Then God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey.
Genesis 22:2-3a
You’ve heard me tell stories about my dog before; they are usually good stories but, alas, it is time for you to know that Rosie does have some flaws. One flaw—she doesn’t always listen. They say there is no such thing as a bad dog—just bad owners—and when it comes to instilling obedience into our dog, I’m afraid we may fall into the latter category.
Rosie listens pretty well—90% of the time. Usually when we let her out, she runs out, does her business, and when we call her, she comes racing toward us, jumps up onto the deck, slides halfway across, spins in place for a minute, then charges inside where she looks to us for a treat. But every once in a while, we will let her out and when we call her, she just looks at us. We can sound super excited; we can say “treat,” “breakfast,” “tennis ball”—in short, all of the magic words and do you know what she does? She lifts her nose in the air, takes three slow deliberate sniffs, her nose lifting a little higher with each sniff, then she tilts her head slightly sideways looking at us out of the corner of her eyes as if to say, “Make me.” Obviously we cannot do that because she’s a half acre away! It is times like this when I am usually running late that she starts acting up that I get some of my best praying in! “Lord, please just let her come. Please just let her listen.” You’ve probably had similarly panicked prayers,
Sometimes Rosie comes racing in. Other times, she turns her little furry tail towards me and races down to the neighbors—in the exact opposite direction from the house and I have to go running after her, and while dragging her back home, I am telling her how other dogs have to live outside all year round and if she doesn’t want that to happen to her .…
A while ago I was reading my Bible and it was the story of when Abraham took Isaac up on the mountain to be sacrificed. The Bible says that God told Abraham to sacrifice his son and Abraham got up the next morning and went. THE NEXT MORNING! Abraham knew what God was telling him to do. He didn’t procrastinate for three days “just to be sure” about what God was telling him. No. He got up and left. Right away.
There’s an old saying that delayed obedience isn’t obedience at all. Unfortunately, I think this means that my dog might not be obedient at all! What about us? How often do we hear the Holy Spirit’s prompting and we take time “just to be sure” when we know good and well what He is telling us.
I challenge you, the next time you hear the Holy Spirit prompting you to do something good, something that you just don’t want to do, that you not wait and instead act immediately. I think you will be glad that you did.
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I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land.
Exodus 23:28-30NIV
Last week I talked about how my cat, Jester, doesn’t just like to have enough food in his bowl—he likes to have plenty! And the same can be true with us and God, we don’t want him to give us just enough—we want plenty! But what happens when we ask him for plenty and aren’t ready to handle His bounty?
In Exodus 23:29 God is talking about bringing the Israelites into a new land and He promises that He will drive the people of that land out before the Israelites and the entire land will be theirs, but He will not drive them out all at once. He gave it to them little by little, testing them, seeing what they could handle, and then slowly releasing more to them. How often do we doubt His promises to provide for our needs and to bless us abundantly. I can think of times in my life when I have wanted to take matters into my own hands to try to produce plenty on my own rather than waiting on Him and His timing. I think we have all done this and, most likely, will do it again!
Remember Abraham, the father of many nations? Abraham desperately wanted an heir and God told Abraham his prayer had been heard and that God would turn Abraham’s descendants into a great nation. Then what? Well, nothing. Time went on, years went by, and Abraham and his wife Sarah remained childless. So Sarah did what many of us would do—she took matters into her own hands and told Abraham to go into her maid, Hagar, so that she might conceive a child. Sarah’s plan seemed to work—until it didn’t. Abraham and Hagar’s child, Ishmael, brewed bitterness and hatred in Sarah. The Bible says of Ishmael, “He shall be a wild man; His hand shall be against every man. And every man’s hand against him. “ (Gen. 16:12). Many years later, God came through on his promise to Abraham and Sarah. Sarah conceived, had her baby, Isaac, and the situation got worse. It became so bad that Sarah eventually sent Hagar away to live apart from them. To this day the descendants of the sons of Abraham still war against each other.
God had waited to bless Abraham and Sarah with children. We don’t know why. We don’t know if there was a lesson God was trying to teach them (patience?) or why God tested them in this way. But they stepped out of His will. They wanted to bypass trust and growing pains and decided to try to self-insure that there would be descendants. And they really messed things up.
Have you ever done some version of this? Have you asked for more responsibility than you were equipped to handle? Did you ask for more financial wealth when you were still struggling to manage what you had already been entrusted with? Have you ever tried to step ahead of His plan? What was the outcome?
We have just started a new year, one in which we no doubt have lots of ideas about how things should go. But before we jump headlong into all the things we want to do, and things we want to ask God to bless us with, let’s pause for a moment and reflect: How did we steward the blessings He gave us last year? What did we start and not finish? To what did He call us already that we are not being faithful to?
He is a wise father, He will give us what we are meant to carry and when we are meant to carry it. Not before, and not after. We don’t have to worry about his plan, but we do have to trust and wait on Him.
