Look up to see what God is doing

January 13, 2024

Maria Anxiety, Colossians 4, Fear, Genesis 21, Hopelessness, Job 34, Joshua 5, Matthew 26, Numbers 22, Prayer, The Lord's Prayer, Watchman , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. Genesis 21:19 NIV

I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days about how short-sighted I can be.  At times very inward-focused on troubling circumstances rather than considering God. Surely you and I are the same, each with both personal situations and an orbit of people and persistent problems or crises whose details trouble, frighten or seem to multiply.

Reading about Hagar’s situation when she was abruptly shoved out of the household of the richest man in the neighborhood, I thought about how she would have processed this sudden turn of events. She tumbled from a high-status position as the mother of Abraham’s first-born son, to being an outcast whose son, now a teenager, was going to die of thirst because they had run out of water. Looking horizontally at her circumstances, there was no way out.

But God! He spoke to her, painting a picture of the reality that he had planned, a staggeringly amazing future for Ishmael. Stunned and lightened by such hope-birthing words, she lifted her head to see beyond her immediate problem. That’s when she spotted the thirst-quenching, life-giving well.

Numerous examples of similar corrected vision dot the scriptures.

  • Then the LORD opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD. Numbers 22:31 NIV
  • Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua 5:13 NIV

So, what is it that has you feeling hopeless?  Maybe it’s the state of the world with irreconcilable wars and conflicts, or the politics of your nation that feel futile. Or maybe the rapid decline of morality in our cultures, even in some of our churches. 

For me, I carry concern over my mother-in-law’s physical decline and lack of happy anticipation of her future with Jesus. Friends in my Bible study carry heavy burdens regarding children and grandchildren and I pray for these needs. Yet, from a horizontal vista, in many of these situations, nothing encouraging ‘appears’ to be happening.

Right after I read about Hagar’s upward shift of vision, I picked up a devotional where I read Jesus’ words to his sleepy men at the Gethsemane Garden. He commanded them to ‘Watch and pray’. Immediately, I connected what Jesus counseled with the value of looking up.

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. Matthew 26:41 NIV

I don’t think Jesus is warning his disciples about the temptation to fall asleep.  Rather because of Satan’s whispered doubts, they and we fall into discouragement, fear and anxiety.  We count the odds instead of counting on God.  But we are to be like watchmen on a castle’s ramparts looking for the help that has been promised.  And we are to pray. That is, to lay before the Savior of the world what we ‘see’ and then tell the truth of what God has done, is doing, can do and has promised to do. We can be like Job whose words in 34:32 go: ‘Show me what I do not see!’.  Then we can add, ‘Father, protect me AGAINST these temptations to doubt and worry.’

So, for the last few days, I’ve been repeating out loud several times a day ‘Watch and Pray’. I don’t want to miss what God is doing.

Apparently, the Spirit of God wants to make sure I get his message loud and clear. For, last night when I was thumbing through a book filled with liturgies for work (Every Moment Holy, Volume III, The Work of the People), I came across a margin reference to  Colossians 4:2, along with the words:

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, (Berean Standard Bible)

Besides watching, praying and thanking God as he brings about solutions to our burdens, we are also to be alert, keeping a look out for his imminent arrival. It’s a true statement, ‘we are nearer today than we’ve ever been in history’.

So, pick up this short mantra for yourselves, Watch and pray, and fill yourself with real hope.  And pass it along to someone else whose eyes are downcast.

Shutting doors on lesser things

January 19, 2019

Maria Conviction, Genesis 21, Idols, Isaiah 55, Psalm 109, Worship , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Journeying through Genesis again, I’ve seen how God closes and opens wombs.  Wombs are a sort of door, a door to fruitfulness. When Abraham passed off his wife Sarah as his sister (for the second time!), Abimelech took her into his harem.  Immediately, we learn in Genesis 20:17-18, that God afflicted Abimelech, his wife, and his slave girls so they could not have any children.  God took away their fruitfulness.

