WINDS OF CHANGE

Colorado tends to shift seasons quickly so this fall has been a pleasant surprise. The leaves fell and there was time to rake them into big piles for the kids to leap into prior to the next snow. The colors have been bright and vibrant, the weather unpredictable, and the hand of the creator has been unmistakable, whether in the brilliant sunshine or the fluffy snowflakes. God beckons to me in these moments and leads me to embrace the transitory existence that exemplifies the change of seasons.

This year, God seems to be talking to me in the fall moments. For the first time in many years, I am seeing the vibrant life in the harvest season. The leaves have turned brilliant hues of red and gold while the fiery sunsets have been filled with startling pinks and purples. The other night, I awoke to the howling of the wind. I could hear it shaking the house and whistling between the fence posts outside. And it seemed like God was saying, rise up and use the winds, set your sails, spread your wings to ride the winds of change to the new place I am taking you. It reminded me of the verse in Isaiah (40:31) where we are told to ‘rise up on wings as eagles’.

A few weeks ago, a word was given I church about Joseph in the pit and the caravan having been sent two months before. It was a clear word of much needed encouragement. A few days later, God started talking to me about the pit. Joseph would not have considered going in the caravan if he had not been thrown into the pit. Joseph had been content in his old life, despite the harassment of his brothers. If the brothers had not thrown Joseph into the pit, he probably would have continued to live in Hebron with his father. Yet God sent a caravan, and what his brothers meant for ill, God turned to good.

Joseph ended up in Egypt, honorably serving God. The bible says everything he undertook was successful because God was with him. Yet Joseph would not have chosen this path of his own volition. He would probably have never considered leaving home and going to Egypt. Nor would he have chosen to work for Pharoah’s commander of the guard. Yet there he was, bringing blessing to all he undertook. Yet even in behaving honorably with Potiphar’s wife, he ended up being thrown in jail. Another transition. But Yahweh was with Joseph and he found favor with the chief jailer. Eventually Joseph found favor with Pharoah, becoming his second in command.

What struck me was if Joseph had never been thrown in jail, he would have never had an opportunity to become such an influential force in Egypt. And if he had never been thrown into the pit, he would have never made it into Egypt in the first place. I can’t imagine Joseph was thrilled about being thrown into the pit – there was no water; and I am sure being sold into slavery did not feel like the favor of God was upon him, yet these challenges helped lay the foundation for greater purposes. Joseph needed to let go of the past and embrace the new so he could be present with God in the new place. He needed to be present in the moment with God in Potiphar’s house and in doing so, he brought blessing to himself and others. If he had spent the time bemoaning his fate and wishing to return home, he would not have been engaged with what God was doing in the present. God made sure Joseph knew the door to returning home was closed so he could move forward and stay engaged with God in the moment. When Joseph was thrown in jail, another door to a past life was closed, and in the transition time, Joseph continued to focus on God and live in the present. He blessed those in jail with him, which eventually led to his visit with Pharoah, and his opportunity to save Egypt and his relatives from a devastating famine.

All of which sounds great as a story. Yet in a place where all that seems familiar has been shaken and changed, I recognize the challenge of letting go of my expectations and allowing God to lead me to the next step. God has been about removing old places, people, jobs, and preparing for something new. The wind is starting to blow and God is bringing new things. Yet He does not seem anxious to share the big picture. In looking at the life of Joseph, I wonder if maybe we are in one of those transition moments where it is all about relying on God to guide the way as we would never get there on our own. So the question I hear in the wind goes something like – Will you trust me with the next step? Change is coming; good things are on the horizon. We have needed a season to release our hold on the things of the past and old comfort zones so we can embrace the new life God is walking us into. Yet, it requires us to keep our eyes on Him and to trust Him for the moment-by -moment directions. The big picture is too big for us to see from here and that is good news! My prayer as we approach this Thanksgiving is that we will all have the faith to mount up with wings as eagles to ride the new currents to God’s highest heights.

Temptation

Jaima's got a great article on temptation posted on her Blog.  Check it out.  A great read.

Temptation

TRUST

            Sometimes we encounter a season in our walk with God where He seems present yet our circumstances don't appear to reflect that presence.  This is where the rubber meets the road and the question God asks is "Do you trust me?"  It can be hard to trust God when a friend dies unexpectedly, you lose your job due to budget cuts, your child gets inexplicably hurt, or your savings disappear in a stock market crash or bank collapse.  All of these things are out of our control and they remove any illusion you have control.  Suppose all those events happen to you within the span of a few months.  Where do you go with your questions? 

