Made Beautiful

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,
for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. - Romans 8:28-29

I have had a handful of creative pursuits in my life. Some I have only scratched the surface with, like playing bass guitar, and others I have gone deeper with, like drawing, digital art, and pen and ink artwork. But no matter what the creative pursuit is or the level I try to reach with it, one thing is consistent in them all: I want to do it for God’s glory.

That is the overarching goal I always want governing the motives behind everything I do. This desire for God’s glory is no different with my newest creative pursuit of woodworking.

Working with wood has been something I have dabbled in for several years now, and while I’ve never had all the tools or resources to seriously pursue any fine woodworking, I still love playing around with this natural material. I keep returning to it in awe of all the rich wonder and beauty God hides away within the trunks of his creation. So in an attempt to satisfy my desire to create with wood, I started trying to find something small that I could make, and also enjoy the process of making, with limited resources. For some time I couldn’t nail anything down that I truly enjoyed, until an idea came from a very unlikely place.

It was in September of 2014 that my wife and I’s marriage suffered great pain and brokenness. Life is messy, and ours was no exception. We didn’t know what was going to happen, we didn’t know if this shattered state of our lives could ever be put back together again. We didn’t have the strength to make it, but thankfully that is when Christ showed up, and was more than strong enough for us.

When God stepped in with a miraculous touch of grace, he began taking what was broken and started putting it back together again.

God opened our eyes to the truth that nothing in this world will ever satisfy us or make us whole. Only he can do that. He brought us to a point of seeing just how dead in our sin we were, and that we had no other hope but to grab hold of him, as if he was all we had. And that is what we did. We gave him everything. Ourselves, each other, and our marriage.

It was there, in that moment of feeling like you are sinking into the black depths of the ocean, that God reached down and pulled us up. We ran to him, leaving everything we had behind and finally found the freedom he offers. We found what true life really is and that it is only found in him.

It was in the months after our healing began and after my wife mentioned wanting a new wedding ring, that the question emerged. Could I make her a ring out of wood? With little to no research, I went out into the shop and found a dirty scrap piece of hardwood to try it on. I drilled a hole in it, and started cutting and sanding, and sanding, and sanding, and sanding, and sanding, until I had shaped it into my first wooden ring. As I worked on it for many nights, the process of cutting, sanding, and shaping this old piece of wood began to take on new meaning to me. Here I was taking a scrap meant for the burn pile and making it something purposeful. Something beautiful. It was there in that process that I started to see the same process God was working in my life, in my wife’s life, and our life together.

The first ring that started it all.

That original ring making process was not easy and it certainly was not quick. It was difficult and trying, but it was not meaningless. The same could be said for the pain and healing in our marriage. With care and purpose, just like a craftsman, God was working to make something beautiful, he was working to make us more like him.

After that first ring, and all that it embodied for my wife and I, I felt I had found something I could make, enjoy, and would have purpose behind it. So I started researching wooden rings and refined my process into what it is now, making bentwood rings.

Each ring is a joy to make. I love what they mean to me, and I love what they can mean to others. The ones I make for my wife and I tell our story, and I hope the ones I make for others will tell theirs. It is my genuine hope that anyone who wears a ring I’ve made will be reminded that they were created to be something more than they could ever make themselves.

As we fully surrender to God, he can and will make us what we were meant to be. He can take what is heading for the fire, and make into a treasured reflection of himself. The process will be hard, maybe difficult to understand, and even painful at times, but making something that is beautiful is never a simple and easy process. However it is one that is worth everything.

Thanks for stopping by! If you are interested in having one of these rings for yourself or giving one as a gift, you can check out my Woodworking page. It will have all the information you need and links to my store on Etsy.

