Don't Pick Me!

But Moses again pleaded, “Lord, please! Send anyone else.”  Exodus 4:13 (NLT)

God had called Moses to go back to Egypt. He wanted him to help free the Israelites. God just finished showing Moses miracles to back up the claim that he would be with him and still Moses said, "Send someone else."

I imagine it sounding a little like this. "Puuuullllleeeeessseee, don't make me do it." I can imagine that because sometimes I don't want to do what I know God is telling me to do.  Why?

If I pretend I am Moses for a minute, here are the top five excuses that would pop into my head.

1. The people you want me to share this with don't know you. They say they do but they don't and they aren't going to listen.
2. These people don't know me. Who am I to them? I have no influence. I'm going to look foolish.
3. They don't like me. Did you hear the last thing they said to me?
4. I do not have experience in _____________________. Way above my pay grade. I am a nothing here.
5. This is way bigger than I can handle. I can see all the stuff going wrong. How do you expect me to figure all that out?

Don't we say things like this to God every day? And these are real concerns.  Here is where we get messed up.  God knows the answer to every single one of these excuses. He's already got it planned or he wouldn't send you. We mess it up when we think it's about us. We get side-tracked when we think we have to have all the answers. We don't. God has the answers. We just have to be willing.

God knows that your story, your background, your experience is the perfect portrayal of what needs to be said in that precise moment. The mistake Moses wanted to make is the same mistake we want to make all the time. He wanted someone else to tell his perfect story. God gives us the story for a reason. He wants to use it. Stop running the other way.  Instead of saying "Send someone else," we should be saying "Here I am. Send me."

I Want To Be In Charge

So come, let us worship: bow before him,
    on your knees before God, who made us!
Oh yes, he’s our God,
    and we’re the people he pastures, the flock he feeds.
Drop everything and listen, listen as he speaks.
Psalm 95:6-7 (MSG)

Recently, I've been pondering something. In the story of the Exodus in the Bible, it says over and over again that Pharaoh dug in. He stubbornly refused to listen to God's direction. See Pharaoh was taught and believed that he himself was a God. So to give in and submit would mean that he was a lesser God than Moses' God.  He couldn't do that. So he dug in and eventually lost that battle.

Lots of thoughts crowd my mind as I wonder about this. Things like "It sure took him long enough." and "How much do you have to walk through before you figure out you aren't the one in control?" And then, I get to "Do I do this?" Do I think that what I want is a better plan than what God wants for me? Who exactly is God in my life?

God never walked away from this confrontation with Pharaoh. He never said "Let's just let him die in one of the plagues and move on." He never pulled rank and flicked him off the face of the earth. But he didn't give up either. He kept being God and working toward his end goal which was to free Israel.

Maybe he does the same with us? When we are being stubborn and digging into what we want in life and trying to make our plan work, is it possible that we are fighting against a God who knows there is something better? Could that be why it seems so hard sometimes? And the ultimate question that we have to ask ourselves is this. Am I OK relinquishing being in control to God and submitting to what he knows is best? Do I love God enough to trust him with everything? Can I get myself out of the way?

A Minute In It - Bring On The Prasie!

A minute in Gods' word will change your life.  Read through the Bible text and finish the thoughts at the bottom of the post.

1 O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!
    Your glory is higher than the heavens.
2 You have taught children and infants
    to tell of your strength,
silencing your enemies
    and all who oppose you.

3 When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—
    the moon and the stars you set in place—
4 what are mere mortals that you should think about them,
    human beings that you should care for them?
5 Yet you made them only a little lower than God
    and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You gave them charge of everything you made,
    putting all things under their authority—
7 the flocks and the herds
    and all the wild animals,
8 the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea,
    and everything that swims the ocean currents.

9 O Lord, our Lord, your majestic name fills the earth!
Psalm 8 (NLT)

O Lord, our Lord, how ______________ is your name!
When I look at ______________________________, I praise you!
I wonder at the _______________________________ that you have put in my life.
You have given me _____________________________ that brings me great pleasure!
I want to praise you for ____________________________________________.
O Lord, my Lord, how I _____________________________ your name.

Feeling Stuck Today?

While Jeremiah was still confined in the courtyard of the guard, the word of the Lord came to him a second time: “This is what the Lord says, he who made the earth, the Lord who formed it and established it—the Lord is his name: ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’  Jeremiah 33:1-3 (NIV)

Jeremiah was locked up in prison. He was put there because he was prophesying for God.  Do you ever feel like you are in prison?  Maybe your circumstances are hemming you in and you feel stuck? 

Interestingly, God shows up even in prison. King Zedekiah was trying to keep Jeremiah quiet. He was trying to isolate him. But no matter where you go or what you are doing, God is always there. The message God spoke to Jeremiah is a message that we all need to remember.