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But that is the time to be careful! Beware that in your plenty you do not forget the Lord your God and disobey his commands, regulations, and decrees that I am giving you today.
Deuteronomy 8:11
I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a wonderful holiday season! As we look forward to and prepare our hearts for the new year, I am reminded of the beginning of 2021 and how I choose the word enough as my focus for this past year. I was specifically reminded of this because, while my focus might have been on having enough, it was not the focus of everyone in my household—namely our boy kitty, Jester.
I hate to air this publicly but our girl kitty, Trixie, has, well, a bit of a weight problem. The doctor said she’s fat. Now getting one cat to lose weight while maintaining the weight of the other is no easy feat. We have been trying to exercise Trixie more, but we have had to cut back on how much food we are feeding them. Let me be clear—they are still getting the recommended serving size of food for cats their size each day, it is just on the smaller side of the scale.
This cut back in food has made Jester panic. (His weight has stayed steady; he has neither lost nor gained weight.) Jester wants us to be sure we know that he needs a steady supply of food, so he has a routine that he goes through. He will meow loudly to get our attention. Then he starts wrapping himself around our legs. When we acknowledge him, he runs a few steps ahead, stops, looks back at us, meows, and waits for us to follow him. When we walk towards him he repeats this routine, a few steps at a time until we arrive at the food dish. Thankfully our house isn’t that large otherwise this would be a very time consuming process!
When Jester has successfully led us to his food, he jumps up onto the space where we keep his food and looks at us expectantly. And guess what—there is almost always still food in the dish! They usually finish their food within an hour before their meal time but still—Jester wants more knowing that while there will be more to meet his needs, there may not be extra food put out day and night like there was in the good ole days of his youth. Therefore, he feels he must always be asking for more, ahead of his actual need. Jester doesn’t want enough—he wants plenty!
Have you ever done this with God?
How many times has God proved Himself in providing for our needs? He tells us in His word that He will provide for our needs. Maybe not all our wants, but all of our needs; and furthermore, He will provide for the desires of our hearts when we have hearts that are focused on Him! But, like Jester, we want to see that all of our future needs will be met ahead of time. We want to take trust out of the picture, so we ask for things way ahead of the need. We worry about things over which we have no control. It is wise to do our due diligence, to save, and to plan for the future, but how often do we do all these things and still worry? How often do we still not trust?
It is easy to say that we trust and lean on Him when we are in the years of plenty. It is in the years of plenty and the easy times that we are most likely to forget our need for Him, and to rely on ourselves.
As we start this new year, my hope and prayer is that we will fully trust in Him no matter the situation in which we find ourselves. May we remember that our God is a God of plenty, not just enough. He is even more so a God of wisdom and will provide as much of what we need, when we need it and not one moment sooner, according to what He knows will be best for us.
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There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 NIV
The leaves have all fallen here in Pennsylvania. The reds and oranges that burnt bright against the blue sky are now turning brown on the ground. The bright colors that blazed bright on the hillsides have now vanished and we have brown and gray where we once had yellows and reds.
I love fall but after fall comes winter. Don’t get me wrong, I like winter too, but it can be rather gray….especially when it is dragging on into March! The other thing about winter here, is that it is cold. I know it gets colder elsewhere but really who want to go for a walk or run outside when it is twenty degrees?!
I want to be out doing things, working various projects, and enjoying the sunshine- but winter is not a season to be outside working. Instead it is a season to rest. To dwell indoors and work on things inside. I marvel again at how the natural world is such a perfect mirror of the spiritual world.
There is a season for everything the Bible tells us, but in our 24/7 world we try to make all the seasons uniform when they were never intended to be. We want to push harder and make more happen, fill our days, our schedules, our homes, but why do we think this is normal? In nature the ground rests, the animals hibernate, and the colors fade into gray. Colorless. A blank space. We need that in our lives too. If God made the season for all of nature to rest why would we be exempt?
There are seasons of doing, of stepping out, of making things happen. There are also seasons for us to be introverted, to ask what God is doing on the inside of us, to ask Him to work inside of us. How many of us still follow the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy? I believe He intended for us to rest. But we don’t. He made a season devoted to it. What would our lives look like if we followed the tree’s example and focused on what’s inside, and invited God in to do some heavy duty work inside of us and took a season of rest?
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And going into the house they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
Matthew 2:11
Ahh, Christmas! It is my favorite time of year! However, I notice that with this time of year we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to getting it right; the right decorations, the right Christmas outfit, the right gifts. But we really need to keep our focus right—on Jesus and not all the other distractions this season has to offer. And you know what? I find it really difficult to get things right some of the time let alone all of the time! Let me give you an example of what happened at the beginning of this season.
It is our tradition to go with our friends to pick out and cut a live Christmas tree. Every year we come home and put that tree in the front window where it looks really nice and can be seen from the road. However, we have a fireplace in our house and that is where we curl up and watch Christmas movies in front of the fire, but we cannot see our tree. So this year we decided to change that—we put up two trees. An artificial tree in the front window and the live one in the room with the fireplace. I had bought an unlit artificial tree because I wanted the flexibility to do either white or colored lights—plus it was A LOT cheaper than a pre-lit tree. The only problem with such an arrangement is that it necessitated that we also buy extra lights, ornaments, etc.