Worship - Loving What Satisfies

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart

and with all your soul and with all your might. – Deuteronomy 6:5

This last weekend, Easter Sunday, many entered through the doors of a church building. They smiled, shook a hand, apologized for stepping in front of someone already sitting in a pew, and found themselves in attendance at an event called a worship service. However, there were some this past Sunday, and actually every Sunday, that entered a church and experienced nothing of worship. After the service, they tucked a bulletin in their pocket or purse, and left more concerned with a rumbling stomach than the famished state of their heart. Why do I think this? Why do I say some attended a worship service, yet never worship? Well, perhaps we will find an answer if we take a look at what worship is. Worship is a matter of the heart. Let’s start with asking a question, what does the word worship mean? The term actually comes from an old English word weorthscipe, which means the act of ascribing worth to something. This is really interesting to me. Worship of something is a declaration of something’s worth to you. What is interesting about this is that it takes the experience of worship out of a ceremonial ritual that happens in a specific place, and makes it personal. When you see worship as an act of you declaring what is of value to you, you find that it is happening all the time and everywhere you go. Think about these illustrations. If someone offered you a quartz stone, and another offered you a flawless diamond. Which would you choose? Of course you would choose the diamond, because it is rare, beautiful, and valuable. If you were in the desert and in desperate need of water and you found two canteens: one was broken and empty, and the other one was full of water. Which would have more worth to you? Obviously it is the one that could keep you alive. If you were hungry, and someone offered you a single cracker, but then someone offered you a three-course meal, you would choose the meal because it is more satisfying. While these examples are physical things, they show us we make choices that reject one thing and accept another based on a greater value or a stronger desire. This is the essence of worship, choosing one thing over another because it has more value to you. One meets your needs more than another. That is why for the Christian, worship of God is not just a weekly event, but takes place in our hearts every time we choose God over anything. It is when our life is guided by a true belief that God is more valuable, sustaining, and satisfying, that we are engaging in worship of him. We worship through sacrifice. The fact that we worship what satisfies us is most vividly shown through the idea of sacrifice. We give up, lay down, avoid, put away and forsake, things that are of lesser value to us so that we may take up, pursue, embrace, love, and enjoy things that do satisfy us. As believers, we sacrifice the things that are lesser, for the One who is greater. We see this picture dramatically displayed in the Old Testament, where the first time the word worship is used in the Bible, in Genesis 22.

Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. 

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.” – Genesis 22:5-15

This is so hard for us to understand. Abraham was taking his son, the very son God had promised to him, and would lay him on an altar to sacrifice. And this act is called worship. Isaac was no doubt precious to his father, but don’t miss this, it was not that Abraham had little value of Isaac, but that he had greater value of God! To look into the face of your child, and say in the depth of your heart that God is more valuable and precious to me than them, is not an easy thing. Our culture does not teach that, but Jesus did. In fact, he said that if that is not in your heart, then you do not belong to him.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. – Matt 10:37

Let us be clear here. This is not a call to child abandonment; instead this is a call to a God-glorifying surrender of all your affections to Christ. Sadly, when we read the story of Abraham from Genesis 22, or Matthew 10:37, our first reaction is shock of the seemingly diminished value of a child or family member. However, that is NOT what is on display here. Instead, it is a display that while those people are precious to you, (and they should be) God is still more valuable and satisfying. We can sacrifice anything, because we have everything. So how do we worship like this? How do we lay everything on the altar, including ourselves, (Matthew 16:24-25) that we might express the all-satisfying worth of God? We do it by seeing that we can give up anything, because God is everything we need, and he has given us himself. When we read the story of Abraham in Gen 22, we see God stopping Abraham from killing his son. However, years later, God’s own son would travel up a hill, trusting his Father, carrying wood on his back. But this time, the knife would not be stopped. The death we deserved and earned because of our sin, our sin of loving something more than God, was endured and suffered by Christ. He died in our place.

In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. – 1 John 4:10

Jesus, like the ram caught in the thorns, took our place in death that we might be reunited with the Father, just as Isaac was reunited with Abraham. Therefore we can say with the Psalmist:

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. – Psalm 73:25-26

And we can answer Paul’s charge in Romans:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. – Romans 12:1

You were not created to be satisfied by anything in this world, instead you were made to be satisfied by the Maker of this world, and it is Christ who died to reconcile you to him. It is because God did not withhold the knife from his Son, that we are able to not withhold it from anything that would take God’s place in our lives. The reason you can give up everything in worship to him is because he has given you everything you need. He has given himself. So surrender to him, and find a life full of joy in declaring the value of God in worship.

It Is Well

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. – Romans 8:35,37

It happens. Pain. Hardship. Crisis. Unknowns. They strike at us and threaten to sink our souls. They roar and crash over us like the waves of a tempest to break loose our joy and send it to a watery grave.

Sadly, if your life is built on something as shakable as yourself or the things of this world, their efforts will succeed. You will find yourself joyless and gasping for air, sinking in the waves as you are pummeled by the sea of despair.

But Christian, Child of God, your joy is not founded on your strength or the trappings of this world. It is founded on something unshakable, that no maelstrom that would rage against you can overtake!

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, 

“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
  we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:35-39

You are made more than a conqueror! Through Christ, not only will you prevail against the storm, but God will direct the violent gale to serve you. You can trust as Christ unflinchingly holds the helm and navigates your journey across stormy seas to get you to sweeter shores. He will see you to where you belong, in closer and sweeter fellowship with Christ and greater conformity to his glorious image.

