Sleepless in New York

I  was at a great workshop on stress relief. I was doing well until the presenter got to the part where she told us to "just Rest in God". Now, that's an expression I've heard a thousand times. Heck, I've used it a thousand times. This time around I could stay silent no longer. At least not before God. There are bills to be paid, a drop in income, unexpected circumstances... I said to Him at the top of my "inside my head" voice, "What exactly does this mean??!! Rest? I am an active, take charge person. I fix. I worry. How do I 'rest' in You?!"

Very quietly, in that still, small voice, I heard: "Watch what I do". The immediate response of my heart was ‘I can do that! I can watch You!’

It's like giving a child the spoon to lick while you bake the cake. Is God the best parent or what?

 I can passively rest while actively watching.

Watching, for me, means searching for clues in my everyday life with a spirit of anticipation. Staying attentive to all the subtle ways God may be moving the chess pieces into place. To look without putting my hands in the pot. 

Paul says in Romans 8 'For if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.' (v.25) 

The Israelites, during their exodus from Egypt, were not only chided for their lack of belief; one whole generation died in the wilderness, their bodies attesting to the value God puts on our faith. We are then encouraged by the writer of Hebrews to enter into the Sabbath rest offered only in Christ. Even with the Red Sea to the front and the Egyptian chariots on your back.

...for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from their works just as God did from His. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience. - Hebrews 4:10-12 

Teach me how to enter into your rest by trusting you to the degree that resting becomes as effortless as breathing. I love You, Papa God. Amen

I Will Wait for You - Jason Upton

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Loving while blind - Part 1

I remember early on during my Christian walk feeling led, like Abraham, to leave everything I knew that was safe and familiar. To leave the comfort zones of my old fall backs and defenses. To leave the comfort zones of control, of respectability, of success in the eyes of men (and women). 

To leave the comfort zone of - warning: sacred cow ahead - the "happily ever after" I had promised myself that my life would become. I even had a vision once where an eagle with a satchel strapped to its belly carried away my hopes and dreams. It felt as cruel as when the Wizard of Oz stranded Dorothy on the dock as he floated back to Kansas on a Hot Air balloon.

God paradoxically blindfolds us and then tells us to "walk". Our walk of faith is one of those things that leads us down such narrow passages that the luggage we are carrying won't fit. Sometimes that "luggage" is our own hopes, dreams and plans for our life.

Strangely, that vision about the eagle with my hopes and dreams was from God; the same God who sent Abraham off to an unknown journey. The same God who let the Israelites be boxed in with the sea on one side and Egyptian chariots on the other. The same God who told Peter how he would be martyred and then said, "Follow me".

We are challenged to believe, to walk and keep on believing and walking and loving while blindfolded. Our role model Jesus entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 1 Peter 2:23

Life challenges me constantly to choose trust- will I love God even before I get an answer to my prayer? Will I love and follow Him even if I never get an answer? My loved one's never healed? The relationship stays broken?  If the money doesn't come? Sometimes I choose trust, sometimes fear.

In Hannah Hurnard's book Hinds Feet on High Places, the main character, “Much Afraid” (feel familiar?) is given a seed of faith and love that is put into her heart. It’s razor sharp and hurts going in but as she continues down her unknown path, that same seed grows and blooms within her to a mature love and faith.

That is what this is all about. Growing. Releasing our own plans for the outcome into His trustworthy hands. Easy? Not hardly.

But remember: when Dorothy's "hope" was carried away by the Wizard, she was shown that the power - [Holy Spirit power] - to guide her way was within her all along. 

For we walk by faith and not by sight.   2 Corinthians 5:7 NASB

What darkened road are you feeling led down today? What dream feels like it's being snatched from your hands?  Will you trust and love Him as you keep on walking?

Free Falling

There is a beauty in the free fall. 

I so often dream that I can fly at will. I finally mastered my childhood wish after many decades of dreaming about it: I just think "flight", set my sights heavenward and up I go. It takes a little effort but after logging at least 15 years of air time in my flight journal, I've gotten really good at it. 

At least I thought I'd mastered it until one recent dream where I was poised on a building ledge ready to take my leap upward  and realized I had no lift-off. In fact, I started to panic realizing my tricks weren't working. I finally remembered God and I said, "Father, would you please lift me?" At those simple words I was lifted by a pair of unseen hands and carried over a grassy vista. What a different sensation that was - being carried - from flying on my own. (Yes, I am still talking about flying without a craft!)

To be carried by God was far superior to my striving to leap. The difference? Admitting my helplessness. Losing control.  To admit my absolute helplessness is terrifying at first, but liberating once I get over myself.

What does it mean to stop striving at things - even things we have heretofore done well - and entrust oneself to God? To do the unthinkable when the world and our own logic tells us that If it is to Be it's up to Me?

"Father, would you please provide for me?" "Father, would you please avenge this evil instead of me?"  "Father, would you please take these reins out of my hands?" "Father, if you don't make a way, there is no way".

"Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done," said Jesus when faced with the cross. Just before breathing His last He said, "Father, Into your hands I commit my Spirit". What a horrific circumstance in which to yield to a pair of unseen hands! Yet in His perfected humanity, He did it. In our pitiful state - in my pitiful state - how can we do anything less?

The Day the Manna Stopped

For 40 years of wilderness wandering God provided a miraculous supply of heavenly bread, the Israelite's  clothing and shoes magically never wore out; they probably grew right along with their bodies. Water came from a rock, quail fell from the sky...

Then they got to where they were going and it all stopped. I don't know why but this struck me the other day. I know there was something more to this account in scripture than what I've read or heard taught from a pulpit. The Apostle Paul said, "For the spiritual did not come first, but the natural. After that the spiritual". So there was a literal meaning then, but a spiritual principle remains.

I ask: Lord, why did the Manna stop? What principle do you wish to speak to me and to us at this moment in time about the end of the rain of this miracle bread?

As He so often does, the Lord answers me even as I write this and ponder. His answer is:
"What happens when the blessings stop reveals your heart"   Wow, Lord.

Now, I know that in the biblical account the manna, quail and water-from-rock stopped ostensibly because, now, in the land "overflowing with milk and honey" the children of Israel would be able to sustain themselves agriculturally. But in our lives today and mine in particular, I can be riding a wave of blessings in various parts of my life and then hit a brick wall: relationships strain, bills pile up, illnesses threaten. I am haunted thinking about His words, "What happens when the blessings stop reveals your heart".

If God was good yesterday, is He suddenly bad today when I got the medical report? If God was almighty last week, was He weak this week when I suffered from depression?Will I be faithful even if it appears that God has left me?

Perhaps what seems like a cruel twist of fate is the continual proving process of growing us up: Yes, says the Lord. You are dependent on me as a sucking child. Now I am withdrawing the easy milk so that you have to secure it for yourself. Now you have to learn to live with hunger pains and thirst for the first time and learn that though it may tarry, your supply will come and your supply is Me.

Jesus said that He was, in fact, the spiritual manna from heaven. Scripture also says that even the rock from which supernatural water flowed was Christ. Perhaps it takes times of famine to make us cling to His every word and search the desert for His water of life. Maybe the desert mirage that makes us believe that the blessing was in the financial security, the marriage or the achievement is finally exposed when only the true blessing is left.

When the manna seems to end, I can comfort myself in these words of God's faithfulness: He humbles you, causing you to hunger and then feeds you...(Deuteronomy 8:3) 
Your next meal will come.