A week before I planned to decorate the artificial tree, I asked my husband to pick up white lights the next time he was at the store. Being the sweet guy that he is, he willingly did so. Unbeknownst to him, he grabbed white lights that were on a white wire which would not look good against the green tree. Off to the store we went but when we got there they only had LED white lights. I figured if that was all they had, those lights would be just fine, so we bought two boxes. When I plugged them in though, they were blindingly bright—as in we should place a sign warning of bright lights at the crest of the hill by our house. So we decided yet again to return these lights and go to a different store to get warm white lights. A few days later my husband picked up two boxes of the correct lights.
In the meantime, I pulled out the lights that we had used the year before for the real tree—a strand of those white lights had decided to stop working. So I added one more box of lights to my shopping list. Finally, armed with lights, I started to put them on the artificial tree, only to find out that it took many more lights than our real trees ever had and we were going to need yet one more box of lights.
If it felt at all painful to hear about the countless trips to the store, then you can only imagine how painful it was to make all these trips to the store to finally get our trees decorated! And that’s just the Christmas tree! I’m not even mentioning the gift giving and second guessing. Then there was the year I was happily distributing my homemade peanut brittle to friends and family only to realize that my candy thermometer had broken and there was quite possibly glass shards in all the peanut brittle I had been giving out!
Sometimes never getting it right is enough to make me want to throw in the towel—to not even try and to just say forget it! But, then I think about the wise men . . . they headed to Jerusalem, only to find out when they got there, that they needed to go to Bethlehem, so they headed to Bethlehem—not knowing exactly where to find the child, but they had faith and went. They took gifts that they were giving sincerely. And they left the rest up to God.
I think there is a lot we can learn from these wise men, especially if you happen to be a, well, micromanager as I have been accused of being on occasion! Rather than worrying about things that are out of our control, let’s just try to remember to bring our best to God, and to others, and then just let the rest of the worries go.
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Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work. They received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to carry out the work of constructing the sanctuary. And the people continued to bring freewill offerings morning after morning.
Exodus 36:2-3
Have you ever thought that what you had to contribute to the world wasn’t enough? I was thinking about the above verse from Exodus and I loved how everyone pitched in to build the temple. The craftsmen used their skills, those who didn’t have skills specific to the task at hand, brought offerings of whatever they could to the temple. They didn’t say they had nothing to offer. No, they all knew they had been given specific strengths and that no gift was too small and they used their gifts accordingly. What if more people in the Bible had shied away from doing something because they didn’t feel what they had to contribute was enough?
I started thinking about this verse in light of this Christmas season. There Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem, taking time off from work that they would rather not take, at an very inopportune time—especially for Mary. They were struggling to find a place to stay in the hustle and bustle of a town that was overrun with visitors. Finally they came across an inn and even though it was full the innkeeper allowed them to stay in the stable. He cracked the door open and offered a modicum of generosity to them.
Imagine if he had said no. Imagine if he felt that the stable wasn’t good enough and so had declined entirely.
We don’t know a lot about the details of what this particular inn was like. In most cities of the time, all the visitors slept in one room, sometimes on multiple palettes, sometimes in one large low bed, but there was not much privacy to be had. Maybe Mary was so heavily pregnant that it was part of the problem— no one had a place where a woman could give birth with any degree of privacy if her time came while at the inn. But this innkeeper allows them to stay in the stable. I don’t know this for sure but I’ll bet you the innkeeper wasn’t sleeping out in the stable with them. I bet he and his family still had moderately comfortable accommodations inside the inn itself. He could have offered his spot inside to this young couple but he didn’t. He had a stable so he offered that. What would we have done in that same situation?
I think many of us get caught up in trying to do the perfect right thing that we miss a host of smaller opportunities that come our way. The innkeeper could, and perhaps should have, offered his place inside the house to Mary and Joseph and stayed in the stable himself, but I’m guessing that would have felt like a little too much effort. So instead of making sure he got it perfectly right, he offered what he knew he could easily do.
What opportunities do we miss because we are trying to make sure we have it completely right that we don’t do anything?
While we should not be lazy about what we have to offer, Jesus did make it abundantly clear to treat others the way we want to be treated, we have to start somewhere, and in time, we will get better at serving others. C. S. Lewis said, “Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.” I believe that same principle applies here. If selling all you have and giving it to the poor sounds really scary, what about giving a monetary gift once a month or starting to volunteer in a food pantry? My guess is the Holy Spirit will fill you with a generosity that you never imagined but you have to be willing to crack the door open for the Holy Spirit to work.
This Christmas and holiday season when opportunities are literally around every corner, I urge you to pause and consider your unique gifts and abilities and see where you can crack open the door for the Holy Spirit to work through you.
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