First, he reminds Jeremiah who he is.  "I made everything!" he says. "I put it all here. I put you here and the king too. There is nothing that is happening that I am not aware of." And then he reminds Jeremiah about their relationship.  "Call to me! I will answer you!"

In this text the word call means to cry out. In other words God is saying to Jeremiah "Shout out to me. Reach for me. Holler! I'm here Jeremiah. I will answer you and I will show you so many infinitely wonderful things. Things you've never dreamed of before."

God is saying the same thing to us every day.  He says, "No matter where you are. No matter how you feel hemmed in or stuck. Cry out to me.  Call on my name and I will show up. I will respond to you and you will know you are loved."

Ready For Battle?

I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. In every place of worship, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from anger and controversy. 1 Timothy 2:1, 8 (NLT)

I came down with a nasty illness last week and was out of commission.  This week, the cough still lingers. Last night, we were scheduled to have Bible Study but there was no way I was going to get through it without coughing incessantly so we decided to watch the movie The War Room.

It's a movie about fighting your battles with prayer. You see, most of our battles are not for us to fight.  We are at war with the enemy and he will do whatever he can to destroy us. He will wreck our lives, our families, our health, our spiritual walk given half the chance.

And it is up to us to not give him the chance.  We do that in prayer.  While we know the war has already been won thanks to Jesus' death and resurrection, the battles wage on. God will do the fighting for us. Our job is to pray. We are to stay focused on God and lift every single thing up to him.

When we fight in prayer, we are doing the most we can do. And when we battle on our knees, Satan cannot win. There is no limit to what you can ask for. There is no limit to the answers you will receive.  And remember, prayer is not a transaction between you and God, it is an interaction. When you are praying, you are strategically involved in the outcome of each and every battle.

The best thing about it?  You can fight the good fight anywhere you are. Sitting at your desk. Doing laundry. Walking outside. Grocery shopping.  Anywhere. What are you waiting for?  Fight on!

How To Change Your Life

He must always keep that copy with him and read it daily as long as he lives. That way he will learn to fear the Lord his God by obeying all the terms of these instructions and decrees. Deuteronomy 17:19 (NLT)

When the Israelites wanted a king to lead them, this direction was given to the new king.  It referred to the Torah, to God's Word. He was supposed to write a copy of the Torah in his own hand and carry it with him everywhere he went. He was supposed to read it daily as long as he lived.

I am reading a book by Mark Batterson called If: Trading Your If Only Regrets for God's What If Possibilities. In it, he digs into the word "keep" from the text above. Here is a quote from his book.

"The word keep means keepsake, as in treasured possession. It means to guard something, as if your life depended on it. It means to keep track of, like a courtroom stenographer. It means to watch over, like an air traffic controller. It means to keep watch, like a night watchman. It means to preserve, like a taxidermist. It means to examine, like a forensic scientist. It means to cross-examine, like a prosecuting attorney. It means to put in a vault, like a banker. It means to put a contract on something, like a real estate agent. It means to decipher secrets, like World War II code talkers."

When you read God's word, do you treat it as a treasured possession? Do you guard it, keep track of it, examine it and really dig into it?  To you preserve it and watch it play out in your life? What if we treated God's Word the same way? What if we carried it around with us and read it every day allowing it to change our lives? What if it were that important to us? How would our lives and our world be different?

Custom-Made For You

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)

Do you sin the same way every day?  The mistakes you made Saturday, are they the same mistakes you made on Sunday?

I don't know about you, but on Saturday I may have become angry with someone and said something mean but then on Sunday, I may have told a lie. On Monday, I may irritate my sister on purpose just because she's there. Each day, I sin and no two days or sins are the same.

Did you know that the Hebrew word for new in Verse 23 means different?  Think about it.  This morning God didn't give me the same mercy, compassion and forgiveness that he gave me on Saturday or Sunday. He gave me the mercy, compassion and forgiveness I needed just for today.

Receiving mercy is to receive kindness and compassion that we don't deserve. What kind of God offers you just the perfect mercy each and every day? It is a one-of a kind, custom made mercy. Designed just for you. Given freely with no strings attached.

That, my friends, is OUR God. Great is His Faithfulness!

Glory In The Small Stuff

23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)  Romans 8:23-25 (NLT)

Some days, it feels like we take three steps forward and then two steps back. Nothing seems to be working according to plan (our plan anyway). It can be very discouraging.

The Bible affirms this. We groan, we wish for something different....like maybe Jesus would come. As we are waiting though, God does not leave us. We get glimpses of his work. Maybe, just maybe, if we looked for him more in all the events of our lives, we'd see even more of his glory. Instead, we focus so much on what we are doing (instead of what he is doing), that we often miss it.

Today, pray with me that God will open our eyes to see where he is working. Pray that he will open our eyes to recognize the glimpses of his glory in everything around us. Where do you see him? What have you missed because you are so focused on the end goal instead of the journey? Will you pray that with me today?