            God whispers, "Do you trust me?"  Trusting God is not merely acknowledging Him to be God despite our circumstances.  He calls us into so much more.  He wants us to run to Him with our questions, our confusion, our concerns, and still trust His heart towards us.  When a number of things have not gone as you had hoped and you go through a season of loss, where do you go to get answers?  We can talk to friends and spouses and receive encouragement and support but not necessarily answers.  When Job talked with his friends, they lectured him and said he must have done something to either open the door to calamity or deserve God's punishment.  Yet that was not the case.  God was working something new in Job and for His kingdom.  Numerous prophets in the Old Testament did exactly what God told them yet ended up thrown in prison or exile.  The apostle Paul went from prison to shipwreck to prison.  Are we to believe those instances are some kind of judgment from God against Paul?

I think not.  Instead, these stories detail how God allows challenges to build something more powerful and more significant in the believer.  He continues to use seasons of delay, loss, and discouragement to perfect His purposes.  In such a season, we are forced to reconcile our false notions of Christianity with reality.  Do we think being a Christian will assure us of an easy life?  Let's examine that thought - did any of the followers of Jesus really live an easy life?  They were stoned, jailed, crucified, persecuted, and hunted.  Who would want that kind of life?  Do we believe that if we are Christians everyone will like us?  The Apostle Paul could not even get along with his own disciples, sending at least one to serve with others and having several quit altogether.  Do we believe everything we lay our hands to will be blessed and we will reap riches just because we are believers?  Jesus called the rich young ruler to sell everything he owned and follow Him.  Despite calling people to a harder life, Christianity spread like a wildfire even while those spreading the message met horrible fates.  Why?

Because God was at work – for His kingdom and on behalf of His believers.  Old thought systems and strongholds were being torn down so a new system of life could be established.  Could it be possible God uses the same principles with us when we encounter hardship?  When in the pressed places, we can more easily recognize our brokenness.  It also becomes apparent our efforts are insufficient.  We need God to work on our behalf and we more readily grant Him access.  The challenge now, as then, is to recognize what forces are truly at work.  When bad things happen for reasons out of our control, our first enemy is fear.  We recognize control is an illusion and where do we turn?  Do we turn to God?  That is the first step of faith.  God whispers, "Do you really trust me?"  The next relates to whether we choose to acknowledge God is in charge of our circumstances or if we will fall back on our own understanding.  We say we want to walk out on the water like Peter yet many times, like Peter, we fall back on our own understanding and start to sink in the waves.  We must choose to keep our focus on God or our circumstances.  Fear prowls nearby and growls at our uncertainty.  Who will be God here?  My own finite understanding or will I loose God to move beyond my limited perceptions?  Again, God asks us, "Do you trust me?"  And the question goes to the very heart of the matter.  Do we REALLY trust God?  Do we trust God to do better than what we ask for?  Will we really go where He leads or do we want Him to respond in the manner we want and refuse to listen to anything else?  When the answer to a healing prayer is 'no', do we still trust God?

The fundamental question God comes to us with is – "Do you trust me?"  In our pressed places, we have the opportunity to allow God to reveal and free us from false perceptions and remove strongholds.  We simply need to choose who will be God here, - God, fear, or our own understanding.  Make no mistake, one of them will rule in this land.  Fear will assail you repeatedly to keep you from moving forward in the plans God has for you.  Our own flesh will rise up and insist on rational plans for escape from the pressed place.  And God will whisper, "Do you trust me?"  The whole process is about freeing us to move into the new land.  Remember Joshua and Caleb who focused not on the giants in the Promised Land but on what God said.  To move into the Promised Land, we have to surrender our earthly perceptions and choose to align ourselves with God more closely.  Many times we want the promises of God but refuse to go through the transforming faith walk.  The Promised Land is out there but we can only occupy the new place by trusting God.

So when God whispers, "Do you trust me?" He is really calling us into battle.  The battle over faith and over the heart of God.  Will I walk on in faith, trusting God's plan, despite what the circumstances scream?  Will I give in to fear or move forward in spite of it?  Shakespeare sums up the battle well in the play Henry V – "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more …"

Keys to successful travailing-

1.                                Recognize the limitations of our own understanding and do not rely on it. 

2.                                Make NO negative agreements about anyone else's motivations or the state of their hearts – particularly towards you.

3.                                Do not dwell on the past.  Focus on the next step in front of you.

4.                                Spend more time in worship and reading the Bible than normal.

5.                                Listen for similar messages from different sources to see if God is trying to say something.

6.                                When fear comes, and it will, choose to set aside your emotions for the time being and re-approach the subject when you can re-focus back on God.

7.                                It is okay to grieve what has been lost but not to dwell on the 'what ifs' or 'if only's'.

8.                                Choose to believe God is for you and He is working on your behalf regardless of how things look or feel.

