Step by Step

Jesus says....Follow Me 

This is not a stagnant invitation.  It implies movement.  Life marches on and there is always movement, change.  So how do we follow Him?  What does that look like?  I think it is one step at a time.  And we do it with our eyes on Him, like Moses from Hebrews 11, "he persevered because he saw Him who is invisible."  That is a trick for sure.  But as we seek to know Him more, it is a trick we can learn. Not perfectly but we can sure learn to see Who He is, how He lived (from the scriptures) and begin to notice His Presence in our lives.  We also move with an ear to hear His Voice.  His Voice within us.  As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit in us.  Do I fathom that?  God in me, whispering to me, His interests, His desire for my life.  My life consists of moments.  And each moment is important to Him.  I can listen for His direction with each step I take, each word I speak. I in no way, do it all the time but I hope I am learning.  Learning to listen, to be more aware of His Presence with me all and to obey, for obedience to God is always in my best interest. Do I always live like I believe that? No.  But it is true.  The more I believe that the better off I am.  And I will say that I believe it more and more as I get older, as I walk with Him and see His incredible grace in my life.  Are there things I don't get?  Hard things?  Yes....but that is where faith comes in.  We walk by faith not sight.  That is what He calls us to. But that is an entirely different subject.

Galatians 5:25 [amp] "If we live by the Holy Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. [If by the Holy Spirit we have our life in God, let us go forward walking in line, our conduct controlled by the Spirit.]" That is Paul talk....."walk by the Spirit".....we move forward with our conduct under the guidance of God's Holy Spirit in us.  No one, nothing can take that from us.  He is within.

The deal is, we have choices, day by day and moment by moment.  So there's the rub.  Often (most often) it is hard, doing it God's way.  His way is the way of love.  Perfect love as described in 1 Corinthians. My own perfect way is the way of ease (for me), of self service, of pride, of shortsightedness (only seeing it my way).  Living to serve myself comes ever so easily.  In this difficult world it seems like someone has to look out for number one (me-me-me)!  We are bent with self preservation in mind. And that can destroy us, our own idea of how to self preserve! Only God knows what is best for us.  

God has a bigger picture in mind. Always.  We must learn to believe that He desires good for us and learn (it is a learning process with a steep learning curve) to trust Him. That is when doing things His way begins to get easier and our desire really is to follow Him. We begin to want to align our steps with His!  Yes! We can walk with God, the One who loves us beyond our wildest imagination, the One who came and lived among us and Who died for us.  He is with us, never to leave or forsake us.  Faithful even when we aren't.  That God. The One Who IS Love.

Psalm 119:133 Direct my footsteps according to your Word; let no sin rule over me.

Psalm 37:23-24 The Lord delights in a man's way, He makes his step firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with His hand.

Lord help me.  Day by day...to walk with You.  To listen. To follow. To be patient and to trust.  Your ways are higher than mine.  Forgive me for following my own silly, selfish, self serving ways.  I want to go Your's, hidden in You.

I feel so far from it.  Thank you for your patience with me.

Undone, I come

1 Kings 19:3-8

Elijah was afraid and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there. Then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died.”
 Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, “Get up and eat!” He looked around and there beside his head was some bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water! So he ate and drank and lay down again.
 Then the angel of the Lord came again and touched him and said, “Get up and eat some more, or the journey ahead will be too much for you.”
 So he got up and ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai, the mountain of God. 

This is such a precious passage of scripture.  It is so real, so raw, so tender. Elijah, undone. God so loving and gentle in His care of this servant.  What leaped out at me this time is concerning "the angel of the Lord" (most believe this is Jesus, pre-incarnation, this Angel of the Lord since He is referred to as God-is worshipped and never appears again after Jesus was born, after the Holy Spirit was poured out). He provided bread and water for Elijah and then rest. What He provided is foreshadowing of what Jesus Himself (by His broken body) provides....for us!

Jesus replied, 

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. John 6:35

Jesus replied, 

“If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” John 4:10

Elijah is provided for and strengthened by God Himself. He then has the strength to go on.  And where does he go? To "Horeb, the mountain of God".  He goes further and closer to the One he serves. Deeper in....

God met him exactly where he was at.  Burned out, spent.  He found no fault. He took care of him.  He nurtured him.  Elijah did pray to God, no eloquent prayer, He was just undone.  He  told Him how bad he felt and then slept.  God did the rest.  He does that for us.  He knows the journey can become too much. We aren't expected to go on and on and on.  There are times when we just come to Him and lay down. And He comes to us. He is there.

He was told there was more journey ahead. Until the Complete has come again we will need to continue, but with the Bread of Life and Rivers of Living Water, we can too can go on.  Jesus gives us this.  The Holy Spirit in us.  Amazing. I come to You Lord.  You come to me.  Thank You for that! So simple. It is everything.

Show me Your Glory

Exodus 33:12-23

Moses spoke to God.  Man speaking to the Creator, the Lord of Hosts who Resides on The Throne in heaven. That alone is jaw dropping. They had a relationship. But Moses had questions. He needed some clarification. He wanted to know more about what this relationship with the Living God looked like and how it would impact the world he lived in.  He wanted to know if God had His back.  "You have been telling me [this]....but you have not let me know [that]...." "If you are please with me then...."  He asks, "how will I know...?" He tells God to remember His/his nation....like God would forget? But he reminds Him of His promises and then asks for more.  Moses always moves me to be more bold in my prayers.  More bold in reminding God of His promises.  It is not like He forgets, it is more like it reminds me of my reality in Him.  

