Sermons

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New Mercies
December 30, 2001
Associate Pastor Lynne Baab

Lamentations 3:19-26

Thirty years ago this month I became a Christian. For the past few months, I’ve been doing a lot of review of the thirty years. Today I want to tell you briefly how I became a Christian and then I want to tell you what God has done in my life in each of the three decades since then.

This is the Sunday after Christmas and before Epiphany. Christmas is about God with us, so this will be one woman’s story of the ways God has been with her. At Epiphany we celebrate the three wise men and God’s light shining in all the world. This will be a story of God’s light shining into one life.

I have two purposes in talking about the thirty years. First, I want to give public thanks to God for what he has done in my life. He has blessed me in so many ways. I want to honor him for his goodness to me. Second, I’m hoping that something about my journey will be encouraging to you in your journey. All of our journeys are different. I’m not telling my story because I think yours will be like it. But I do hope something of my story will be helpful to you as you journey on in obedience to God.

The beginnings
In my childhood we went to church every Sunday without fail. We never talked about God at home, but church was important to me, and my childhood faith in God was significant and real. When I got to be about 15, I started having questions. Some of them were pretty typical ones, like “How can a good God allow suffering?” Others were more specific to me. I had a lot of questions about ethics and good behavior. Why was it important to live a moral life?

I couldn’t ask my parents about these questions because we didn’t talk about those kind of things. The attitude at my parents’ church was also not accepting of questions. They had a kind of “leap of faith” view. Your questions were over here on one side, and your faith was on the other side. You were supposed to believe without understanding.

So I became an atheist. When I went to college at 18, I was very conscious of being an atheist, and when I went to France for my sophomore year of college, I was still very aware that I was an atheist. In France, they celebrate All Saint’s Day, November 1, as a holiday, and we had a three- or four-day weekend. Some friends and I went to Switzerland. One of my friends had a friend who was studying at a Christian community in Switzerland called L’Abri Fellowship. We stopped by this community for a brief visit.

We missed the bus so we had to stay longer than we expected. While we were there, I heard a talk entitled, “Possible Answers to Basic Philosophic Questions.” It was as if someone had climbed inside my brain and listened to all the questions I had. The speaker gave the Christian answers to those questions. This was just what I had been looking for in my teenage years!

I didn’t become a Christian that weekend, but I went back to France and my classes and I thought a lot about what I had heard. Christmas vacation came along, and I left on a trip with a bunch of friends. When I left, I wasn’t a Christian, and when I came back to France in January I was. I don’t know when it happened, but I do know that there were two significant influences. We attended a beautiful candlelight Christmas Eve service in Bergen, Norway, which was deeply meaningful to me. And I was able to buy a Bible in English somewhere on that trip, and I began to read the Bible.

So I started the second semester as a brand new Christian. One of the first things that happened was that I stumbled onto a Bible study on the French campus. So my first Bible study was in French, which I thought was pretty cool! At one of the first Bible study sessions, there was a new American student who had come for second semester in the program I was in. She was from Washington State, as I was. She lived south of town a couples miles out, like I did. And she was a mature Christian.

Her name was Julie, and she was my first Christian friend. I picked her up for school each day, and as we walked to school in the mornings and home in the evenings, we talked and talked. I asked her thousands of questions, which was wonderful. But even more wonderful was that she cared about what I was thinking and feeling. She listened to my inner life, and brought my thoughts and feelings into God’s presence. She taught me what it’s like to have a Christian friend, and she was the first of many such friends over the 30 years. When I think back on the 30 years, one of the greatest gifts has been the friends who have loved me and accepted me, inside and out.

Another significant thing happened before I left France. I wrote to the Christian community in Switzerland and asked if I could come back and study there. So I spent two weeks there over spring break and another two weeks in June before I came back to the States. This was the first of many places that God gave me where I could ask all those questions that I had and learn to use my mind in the context of my faith.

Those first two weeks there I studied Romans 1-8. For four hours each day for two weeks I listened to tapes of lectures on Romans 1-8, and I got a wonderful overview of the basic beliefs of the Christian faith. It was a wonderful foundation, and gave me a strong sense that it was okay to ask questions and that I could bring my mind to bear on issues of faith. I learned that the Bible is endlessly fascinating to study.