So stand in awe of the captain of your ship, and declare his praise! Though even through tears, you can proclaim, "It is well with my soul."

If you find yourself in a difficult storm, below is a handful of scriptures to offer encouragement.

Psalm 36:7

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
    The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Isaiah 41:9-10

You are my servant,
    I have chosen you and not cast you off”;
fear not, for I am with you;
    be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
    I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Hebrews 6:19

This hope [in the work of Christ] we have as an anchor of the soul...

Matthew 8:24-27

Behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

Romans 8:28

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Hebrews 4:16

 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. 

Psalm 34:18

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
    and saves the crushed in spirit. 

Picking Stickers – Longing for a world void of sin.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. – Revelation 21:4

I’m not a big fan of cold weather. I’d much rather be outside working and sweating, than have freezing hands while scraping ice off a car in the morning.

Yet, as winter is here, there is one thing I’m thankful for; not having to cut grass. Then with that, not having to deal with sand burrs.

I truly hate these painfully prickly plants with righteous furry! So much so, that every time I plan to cut grass I walk the yard and pick as many plants as I can find. Some days I have spent several hours, getting 6-8 five-gallon buckets worth out of the yard.

During the summer, when I spend my Saturday mornings doing this, I tend to think on several things. One set of thoughts that continually emerges in these times is contemplating the struggle and fight against sin.

Having to deal with these foot assassins is a part of living in a world that is under the curse of sin (Genesis 3:18), and honestly I have hoped several times that Adam at least had to step on one of them. Yet, no matter if he did or didn’t, I think there is a bigger picture we can see in picking stickers. Something to see in spending hours knelt on the ground pulling plant, after plant, after plant. It is a thought that stems from the question, “Why am I even doing this?"

The reason why, is because I hate the pain the stickers bring, and I love my kids. I want my kids to be free to run in their yard without fear, but they cannot. I tell them often to avoid the areas where they are the thickest, and to always keep their shoes on in the yard.

I still vividly remember one day where my son did not heed the warning and ran with just flip flops into a large batch of them. He screamed that scream all parents know. The scream that is not whiny, not annoyed, not upset, but pain. Real pain. He had several deep in his feet that had to be pulled out, and if you have ever experienced that, it is not fun. It broke my heart having to watch him suffer that pain, and it broke it in two ways.

First, that he didn’t heed my warning. He was running and I knew where he was heading, so I cried out, “STOP!!” but he kept going. He not only failed to follow the warning that day in the moment, but also the many warnings before, pointing them out and telling him to be watchful for them. But that day he wasn’t, and there were consequences that broke my heart for him to endure.

Second, is that he even has to deal with stickers in his life. I hate that they even exist, that their presence threatens him when he runs through the yard. It breaks my heart that he cannot go outside barefoot and just run through the grass without worry. There is always a threat, always at least one lying in wait to cause him pain.

As I was thinking on that, the picture became clearer and clearer. God has always been so gracious to warn us of sin and the pain it brings. His words are not hazy on the subject. His warning is clear and so often, even if just a still small voice, we can hear the shout, “STOP!!” in our heart. And so many times when we do not listen, we tend to think God stands over his children to condemn them. Yet just as a father, I believe his heart breaks over the pain our sinful choices inflict upon ourselves and others. He kneels with us, and pulls the stickers from our feet with care. It hurts taking these things out, but it’s gracious love that does it.

Not only that, but God hates that we even have to deal with sin. Not only does his heart break when we do not follow him, which brings pain and suffering, but he wants to remove the threat completely. And for his children, one day, even the threat of sin will be no more.

My brother, after his first experience seeing these plants, told me I need to set the yard on fire, burn it all down, and bring in new fresh sod. I don’t think I’ll trying that anytime soon, however with God and this world, that's going to happen one day. This world full of sin, this place overrun by sin, will be set ablaze by a holy and just God, removing every remnant of it forever. Then for his children, he will create a new heaven and new earth where we can run barefoot with him with no fear! A place void of sin, void of the struggle, void of the fight. I long deeply for that day!

Another thought that came to my mind was a plea for myself and other dads. A plea to God to help me see my kids in that same way. That when they sin, are defiant, covet, and every other act of disobedience they can conjure up, that I would not just see a child rebelling against me, but against God, and that it would break my heart. That I would not discipline out of anger or frustration, or react with zero patience, but that I would see it the same way as the day my son ran through a sticker patch. That it would break my heart, and that my discipline would be from a desire to lovingly remove the stickers from his feet, and to point him always to the one that can remove them from his heart forever.