Questions:

1.              Take yourself to a time when things were out of control in your life and you were unhappy.  What kinds of questions went through your mind? Did you get any answers?  If so, what were they?

2.              How do you reconcile the fact that many of Jesus' disciples met untimely ends?  What expectations do you have for what life, as a Christian should look like?

3.              Do you trust God's heart toward you?  Why or why not?

4.              Can you remember a time in the past when the future looked bleak yet everything turned out well?  What happened?  Do you see God's hand in that process?

5.              Has your life progressed as you expected?  Have there been any unexpected events?  If so, were they good or bad?  In looking back, can you see if God was there?

What are you carrying?

And they carried the ark of God in a new cart out of the house of Abinadab: and Uzza and Ahio drave the cart. And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels, and with cymbals, and with trumpets. And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God. – 1^st Chronicles 13:7-10

It’s tragic that Uzza died in this episode. He had lived with the ark for 20 years with his father Abinidab, and he and Ahio were clearly familiar with it. It seems odd that he would be punished because he was simply trying to help when he thought the Ark might fall. But perhaps the real question in this story is “why did the Oxen stumble?”

These oxen could easily pull the Ark itself. The Philistines sent the ark, along with golden offerings, back to Israel on a cart being pulled by milk cows. The cart could also easily carry such a load as the Ark. David made sure to build a NEW cart to carry the Ark back and it’s not unreasonable to assume that David had engineers who were capable of designing a cart that could carry the weight of the Ark.

It’s quite simple to design a vehicle to carry any specific item, but it’s quite hard when you aren’t sure of the weights the item itself will contain. But we often forget that while the ark was being moved, Israel as a nation was busy bringing praise to the Lord. Psalms 2 points out God is enthroned on the praises of his people, which means it’s very likely the Glory of God was seated on the Ark while it was being moved. And so, even though the Oxen could easily pull the Ark alone, it’s very likely they were unable to pull what the Ark carried during this trek, that being the Glory of God.

Oxen are not designed to carry such a load, and as a result, they strained to pull the ark and inevitably stumbled. This led to Uzza’s death. It’s not a matter of strength; it’s a matter of design. It’s a well-known fact that if you try to carry or pull a weight with a vehicle that’s not designed to carry that weight, you create a dangerous and often deadly situation. If you doubt this, just try to pull 10,000lb boat behind a 67 Volkswagen and see how comfortable you feel driving that car. The Volkswagen CAN get it moving, but it’s not designed to pull that load.

The charge of carrying the Ark and the rest of the holy utensils was given to the family of Kohath, of the tribe of Levi (Numbers 4). In other words, it is the Priests of God that are ordained and designed to carry the Glory of God. When Uzza died, David had the Ark carried into Obed-Edom’s house, and a month later, David had it carried by the priests all the way to Jerusalem and both of these transfers happened without incident.

Through Christ, this charge is now extended to not just the Levites, but to each and every one of us. As a Christian you are also ordained as a Priest of the Most High, and you can carry the Glory of God with you everywhere you go.

Man is the only creature designed to carry the Glory of God, and in fact it’s the only thing that God asks us to carry. He tells us to ‘lay our burdens down’, not to pick them up. But too often, we pick up burdens we are not designed to carry, and as a result, we create dangerous situations either for ourselves or for those around us; who, trying to help, might end up like Uzza when we stumble. If we are carrying a load we are not designed to carry, it is inevitable that we will stumble at some point. But if we carry the load we are designed to carry, we find that his ‘yoke is easy and his burden is light’. It’s not easy because it’s small and puny in size and weight; it’s easy because we were designed to carry it.

Our duty in life is not to try to ‘resolve’ or ‘manage’ the situations we find ourselves in, but rather to carry the Glory of God into those situations. Then God, not us, can bring His purposes and His resolutions to the situations we find ourselves in. Our questions that we ask of God need to change from “God how do I fix this?” to “God how do I bring your Glory into this place?”

Questions to ponder

1. What are you carrying that you are not supposed to carry? Do you find it hard to put it down? Why?
2. Do you think to bring the Glory of God into your situations? Why or why Not?
3. Do you try to bring your own strength to your situations? How’s that working for you?
4. How comfortable are you with God dealing with your situations ‘His way’ instead of ‘your way?’ Why?
5. Do you sense the presence of God in your daily life working on your behalf on the issues before you? How does that make you feel?

So the question is.. Which is the Superhero?

Sent from my blackberry

The Dire Straits

As I write this we are nearing the end of a period of mourning for traditional Hebrews. Every year, there is a 3-week period designated as time of mourning over the destruction of the Holy Temple. The 3 weeks that began on July 9, 2009 (or Tammuz 17 in the Hebrew calendar) and ends on 30 July (Av 9) contain the anniversaries of tragic events in history. Here are just a few of the events that happen during this period.

