My Way or God's Way?

Still reading in Genesis.  And I got to thinking about Isaac and Ishamel.  Both sons of Abraham.  Both with descendants that number like the stars.  From Isaac we have Israel and the chosen people of God.  From Ishmael we have Islam, a religion devoted to destroying the chosen people of God.

It's easy to see the root of the division between the two groups of people.  Ishamel was bitter at having been sent away.  And it's easy to see how that bitterness turned him against Isaac and his descendants.  But I don't think that his bitterness is where it all started.

God had laid out his plan to Abraham and Sarah.  They would have a son.  In God's time, despite their age, despite all the appearances of Sarah being barren, they would have a son.  But Sarah decided that she couldn't wait.  Abraham needed a son.  She decided that she would come up with her own plan.  Abraham would marry her maid, Hagar, and Abraham's son would come from that marriage.  Abraham married Hagar.  Hagar got pregnant.  Hagar had a son.  And Sarah had a problem.

When God tells us part of the plan that he has for our life, why do we try to make it come to pass on our own?  Do we honestly think that we know better than God?  Can we not trust God enough to let him bring that plan along in the timing that he sees as best.  In short... No.  We get impatient.  We want God's plan now.  And when we don't see that plan moving quickly enough we decide to move it along ourselves.  And we have a problem.

When I graduated from Rhema Bible Training Center in '98 I decided to move back to Indianapolis.  I moved back in with my parents and volunteered as the Youth Pastor at a brand new church.  But for three years I felt like I was supposed to move to St Louis.  I had a good job, a good group of friends, and was attending a good church.  But something didn't feel right.  So I moved.

In St Louis I was rehired at my same job.  I started attending a great church.  I made new friends.  Life went on.  It didn't seem much different than what I had in Indianapolis.  But did you notice I said great church and not good church?  I'm not trying to knock the church I attended in Indy.  It was a good church.  But the teaching at my church in St Louis was worth the move.  And my life continued to grow in ways I cannot see happening if I had stayed in Indy.  I've gone on mission trips that changed my life.  I've advanced in work.  I met the woman God planned for me for all my life.  None of these things could have happened in Indy.

It was a big decision.  I packed up and moved to a different city because God wanted me in St Louis.  I didn't have a ministry or a new job waiting for me.  I was moving because God wanted me to.  But the timing was everything.  I stayed in Indy for three years.  And I had thought about moving to St Louis after Rhema.  But God's plan didn't have me moving until 2001.  And the timing made all the difference.  Had I moved to St Louis in 1998, I would have had to crash at my brother's house, and would have felt obligated to move out as quickly as I could.  I didn't have a job line up so I would have had to find something quickly in order to find a place to live.  It would have been a struggle that I didn't need.  But taking the time in Indy for my life to get prepared my transition to St Louis was smooth and easy.  Exactly how God wanted it to be.

We can never know how things "would have been."  Every choice that we make has an impact on our future.  Each decision you make, however small can profoundly impact the plan that God has for your life.  But trusting God's plan makes the "would have been" seem much less like the greener side of the fence.   

The Great Unknown

So I read Genesis 19 this morning.  The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Why was Lot so hesitant to leave?

Here's a short paraphrase:  The angels told him to leave the city but he lingered.  The angels took him and his family outside the city and told him to escape to the mountains.  He said "The mountains are too far.  How about Zoar?"  They said OK and he took his family to Zoar.  And after Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed he took his family to the mountains.  Was Sodom that nice of a place for Lot that he was that hesitant to leave?  Or is it just hard to leave what he knew, however bad a situation, and head off into the unknown?

I don't know whether you can consider Lot a man of God.  He was a good enough man to take two strangers into his home to keep them safe when they entered Sodom.  Then when a mob demand he turn out the two men so that they could "get to know them" he refused.  He even offered up his daughters to the mob instead of the two men(that's a whole other issue I don't think I want to get into).  Yet when given direct instruction that would save his life and the lives of his family he hesitated.

What is your reaction when God speaks in your life? How hesitant are you to leave what you know and move into what God is telling you to do?  Is your faith so invested in God that as soon as he tells you to do something you move to action?  Or do you hem and haw, waiting and praying, making sure that it's really God that you're listening to.  Do you really need to verify that it is God speaking to you or are you hesitating because the course God has laid out for you is not where you want to go?

That's the key.  It all depends upon whether you want to take the actions God has told you to take.  Lot didn't want to leave Sodom.  Yes it was a city of great sin.  Yes it was going to be destroyed in a rain of fire.  But it was what he knew.  He didn't know the mountains.  In the mountains he didn't know where he would live.  He didn't know how he would provide for his family.  It was unknown.  And the unknown is frightening.


