“Then you will delight yourself in Adonai, and He will give you your heart’s desire. Commit your way to Adonai; trust in Him and He will act.” Psalm 37:4-6 There are two verbs here that stuck out to me: give and act. They have something in common. Neither have anything to do with me! My usual thought is to ask God, pray about something, and then do something, maybe “helping” it get going. I give the situation to God, and then I act, assuming that I’m doing what He wants me to do. But these verses are pretty clear. HE gives and HE acts. All the action that involves doing is done by Adonai, not me. So what am I supposed to do? Sit there? Well, yes, sort of. I have to delight in Him (trust, settle in the place He puts me, and feed on His faithfulness), and I have to commit my way to Him. I have to believe and trust. Trust is inaction in action. I can believe and then do nothing about it, acting contrary to my “beliefs,” but trust implies that I act on my trust (or in this case, not acting, but rather waiting an allowing Him to act, which I believe will be a good thing because I delight in Him and He loves me). Once again, my actions are unnecessary. God does the acting. God does the giving. I don’ t need to “help” Him. I just have to release control, let it go, and find joy in the One who loves me with a passion that is unfathomable! And that is amazing!
I was reading yesterday and today, and both days I noticed something interesting (and profound, for me). In Number 1:5, YHWH tells Moshe (Moses) “These are the men to take with you: …” He then proceeds to name specifically each of the men that He wants. What’s the big deal? He knows them by name! For some reason this hit a little deeper today. There are hundreds of thousands of Israelites, and YHWH knew exactly which ones He wanted to go with Moshe! He didn’t say vaguely, “Take with you the leaders of the clans.” No, He called them out by name. The people of Israel weren’t just nameless masses to Him. And we aren’t either. There may be billions of people on this planet, but Yeshua and YHHW know me by name and He doesn’t just call out for that woman in that state who does… He calls me Amanda. And that is amazing! The second part of that is in Numbers 4:32. YHWH told Moshe to assign each specific person (each person by name) a load. YHWH knows our names, and He has specific tasks or loads for us to carry out. I think that is awesome! It’s so easy to think of YHWH as so big that He can’t possibly know all the little details. Those things He must surely delegate to others. But, no! Even the details like giving us a task by name are His choices and His desires for us! Hallelujah!
Jeremiah 29:11 is probably one of the most quoted verses in scripture. It’s the one about the plans God has for us…. remember? It used to be that I figured I had messed up the best plan royally by now, but looking back (remembering) the way God worked with people like Abraham or Jacob who messed up constantly made me realize that just because I mess up it doesn’t mean that God’s plans don’t happen. And then I began to see that it’s not so much the plan as it is the goal – to be more like Yeshua. It’s so easy for me to have a laundry-list of things I want God to do (my plans). I think part of the process is learning to remember that His way is ultimately better (for the overall goal of restoring the world, not always for me)… and being willing to submit to it. Anyway, my thoughts seem oddly jumbled this morning. Skip Moen wrote an interesting post about this verse today, and I highly recommend reading it. It’s got some really interesting points about God’s plan and our tendency to put God in a box. Read it here. >>>
Abraham. We think of him as the “Father of Faith”. A righteous man. A man after God’s heart. A man to whom was promised a nation. A father who trusted God so completely that he was willing to sacrifice his son. Thinking of Abraham this way is kind of dangerous. It paints a picture of a saint who did everything right. He blindly followed God out of his homeland. He was willing to give up Isaac because God asked him to. It’s so easy to picture him in the desert staring at the skies while God promises to make him into a great nation. It makes me believe that God used him because he was a righteous man. But Abraham has another lesson that I learned today. I was reading an article by Skip Moen (oh, stop your groaning). It was about faith and it talked about Abraham. But about half way through it I was struck by the realization that my thinking was completely wrong in this area. It has nothing to do with words or interpretation. It has everything to do with perfection. I’ve always thought (whether consciously or not) that since I’ve made so many mistakes in my life that God must be on his second or third best plan for my life. When I made those big mistakes and those things happened way back right after college, it must have derailed whatever plan He had for me so that now I’m off course and headed to the next best thing. I can’t receive His perfect promised plan because I’ve made so many mistakes. Does anyone else feel that way? And then I remember the rest of Abraham’s life (thanks to the article). He didn’t trust God, so he told Pharoah that his wife was his sister. Twice. He agreed to sleep with another woman in order to “help” God accomplish His plan. He stood by and let Sarah send his son off into the desert to die. Abraham made a lot of mistakes. And they were some pretty big mistakes. But here’s the part that is amazing to me: No matter what mistake Abraham made, God’s promise to him never changed. When Abraham let Pharoah try to marry his wife, God didn’t say, “Oh well, too bad for you. You don’t get my promise anymore. You messed that up so you’ll have to have something else.” When Abraham said yes to sleeping with Hagar to try and get her pregnant, God didn’t roll his eyes and sigh, “Abe, you’re on plan three now. Keep messing up and you won’t get anything good!” Even when Abraham made some huge mistakes (like me), God continued to bless him and kept His promise to him by giving him Isaac when Sarah was 90-years-old! So, it suddenly hit me that even though I’ve made mistakes (okay, lots of mistakes), that doesn’t mean that God has chucked His original plans for me into the trash. My mistakes don’t mess up God’s plans. Sure, they create a lot of extra baggage that I have to lug around on my trip (or really, I give it to God to lug around, but since He’s so big it’s not very heavy for Him). But they don’t stop God in His tracks and divert me to plan B or plan C. My mistakes don’t surprise God either. He knew me before He made me. He loved me before He made me. He loved me before time began, before there was light or dark, and before He even started creation. A few (albeit large) mistakes don’t throw Him off, don’t disappoint Him so much that He takes away the perfect plan He has for me. I’m going to say it again, in case you didn’t get it: My mistakes don’t mess up God’s plan. He doesn’t take away the promise just because I sin. I have consequences for my actions that affect my life, for sure. But just like Abraham became the father of the nation Israel, despite his rather large mistakes, God will continue to work my life for His glory into whatever His BEST (not second or third best) plan always has been. And that’s REALLY awesome!