The first decade
That first decade as a Christian was very eventful. When I left France, I went back to Oregon to college, where I joined the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Group on campus. I learned to lead Bible studies and made more friends. When I graduated from college, I moved to Seattle and served with InterVarsity at the University of Washington for four years. During those years, I met and married my husband, Dave. We went to the Middle East to be self-supporting missionaries. We lived in Iran for six months and Israel for a year and a half. In Israel our first son was born. After Israel we moved back to Seattle.

When I look at that first decade, I can see that God was doing three significant things in me. Two of them I’ve mentioned. First, he gave me friends. Second, he gave me places to use my mind in the arena of my faith. I learned to study the Bible as a student in InterVarsity, attending conferences, and then in those years on InterVarsity staff, more conferences and Bible studies. God gave me places to ask my questions and to study.

Third, God gave me places to serve him. I had grown up with a strong model of volunteering and service. Even today, my parents are in their seventies and eighties and they still have volunteer commitments. The problem is that their gifts are very different from mine. They are good at hands-on, practical ways of serving. When I try to serve that way, I always break something! I am such a klutz.

In college I learned to lead Bible studies and during my years on staff with InterVarsity I did more teaching and leading of seminars. I learned that my gifts are more in the area of teaching rather than hands-on service. God gave me places to serve using my gifts, no one else’s, and that was wonderfully encouraging and affirming.

In that first decade, it seems to me God was giving me what I lacked in the years before: friends who listened to my inner self, places to serve using my strengths, and places to ask my questions about faith. It’s a good thing I had such a solid grounding in that first decade, because the second one was very different.

The second decade
I call the second decade “God in the Darkness.” I was depressed for a lot of that decade. I really didn’t understand that when you’re depressed, it’s a good thing to get counseling, so I just slogged on. It wasn’t until the end of that decade that I got counseling and began to understand some of what was going on.

During that decade I stayed home with kids. Soon after we returned to Seattle, we had a second son. I don’t know if it was good for our kids that I stayed home, but I know it wasn’t good for me. We make the best decisions we can, and I lived with a decision that might not have been a good one.

Where was God in those dark years? I can see clearly now that he was right there beside me. I have a picture in my mind from those years. It’s the middle of the night. I wake up and I can’t get back to sleep, so I get up and go into the living room and cry for a while. Maybe ten minutes, maybe half an hour. Then I wait a while longer until I can get back to sleep, and I go back to bed. I’m very tired the next day.

But as I look back, I can see something I couldn’t see then. Something wonderful happened every single day. Do you know what it was? The sun came up. A new day started. There’s a verse in Psalm 30 that says, “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” The nights may have had tears, but the days had so many good things. My kids learned to walk, to talk. Then they learned to read. There is nothing as intoxicating, in my experience, as watching a child learn to read.

I attended seminary part time during that decade, taking one class each quarter, and at the end of the decade, I had a seminary degree. I was involved in some of the same kinds of things at church that I do now, teaching classes, organizing retreats. Good things happened at church. Through those good things in the dark years, God taught me hope.

The first Scripture in the service today, Romans 5:1-5, has a sequence in it that I both love and hate. It says,

We rejoice in our suffering because suffering brings about perseverance, perseverance brings about proven character, and proven character brings about hope, and that hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

I know I have more perseverance now and I know I have hope in a way I didn’t have before.

My husband says there’s something else I have now that I didn’t have before that decade. He says I have more compassion and a softer heart. He ought to know – he was there before and after that decade. He says I’m not the same person I was before that decade. So while I would never want to repeat the pain of those years, I am grateful that God brought good out of it.

The third decade
I’m happy to report that the third decade was much, much better. I call it “The Decade of the Holy Spirit,” because this has been the time I have learned to walk in the Spirit, to listen to the Spirit. I’ll give you several examples.

When the third decade began, I had just finished seminary and I knew I wasn’t ready to be a pastor yet. So I did a number of different jobs, teaching as an adjunct faculty member at a couple of places, editing a couple of publications, writing a lot. In each case, I felt that God, through his Holy Spirit, led me into each job and then led me out of each job. Four years ago, two important things happened in the same year. I got my first contract to write a book, and I was able to be ordained to be a pastor here at Bethany.

