Brenda Rodgers

Category: identity

  • The Making of a Life Verse

    I opened up the drawer to the small wooden end table that sits next to John’s favorite recliner in the family room.  I took out a whole bunch of past sermon notes, books, and other random papers.  As I flipped through them with the intention of finally getting organized, they stared at me.
    Last summer I printed cards with scripture verses on them to hang in John’s hospital room.

    Now, they no longer hang in a hospital room, but they sit in a drawer, all together, like a deck of cards, forgotten.  I read through them slowly.  Each one evoking a different feeling, a different mental image of those days that still seem like yesterday.

    And then I came to the last card.  It stared at me like the others, but this one caused me to stare back.  I looked at it.  I read it over and over. And I stared some more.

    The Holy Spirit began to tell me why this one is different – why this one is special.  This one tells my story.  This is my life verse.
    Several months ago I heard the idea of a “life verse” for the first time.  It was a new concept to me to distinguish one verse from all of the others that mostly encompasses your life’s journey and purpose, but I was obviously behind the times on this one.  Talking to other people the idea has been around a long time.
    It was a neat idea, but I couldn’t imagine choosing one verse of the Bible to be a life verse.  Except for the law books in the beginning of the Old Testament, I think probably every other verse needs to be my life verse. I never thought about it again.
    That is until I opened the drawer of the small wooden end table next to John’s favorite recliner.
    I flashbacked to the ten years after college that I lived as a single woman desperate for a husband and refusing to trust God. Then I thought about my testimony to all the single women I meet today and the story I have to tell.
    I flashbacked to how I felt when God finally brought my husband to me and only two years later we were told he would have to have a heart transplant.  Then I thought of my words to Satan, “You may take my husband through this process, but God will be glorified, and lives will be changed through our experience.”
    I flashbacked to sitting in the waiting room as John was being hooked up to life support.  Once again I had to lay down my desire for a husband, look God in the face, and say, “Your will be done.”  Then I thought of all the people who talked to God, maybe for the first time or for the first time in a long time, on behalf of John and the countless emails I received about how people were moved to God through John’s story.
    The enemy does intend to harm me.  He intends to kill, steal, and destroy. 
    Sitting in that hospital last summer, I would imagine in hopeful prayer meeting in Heaven the people who my heartache connected to God.
    God uses it all for good.
    Do you have a life verse?  How did you decide upon it?
    

  • My Nose Is Too Big!

    I have been blessed with a husband whose primary love language is “words of affirmation”, and even though he feels most loved when he receives encouraging words, he also does a wonderful job of modeling how to show love through encouraging words.  This is great for me because I cannot tell you how many times a day he says things to me like, “You are so pretty!” or “I just love looking at you!” or “I am so proud of you!”

    Two nights ago I had gotten home later than usual and John says to me, “You are just so cute.  I want to take your picture!”

    I precede to say, as he reaches for his phone, “Well, I don’t have any more makeup on.”  He didn’t care.  I stood in front of the window, and he took a picture of me.

    Immediately I said, “Let me see!”  He showed me the picture, and without another thought I said, “Oh, my nose is too big!”

    In that moment John stopped and looked at me dead in the face. 

    “Don’t say that”, he said with a firm tone without even blinking.

    It was as if I had offended him.  Something that he saw beauty in I was degrading.

    I couldn’t help but feel my spirit being pricked.  That is what God must feel when I say degrading things about His creation.  Every time I say something negative about myself, He must look at me and think, “Don’t say that.”  It’s literally taking a masterpiece that He, God, created and finding fault in it.  How could there be anything faulty about something God created?

    John’s simple comment helped me to remember that even though I see imperfections, God sees a masterpiece, and a nose that is perfectly sized just the way He designed it to be.

  • Souls on Board

    Tonight John and I were watching the national news.  There was a report about a plane who had to make an emergency landing.  As the pilot communicated to the air traffic controller he said, “We are declaring an emergency . . . 106 souls on board.”
     
    As I heard these words I remembered watching another news report fairly recently, and they used the phrase “souls on board”.  
     
    I remember thinking how odd those words sounded coming from a news report and yet so very beautiful.
     
    We don’t usually hear the word soul used unless we are talking about religion or God or death.  But I thought it was beautiful that the pilots recognized what C.S. Lewis famously explained,
     
    “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”
     
    I have tried before to go throughout my day viewing every person I come in contact with as a soul.  I walked in the grocery store and instead of seeing a bunch of bodies walking around I saw transparency – souls who were transparent.  They were a lot deeper.  There was a lot more to them.  They had a past and hurts.  They had hope and a future.
     
    Seeing souls showed me their worth.
     
    Times when I have imagined bodies in this way, I feel more patient, more empathatic, more loving.  I’m not in a hurry to get my way or be first in line.  For a second, I have a tiny, very tiny, glimpse of how God sees them and how God sees all of the souls on board that He loves so dearly.

  • Etched on My Heart

    It’s that time of month again . . . time to choose another scripture verse to memorize.

    Since January I have been following Beth Moore’s Siesta Scripture Memory Team.  On the first and fifteenth of each month I choose a new Bible verse to memorize.  I have tried to come up with ingenious ways to have the verses accessible to me at all times no matter where I am in the house or for that matter no matter where I am anywhere.

    I tape each verse to my bathroom mirror.  I make a little card and prop each one up on the dining room table. I write them in a spiral bound notebook.  And I even have and app for them on my phone!  All in hopes of actually memorizing them!  Better yet be able to recall them in those tough situations when I think to myself, “If only I knew a Bible verse that would help me right now!” or “What was that verse again?”  And what would top all of it would have the ability to know it, recall it, and actually use it in a conversation with someone as encouragement or witnessing!

    But it’s not as easy as I thought.

    I can memorize them for a time and say them back to my husband on the last day of the month, but why do I have such a hard time etching them on my heart?  I know God gets a lot of joy knowing that I’m seeking to know more about Him.  I know it’s His deepest desire for me to learn all that I can about Him. 

    “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” Deuteronomy 11:18

    So why can’t I memorize it, apply it, and teach it?

    I began asking myself, “What is etched on my heart now that might be keeping me for learning God’s Word?”

    Well, I love knowing things.  I love knowing things that others don’t know.  I love the recognition that comes with that, and I love it even better when I can prove someone wrong.

    What is etched on my heart? 

    Pride.

    The one thing I struggle with the most, and the one thing that will make me unusable to God.

    “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Matthew 6:1

    In order for God to gift me with the ability to learn His Word thoroughly, He has to know that I know it all comes from Him: my mind, my working memory, His Living Word, opportunites.  How dare I even think of taking the credit!

    “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”
    Romans 11:35