priest who succumbed to Satan’s plan? How many churches shut their doors because of a pastor’s infidelity? How many international healing and deliverance ministries are disbanded due to allegations of sexual abuse?

It is very easy for us to laugh and roll our eyes in disbelief at the Tigers, Schwarzeneggers and Weiners of this world. It’s even easier for us to judge and wag our collective, holier-than-thou fingers at the Bishop Longs, Jim Bakkers, Ted Haggards and Catholic priests of the Christian world.

However, when was the last time you really prayed for these fallen men? Prayed for the healing and restoration of their marriages, their children, and their ministries? When have we really wept in spiritual sorrow over the countless numbers of lives Satan has ruined by these sex scandals?

Ladies, this is not just a case of men behaving badly. Our men are systematically being targeted by Satan in his broader plan to overthrow the Kingdom of God.

And, by no means am I writing these words to defend or excuse the actions of perpetrators, predators, pedophiles, pimps and perverts.

Instead, I am writing these words to plead for a call to prayer and fasting to eradicate one of Satan’s most effective weapons against Christians: the sex scandal. Whether it takes the form of suburban infidelity, or the fall of a mega-church pastor, the result is the same: shattered lives and a multitude of hearts turned away from God the Father.

Pray for your men.

Fast for your men.

Get on your hands and knees for your men.

Look to the person to your left. Look to the person to your right. “Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat.” Luke 22:31