But that's why God directs us to the unknown.  It takes faith.  We show our love and trust in Him by leaving what we know and following His direction.  Yes we can choose to not follow that guidance.  We can choose to stay.  But it's not like He will lead us into a trap.  He's taking you to a place where you will grow closer to Him.  Where your faith will increase.  It may be a struggle, difficult.  But with faith all things are possible.


Besides, I'm pretty sure life will be more of struggle by choosing to stay.  Because by choosing to stay you're choosing to leave God's perfect will for your life.

Amplify Your Belief

I love the Amplified Bible.  Friends at a bible study would make fun of me because when it was my turn to read it would take twice as long, but I love that the translators went to the trouble to make absolutely sure you knew what the writers were trying to say.  In reading this morning a couple of words stuck out to me.

"And He brought him outside [his tent into the starlight] and said, Look now toward the heavens and count the stars--if you are able to number them. Then He said to him, So shall your descendants be.  And he [Abram] believed in (trusted in, relied on, remained steadfast to) the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness (right standing with God)."

Genesis  15:5-6 (Amplified Bible) 

Abram's belief in God's Word was so much more than just being persuaded of the truth of a statement.  He trusted in that truth and made decisions based upon it.  He relied upon God standing behind those words and he took actions.  And he remained steadfast to that truth in the face of waiting years from God's promise to come to pass.  Abrams belief wasn't a mental click.   His life lived out his belief because he trusted in, relied on, and remained steadfast to God and His promise.

And this lead to Abram's righteousness with God.  What does right standing mean?  Think of the end of the movie "US Marshals."  Marshal Gerard asks Sheridan how it feels to be exonerated and he replies, "Righteous!"  He's been on the run and outside of the law.  He could never relax and be comfortable.  The next person to turn the corner could be someone arresting him.  But now he was righteous.  He was in right standing with the law.  And he was at peace.  He could smile, relax, and enjoy his life.

Our right standing with God gives us peace.  Sin puts us on the run.  Sin requires punishment and that punishment is death.  So we try to run from punishment and end up going nowhere.  But why run?  God has said that His Son took the punishment for us.  Christ died for the sins that we commit.  All we have to do is believe what God told us to be true.  And then trust, rely on and remain steadfast to that truth.  And you'll be in right standing with God.

Jump Start

Genesis 9-10

Have you ever thought about why God put the rainbow in the sky as a reminder of his covenant?  I remember the Sunday School stories and being told it was to remind us of God's promise to never flood the earth again.  But that's not what God said it was for.

"And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud, and I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh."

Genesis 9:14 - 15

God put the rainbow there to remind Himself of His promise!  He knew that we would again become wicked and His heart would again become grieved.  He would again want to flood the earth.  But He loved us so much to make a vow that He would not break with a constant reminder to Himself of that vow.  And I'm certain it's constant.  

Somewhere on the planet Earth the rain has just finished and the sun is shining through the mist.  Somewhere a beautiful rainbow is stretching across the sky.  Somewhere, God is reminding Himself of His Love for us!

Momentum

Most people think of momentum and they think of keeping in motion.  If you're riding you bike and you stop pedaling you'll still be moving.  But you will slow down.  If you don't start pedaling again you'll come to a stop.  And once you've stopped you're going to experience a whole new type of momentum.  The tendency of an object to stay at rest.  From experience, it's easier to start pedaling again if your bike is still moving than if you've come to a stop.

I bring this up because the momentum of my blog has definitely been the tendency to stay at rest.  I got distracted and got away from writing and expressing myself.  With two toddlers at home it can be easy to get distracted.  And the longer I stayed in my lack of motion the harder it was to get moving again.  I needed a push...

Enter Finding True Balance  Nothing like your wife starting her own blog to give a push :-)

So how does this apply to my spiritual life?  I am trying to keep that the focus of this blog, right?  Well, how often have you woken up for the day and said to yourself "I'm going to skip reading the Bible today and get an extra 20-30 minutes of sleep."  Then you get up the next day and say the same thing.  And the next day... and the next day...  Let's just say that my bible ready has been more inconsistent than my blog writing.  

So where do I go from here?  It's time to make a commitment.  A jumpstart in two parts.  For the next two weeks I'm going to read my bible every morning and then write a post on what I read that morning.  Depending upon the time I have left before I leave for work I may have to just say "I read Genesis Chapter 7-8.  Tell you about it later."  But I hope to have a little more than that each day.  Hopefully after those two weeks I'll be able to keep pedaling.  So until tomorrow.