The Holy Spirit has narrowed my focus during this decade, making clear that there are things I’m not supposed to be doing and making clear what I am supposed to be doing. I am very sure that right now I’m supposed to be a writer and pastor, and that certainty comes from the Holy Spirit.

This is the decade when I learned contemplative prayer. It was a revelation to me, because I always thought prayer meant talking to God about what was on my mind. I still do lots and lots of intercessory prayer, asking God for things for myself and for others. But contemplative prayer taught me that prayer is also listening to God. In contemplative prayer you learn quiet, meditative ways of sitting with the Scriptures, allowing God to speak. You also pray in silence, waiting for the Holy Spirit to communicate with you.

Over the course of this decade, the Holy Spirit taught me to listen to him to guide my prayers for people. Maybe five or ten years ago, I would have recurrent thoughts about a person over the course of several days. Then I would see them and say, “Gosh, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.” They would say, “That’s great, because something incredibly significant has been happening to me.”

I realized that maybe it was God who was putting the thoughts into my mind about that person, and maybe all those thoughts about the person were God’s call to me to pray for that person. So now, when I find myself thinking of someone, I try to pray for them. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve called someone or seen them and told them, “I’ve been praying for you,” and they say, “Good. I’ve needed those prayers.” This gives me the sense that God and I together are caring for people. It feels like partnership, teamwork.

Many of the times God speaks to me, he tells me to call someone. Sometimes I even call a person and say, “I don’t know why I’m calling you, but I just felt I should.” And they will tell me that they need someone to talk to or someone to pray for them. Sometimes the Holy Spirit nudges me to call someone just to get some detail cleared up. I’ll give you one small example.

Our younger son, Mike, is a senior at Western Washington University in Bellingham. He just spent a semester in Australia, and while he was there, he decided that he wanted to stay at Western an extra year and get a second major in journalism. I had a lot of questions about that decision, and I was trying to think about where I could get my questions answered.

I remembered my husband, Dave, has a friend who teaches journalism in Florida. I thought maybe I could call him, but I didn’t really take any steps to do that. Three weeks ago today, Mike got home from Australia. Ten of his friends picked him up at the airport and brought him home. This was a Sunday when I’d had a very busy morning at church. After the group of kids left with Mike, I was very tired. So I collapsed onto my bed to read.

While I was lying there reading, I felt a nudge to call the fellow in Florida. I really, really didn’t want to get up and do that because I was tired. But I’ve learned to obey those nudges from the Holy Spirit. So I got up, found his phone number, and called him. He was home and I was able to ask my questions and get answers. At the end of the conversation, he said, “Where is Mike in school? At Western? One of my close friends is a journalism professor there. Tell Mike to go see him.”

I hung up the phone. Mike and his friends stormed in to pick up some clothes for Mike so they could all go up to Bellingham. While Mike packed, I give him the professor’s name and told him the remaining questions I had. Mike dropped by that professor’s office the next day and was able to make an appointment for a few days later. He got his questions answered, my questions answered, and he is moving ahead on a path that seems very right for him.

It is a great gift to have God’s help like that in small and large matters. It is an even greater gift to have a sense of partnership with God. It’s as if, through the Holy Spirit, God and I are partners in living my life. God is my partner in my work and in my roles as mother, daughter, wife, friend, sister. We talk about God being our Shepherd, and I experience him leading me in each of those roles.

I chose the Scripture from Lamentations because as I look back on the 30 years, I definitely see that God’s mercies are new every morning. It’s so easy to think that the Christian life begins on a high point, with strong emotions and a sense of God’s presence around the time we become a Christian, and then it’s a bunch of slogging obedience after that. I’ve had my years of slogging, and we will all probably have them, but they don’t have to last forever. The key to a rich, ongoing life of faith is the Holy Spirit. I encourage you to ask God to help you learn to listen to the Spirit’s voice in your life.

Let me read to you from Lamentations again:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
"The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
"therefore I will hope in him."