Catching my attention after this account were the words: Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised.  Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Gen 21: 1-2

God opened a door; he made Sarah fruitful.  Yes, Sarah and Abraham came together as husband and wife so a baby could be conceived.  But the conception and subsequent birth were entirely OF the Lord!

God has been shutting doors in our lives, specifically in Mike’s life.  We finally have seen and come to the decision to go in the direction God is leading. We don’t yet know the where or the when.  That is up to God.  However, we are doing what he gives us to do: apply for jobs, list our house.

The Holy Spirit has yet to close any doors at this point in my life.  Instead, He has recently shown me a door I am to close.  As an act of worship.

Those who know me well, put up kindly with my seeming insatiable quest for information.  Over the past 7 months, I have binged on podcasts and books about Keto.  Keto is a health-promoting low-carb, high-fat way of eating.  Mike and I switched to this protocol for brain health and disease prevention.

Keto is what I talk about.  Constantly.  My computer password has included a reference to Keto.  I have listened to at least one Keto podcast a day on my long commute to and from school.

Two days ago, God opened my eyes to this idolatry.  Painfully, and in a way that fit me.

  • My weight climbed, something that always ‘sends’ me into self-preoccupation and temporary depression.

How did He connect that with my idol worship?  That very first morning of weight gain something came up in one of my prayers. Scotty Smith, a PCA pastor who writes daily prayers, had used the example of  Betsy Ten Boom urging her sister Corrie to thank God for the fleas in their Nazi concentration camp barracks.

Convicted, I thanked God for the weight gain, not an easy thing for a weight-obsessed Maria to do.  During this same morning time with the Lord, I read another prayer and wrote this down: “Whatever we treasure in our hearts will be reflected in the stream of our words.”

Ouch!  What a closeup snapshot of me!  Almost daily I have flooded poor Mike with what I have newly absorbed in a Keto podcast.  A clear illustration of the principle:  what you dwell on and talk about reflect what is important to you.

The final gentle but firm push from the Holy Spirit was something Charles Spurgeon had written this week, based on a text from Psalm 109:4 ……but I give myself to prayer.  At the time I read it, I had said to myself:  I am a woman who gives herself to prayer.

Two days later, I saw that my conclusion was NOT true.  I had become a woman who gave herself to Keto (the latest in a long string of a ‘passion of the month/year’).

I knew what I had to do. Unsubscribe from the podcasts and the email newsletters.  Go back to podcasts about God. Change my password.

During our nightly prayer check-in, where Mike and I open our hearts to one another and write down what we need God to do for us, I confessed my sin and how the Holy Spirit had revealed it to me.  He prayed for me.

This morning, God has kept up the training.  I wrote in my journal:

  • Maria, repent when you are more interested in a created thing than in the Creator!

God then directed my mind to this exhortation from Isaiah 55:2:

Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and you will delight in the richest of fare.

To eat what is good, I have to stop putting garbage into my mouth.

I almost fell into temptation this morning. There remained ONE Keto podcast I had not unsubscribed from.  I started to justify, “Surely ONE podcast a week won’t hurt me…..”

(the Serpent’s lies feel so palate-pleasing and harmless!)

I unsubscribed.

My conclusion?  In this case, God did not shut the door for me, He instead urged me to shut the door myself.

I now understand that giving up this lesser thing IS a sacrifice He calls me to make.  Worship is about sacrificing the best-created thing to show yourself, God, maybe some of the watching world, and all of the invisible world, that our triune God is worth MOST OF ALL!  Sacrifice and worship are not about earning God’s favor.  His children already HAVE received His grace and can’t lose that.  But we need a constant reminder of Who is supreme.  The world, the flesh and the devil all can look mighty satisfying.  All a lie.

Eating what is good trains our palate for the Holy.

I wonder what other doors He will reveal.  More doors to close?  Or maybe new doors to fruitfulness.  Eat up, Maria!  But only what is good.