Tammuz 17

• This is the day Moses smashed the tablets of the covenant because of the Golden calf
• This is the day that temple services were stopped when the Babylonians invaded Jerusalem in 423BC
• This is the day that the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans in 69AD

Av 9

• This is the date Solomon’s temple was burned in 423BC
• This is the date of the destruction of the temple in 69AD
• This is the day that God decreed that the Exodus generation would die because they wouldn’t enter the Holy Land out of fear of the giants that lived there.

For Hebrews this is traditionally a period of fasting and contemplation. There are no weddings, or other joyous events during this period. The weekly readings are from the prophets focusing on sins, penalties, and repentance. They also read from Lamentations, which is where one of the names of these 3 weeks comes from: "Bein haMetzarim" ("Between the straits", from Lamentations 1:3 "All her persecutors overtake her between the dire straits.”)

The purpose of all this is to learn from the mistakes of the past. A key element in all of these tragedies is that they all came from people deciding to put their faith in something other than God. The calf was made because they thought God had forsaken them. The spies put faith in themselves, not God, and so they realized they could not defeat the giants in the Holy Lands.And the temples were destroyed because Israel had chosen to put their faith in other gods, idols, or themselves at various times.

It was not God’s desire that these things happened. On the contrary, this SHOULD have been a great time of celebration and blessings from God. God brought his people to their dire straits and asked them to choose to trust Him. If they had chosen differently, these would be stories of victory and celebration not tragedy.

God is asking us every day to choose.

Do we put our trust in HIM? Or in something else?

It’s easy to trust the things in front of us. They are readily there and the enemy points to them and says, “you can trust this.” Haven’t you ever felt a draw that you could put your faith in something other than God? Your job? A friend? Your spouse? Your money? Or worst of all… yourself?

The Bible clearly teaches us that our trust MUST be in God. People and things will let us down eventually. I can enjoy, and put SOME trust in other people or things, but I have to temper that. I might lose my job. My friends might move away or have their own failings. My money might run out. My spouse might have a hard time, or even die. And eventually, my own strength will run out.But we CAN trust in God through everything. He does NOT fail. He does NOT grow weak. He will NOT forsake you. No matter what you are going through, God is bigger than the giant in front of you.

But he does want to know if we will CHOOSE to trust in Him, or in something else.

That is the purpose of dire straits… to find the answer to that key question.

We all have our giants before us, and they are scary and dangerous. But God promises that He is bigger than our problems, and that He will deliver us through it. And God is always right.

Our fear is that our giants are going to stop us, but the dire strait is not a roadblock designed to hinder us. On the contrary, it is to focus us back to God. It is a mechanism for increased productivity. Hydraulic power plants, rockets and garden hoses employ the same techniques to squeeze a greater degree of power and velocity from the element they constrain. In the same way, we are pressed to create a greater degree of power within us. Assuming we trust God and we choose to go through the narrow space God has prepared for us, we can obtain that power. If we choose to not trust Him, we lose that opportunity to advance, and have to live with the consequences.

In these times we can feel the pressing of our problems and fear that we might repeat mistakes of the past. Instead, this should be a time to rejoice and refocus our faith in God and his promises to us. We rejoice because God is trying to press us through to a great victory. We get that victory if we focus on Him. That is God’s plan for us in this time. God’s plan is to redeem all of our past mistakes and crush our giants.

This is why many Hebrew sages say that the Messiah’s birthday should be 9 Av.

That’s right! If they are right, the same day the temple was destroyed is the day that the Messiah was born.

Merry Christmas!

A word from Chuck Pierce that came to me on 3 July and started me on this study: "A new corridor is forming and I will narrow your way. You must narrow your desires. I am sanctifying desires and narrowing the corridor through which you will walk. You are entering into new alignments and assignments, and coming into a place that will bring you forth into a realm you have not known. You will come from a dark place into light, but the corridor that you have been in is beginning to narrow to push you through into the new.”

Questions to Ponder:

1. How are you being pressed at this time? Can you identify your giants?
2. Can you think of a situation when you put your faith in something other than God? What happened?
3. What burdens might God be asking you to lay down during this season? As you make this list ask yourself how you feel about laying these things down. Is it easy or hard? What is making it easy and/or hard?
4. Are you able to see God working in this pressed place? If so, what does that look like? If not, what is helping to sustain you?
5. Think back to a period of pain and destruction in your life (like the destruction of the temple). Has God transformed those times of mourning into times of restoration and redemption? If the answer is no, do you trust God to make that change?