Moses most poignant moment to me is when he says "if You don't go with us personally, don't let us move a step from this place."  In this he declares the most important thing is to be with God.  His Presence is everything to him. I know I get ahead of God but honestly, I don't ever want to be where He isn't (not that He isn't everywhere but that is a whole other topic).  His Presence is EVERYTHING and God most assuredly promised Moses that His Presence would be with Him and that in that he would find rest.  

But the great thing about Moses is that he asked for more.  He wanted God to show him His glory.  I truly think that God loved this boldness in Moses.  It was a boldness to know Him more, to want more of Him, to learn more from Him, to receive more from Him.  Moses was a man who sought God boldly.  O Lord, help me to be that way too.  

God asked a lot of Moses as a result.  Back at the scene on the banks of the Red Sea, with Pharaoh's army pressing in, He tells Moses, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on."  He made a real leader out of Moses.  He used Him to do His work among the nations.

So God says yes!  I will show you my glory. He hid Moses in the cleft of the rock and passed before Him.  He caused all His goodness to pass before Moses.  That is what He wants us all to see, that He is good.  He proclaimed His Name, The LORD and Moses saw all His goodness pass by.  

Help me LORD, to come boldly to your Throne of Grace and ask. Ask you to teach me, to show me Your Presence. Your goodness is the only place I want to be.

Bring it to Me

The disciples noticed it was evening and everyone was hungry. The crowds needed to go home to eat. But after suggesting that everyone should leave, Jesus had a different idea. He suggested they feed everyone, all 5,000 people! The problem (in the eyes of the disciples) was they only had 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. So the reply of the disciples? Impossible! 

Jesus used this as a teachable moment. He proceeded to show them step by step, how to feed this multitude. One important  thing that stands out to me, is after the disciples assessed their resources Jesus asked them to bring what they had to Him. This is huge.  I need to learn to take the time to bring all I have, all I am, to Him.  First. I need to trust that this is time well spent as it is only through Him that anything I do will amount to anything, anyway.  "If you remain in Me and My Words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you." John 15:7 I must stay connected to Him in order to bear fruit.  

On my own, I can do nothing! Nothing of lasting value anyway. I need to reflect on how often I  charge ahead and do it all on my own.  I need to recognize that I will never have/be enough on my own.  I need to learn to habitually bring all I am and all have to Him. Only  then can I watch Him work in and through me. I need to ask Him what He has in mind for me.  He cares about who I am and what I do.  How often am I wasting my time and energy on things that I shouldn't even be doing?

So He said to His disciples, "Bring them to Me..."

Then He asked the people to sit and relax on the grass.

Took the bread and the fish and looking up to heaven, He gave thanks.  He set this example here.  He took what they had to His Father and thanked Him for His provision.

Then He broke the bread (a picture of His broken body for our salvation, our lives) and passed it to the disciples to distribute.  

Everyone ate and all were satisfied.

That is how it is with Jesus. We bring everything to Him.

He provides and we are satisfied. It doesn't always look like we think it should but we can trust Him!  Just come to Him and He will work out the rest. Help me Lord to follow you. And also take no credit for myself, as all good things are by your hand.  Only You can satisfy souls, redeem lives, restore and rescue the lost.  And Lord, the amazing thing here is that it is the coming to You that is the most satisfying.  You are the blessing. You are the One who fills my heart with what I need.  Thank you so much that you beckon me to come. For that I give you thanks!

The Grief of our Lord

When Jesus heard what had happened, He withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed Him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick. Matthew 14:13-14

Jesus was sad.  He heard that his cousin, John, had been beheaded, and he needed time to grieve. John, the one who was sent to prepare the way for the coming Messiah, was also family to Jesus.  These events were grand in the scope of the coming of the Kingdom of God, to us.  But it was also personal.  This brutal act was a piercing loss for Jesus.

Isaiah 53:3 says, "He was despised and rejected—a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him and looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care."  

This is the deepest kind of grief, losing a loved one.  And this death was so unjust.  This godly man was beheaded for standing up for what was right.  It so is hard to understand this, except it does exemplify our need for a Savior, one who can save us from the vile things we do.  And also our need for an Intercessor, One willing to stand in the gap for us before our Holy, Just and Righteous God.

"He is the kind of high priest we need because He is holy 

and blameless, unstained by sin. 

He has been set apart from sinners and has been given 

the highest place of honor in heaven. 

But because Jesus lives forever, His priesthood lasts forever. Therefore He is able, once and forever, 

to save those who come to God through Him. 

He lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf."  

Hebrews 7:24-26

This is the amazing thing Jesus does for us!  Forever interceding. But in the meantime, here is Jesus, living among us, experiencing the suffering of a broken world. His cousin was murdered and He was brokenhearted.  I wonder what happened when He withdrew to this private place.  I imagine He cried.  Pouring out His sorrow for this personal loss. And maybe also for the horrible state of mankind, with its suffering and injustice. Oh, the things we do to one another. I imagine He cried out to His Father.  And I picture His Father comforting Him.  2 Corinthians 1:3 refers to God as the Father of all (and that is ALL) comfort.  

This also is the nature of God, compassionate and comforting.  So Jesus did what His human nature caused Him to do, He grieved His loss and cried out to His Father in heaven.  And then almost immediately He did what His divine nature called Him to do.  He responded in compassion to the needs of the crowds that followed Him by healing their sick.  

Jesus experienced it all. He respected His humanness by grieving a significant loss and all of the injustice of that. And He respected His divine nature by not becoming bitter and carrying on with His mission of compassion, of salvation. For us.  

Help me Lord to grieve my losses, but also to keep moving forward. Help me to respond in compassion and not give in to the bitterness and brutality this world has to offer.  Help me to accept your comforting touch.  Help me to abide in You and respond to my world as You would have me do.