It all started when I wanted to see what Skip had written today. It turned out to the another in the “Answer” series. It was about sin and the use of color to describe our sins. It was interesting, so I followed the tags… And came here. This is a look at what sin really is, in light of the context of the verse. Interesting. But I kept reading… I read through an interesting look at what Peter meant when he spoke of a weaker vessel and came… HERE. This caught my attention. It’s a seemingly small thing, but the question at the end: What is it about planting and placing that is essential to the purposes of God? really made me stop. Skip reexamines a very familiar passage from the creation story, noting that Adam was placed in the garden by God. You read right past that, too, didn’t you? Sunday school and tradition teach that Adam was created in the garden… but the implications of this is that he was created somewhere else and put in the garden by God for a purpose. Wow. I clearly do not read the Bible nearly as carefully as I thought. If you want to really think, read the post (it’s not long, I promise) and then read through some of the comments (okay, these are long). This is a question that I hope Skip followed up on.
Psalm 16:8 I know the LORD is always with me. I will not be shaken, for he is right beside me. I feel pretty shaky a lot these days. Between proposed education bills that would base my livelihood on the motivation that my students have to strive to do better and congress pushing huge bills that push us closer to socialism than to republicanism, life seems rather turbulent. Things seem so up-in-the-air. Hope is working on funding, but it’s an arena I’ve never entered, and I feel at a loss during this stage. This verse reminds me that I’m not alone. God is always right beside me to be my strength, my guide, and my protection. I can stand tall and firm because He is there. I just have to remember that when I’m freaking out.
Psalm 105:19 Until the time came to fulfill his word, the LORD tested Joseph’s character. This entire Psalm is a historical account of how God kept His promise to Abraham and Jacob to give them the Promised Land. It all started when there were just one or two men who wandered around the countryside. And then God sent Joseph (he was kidnapped and sold into slavery, remember? No first class accommodations there!). God spent a long time testing Josephs’ character when Joseph was in jail for something he didn’t do. Those loooooooong periods of time when we feel like we’re trapped (imprisoned) by life might be those times when God is testing our character in preparation for the next period. If God had never humbled Joseph and taught him the lessons he learned in prison then he might have become a proud and contemptuous ruler instead of a wise and caring leader. I doubt it was fun being in prison though. Their prisons probably make our prisons look like the Ritz Carlton. Anyway, the rest of the song recounts how the Israelites grew in number until they were like the stars, fulfilling the promise made to Abraham. They were enslaved because the Egyptians grew afraid of their power and great numbers. In their oppression, they didn’t try to rebel (that we know of) and if God hadn’t sent Moses to stir the pot they may have continued in slavery there forever. But God was only half-way done. He turned the Egyptians against Israel and hardened Pharaoh’s heart. And then He led them out of slavery. One thing I noticed is that when they left, not only were they loaded down with silver and gold (the slaves became rich), but “there were no sick or feeble people among them (vs. 37).” That’s pretty remarkable considering the conditions they were probably living under. And God eventually fulfilled the second promise, the one He made to Jacob to give the people the Promised Land. He would have fulfilled that promise sooner, too, if the Israelites hadn’t been so stubborn and unruly… but that’s for another time. God’s promises don’t always get fulfilled immediately. Sometimes it takes a generation or more to see their completion… but just like with Abraham and Jacob, God keeps His word. Sometimes it just takes some testing of character to get it all started.