April Motl

If we perceive that a person, especially our other half, is the enemy, we may face a spiritual problem. The winning battle perspective won’t be to draw lines between our spouse and us; it will be to identify who the battle is really against - the enemy of our souls, not our spouse.

Our culture speaks a lot into our personal identity. When I was a teen, I watched my peers pursue worldly paths to “finding” themselves. One day, I felt the Lord impress on my heart that the set of choices I was considering was a path to losing oneself, not finding it. I would only find myself in God’s design, not the world’s. God graciously hemmed me in during my youth and kept me from many thorny life paths.

Sometimes what looks like freedom, ends up ripping us off.

Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

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I was raised as a city girl. However, my soul always breathed better closer to nature. 

When my husband and I set out to buy a home in Southern California, we found affordability in the mountains, rather than the urban areas we had previously called home. We loved our mountain home and our two acres beckoned me to try my hand at all the homestead pursuits I’d seen on YouTube and Pinterest! I’d even read a book proposing the enticing notion that a stay-at-home parent could easily make up the difference of a salary by using a quarter of an acre to grow food. I was in! Hook, line, and sinker! (Sinker being the operative word.)

Now seven years into these endeavors, I would concur with many other homesteaders who haven’t written such catchy book titles, that the wealth you accrue from these types of investments isn’t in the bank, but it is in learning, living, and making memories with your family. In fact, the expense of running a homestead can be considerable. I haven’t yet ended up pulling a Susanna Wesley and financially supporting our ministry family through raising animals and crops. But I still hold on to the hope that I will reap something from all this sowing!

Along the way, I have had some illuminating lessons with my Father on our hobby farm.

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Language is a fascinating thing! Some languages have many words to describe a particular thing and another language might have only one word for the other’s three, five, or more. With all these differences comes nuance of definition that can get lost in translation, even when translators have given readers the very best they can.

In English, I can love tacos, my cat, and my husband all with the same word. But clearly, I love my cat more sacrificially than I love tacos and my husband gets a whole separate category in my heart! But in English, it’s the same word.

So when translators come upon an instance where there’s not a direct, one-to-one meaning equivalent, they do their best. There’s a lot of study that goes into it. But many times, knowing a little more depth behind the words of Scripture can help us understand the Lord’s heart better.

Here’s three kinds of word study that enlightened my understanding of God’s word, His ways, and His heart.

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Scripture doesn’t specifically define greed. In America, we often relegate greed as some abstract quality only the uber rich are guilty of. The rest of us just “want” stuff… we’d never be downright greedy! But perhaps, greed affects more of us than the uber rich. Maybe greed is simply not being content.

In Luke 12:15, Jesus warned us to be wary of every form of greed. So that must mean it can come in a variety of flavors.

Still, it’s difficult to identify greed in our lives.

“Daffodils!!! Momma look! Daffodils!” These words have been ringing out loudly in our car the last few weeks from my little three year old son.

Last Fall, he and I planted 150 bulbs. I told him we would have to wait and then in a few months we would have a beautiful surprise! It was a lot of work. We have ground that is very rocky, and where it isn’t rocky, it’s clay. I was just hoping the gophers wouldn’t steal our labors when we finally got them all in - and that those bulbs would actually deliver on what I’d promised!

He couldn’t quite fathom “months” to wait for them to grow and so when he'd go look for some sign of life where we toiled, he was a bit unimpressed, for quite some time. When those bulbs eventually sprouted their little green tops about a month ago, I ran inside to get him and show him they were finally growing up. They didn’t look like much. He wasn’t that thrilled.

But once the driveway was lined with smiling yellow flowers that he helped plant, he was very proud and has been more than a little excited. And he also began loudly and urgently pointing out all the other daffodils along the roadside ever since, as if some how he knows and celebrates the work and waiting that went into those flowers too.

Our little daffodil planting taught him a small, but valuable lesson. Life is precious! It takes work and it takes patience.

O LORD, how many are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all; The earth is full of Your possessions. Psalm 104:24

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I was about eighteen years old when I’d come to the realization. I had read Bible passages and Christian books, been to various testimony services, prayed every which way I knew how. I was at the point in my Christian growth where I needed help, real flesh and blood help, to get me from where I was stuck to where I so desperately wanted to be in Christ. I couldn’t read anymore on my own and connect the dots in my life. I needed someone to come along with some outside perspective and help me untangle some of my thinking about God, life, and how I fit into it all.

You might not find the right person on the first try.

I started with my college leader’s wife. She was an amazing woman! I mustered up all my courage to press into her busy schedule to snag a little time from her. I shared my point A stuck place and asked her if she would teach me what I was missing to get to the promised point B in my walk. She looked at me, super sweetly, and said, “Well honey, if you know it’s wrong you just won’t do it anymore.”

I was struggling with emotional baggage. I desperately wanted to know that joy and peace Christ came to give me, but I was stuck inside my junk. And no matter how hard I tried, knowing I wasn’t supposed to be undone with anger or depression just really wasn’t fixing my soul. I thanked her for her time and just swallowed the experience as further evidence that I was pretty hopeless and most certainly the worst excuse for a Christian EVER! To top it off, in a month or less, she and her husband were off to another place of service.

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This time of year, we can lose sight of what matters in the hustle and bustle. Let's reclaim this as a time of worship and joy as we walk through this Christmas scripture and prayer guide together!