“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!

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!

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!

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.

Psalm 43:5

Why am I discouraged? Why so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again– my Savior and my God!

I know that my husband is really feeling discouraged right now.  His job is chewing him up and spitting him out mercilessly.  He’s frustrated with it and is finding it difficult to work so hard every day without any appreciation or hope of added compensation or promotion.  And I totally feel for him.  Teaching is a thankless job where you work really hard with students (teens, in my case) who may or may not want to be there (and most of whom think what is being taught is pointless and stupid) and usually end up with a tiny salary and all the blame when students aren’t as successful as the state thinks they should be.  End of rant.

I know the feeling of frustration.  We’re in a position where our choices are incredibly limited.  We don’t know what to do to get out of the mud we’re in, and it seems every time a vine lands close to the pit, it snaps just as we begin to pull free, landing us right back where we started.

Faith tells me that God has a plan, even in this, and that He can work miracles because He has resources that we know nothing about.  Faith tells me to keep trusting Him because He can work all this together for good.  Faith also tells me that God is glorified in my weakness and that He is my strength when things are so tough and it’s hard to stand.

My mind and the rest of me doesn’t always agree.

But what else can I do?  When there’s nothing left to do except trust that this isn’t all there is and this isn’t the best there is, it all comes down to faith and what I believe about the God who made me and loves me.  Some days that’s easy.  Some days that’s hard.  I choose to believe that every day is one step closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.

Psalm 42:11

Why am I discouraged? Why so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again– my Savior and my God!

It’s kind of strange how it’s so easy to get discouraged.  Maybe it’s the weather (it’s stormy this morning).  Maybe there are just so many people who feel the need to poke holes in my dreams (some of the holes are quite legitimate).   This school project I’m working on is so huge that sometimes it seems overwhelmingly impossible that it will ever get off the ground.  But, God is bigger than my storms and bigger than all my limitations.  He is wiser than I am and knows far more than I do about what resources He has available.  When I get discouraged I try to remember that God is not always predictable because then why would I need faith?  It’s hard to cling to something invisible, especially when I’m trusting Him for something that’s so dear to my heart.  On the other hand, what other choices do I have?  I can’t trust in my own abilities, even though I want to work as hard as I can.  There’s so much I don’t know.  Trust other people?  They’re just as limited as I am.  Sure, God can work through them and through me, and He often does, but ultimately the answer will come from Him and His resources.

Psalm 11:4

But the LORD is in his holy Temple; the LORD still rules from heaven. He watches everything closely, examining everyone on earth.

In teaching American Literature I’ve learned that there is a mindset that believes that God made the earth and then just left it to run itself – the “Clockmaker God.  But this verse clearly disputed that belief.   The Rationalists during the Colonial times didn’t see God at work around them and dismissed the Puritan notion that God could be seen in and through every event in life.  They came from  Puritan roots, but either didn’t read or didn’t believe in the Bible.  Maybe Psalms weren’t part of their Bible.  If they had read more carefully, they would have noticed that God is closely involved in activity throughout the Bible.  I don’t think He would have had such a hand in Biblical times and then just bowed out once He got to the 1700s.  But, there again we see the limits of man’s rationality and logic.  We build arguments of straw on foundations of sand.

Personally, I like to think that God is still at work around me.  There’s sense of relief to know that I don’t control everything.  Sure, I have a hand in my life and in my world because God gave me choice and free will, but the world isn’t operating purely on its own.  It’s easy to feel like God’s not there though, sometimes.  It’s especially challenging to see Him at work in our nation today.  There are so many things that are contrary to His will and His desires that it’s hard to imagine how He could be in that and allow that.  But I suppose that since He gives free will, He also allows the consequences of our decisions.  And He’s totally capable of stepping in at any point and stopping the play clock.