music :: worship :: life
Maybe God can forgive once and be done,
but I have to forgive over and again.
Forgiveness is a garden
that must be watered every day.
Sometimes, you have to pull the weeds
that spring up to strangle it.
Self-righteousness, jealousy, envy, resentment—
these weeds grow fast and hardy.
Love and patience grow ever so slow,
and need nurture every day.
After complaining on Monday about God’s reticence, I awoke to find this scripture from the Upper Room in my email:
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I put my hope.My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.–Psalm 130:5-6
And the devotional for the day was about waiting patiently for God to speak.
At work, during my break, when I opened my Bible-in-a-Year, the day’s reading gave me this:
The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
–1 Kings 19:11-13
Not exactly subtle, is He?
Maybe I think I have to be waylaid by God for it to count. For Paul, only a severe mauling would have gotten his attention. Perhaps I should have more respect for the small promptings of the Spirit, and the little “God-moments” that almost unnoticeably change my course.
A friend asked for prayer for finding God in the workplace. It is easy to see God working in the day to day events. All of us, if we are attuned to God, can’t help notice the God-moments that bubble up throughout the day. But that’s not what she was talking about. She was talking about discernment of God’s long-term plan for her life.
Meaning and purpose—finding your life’s mission—this is no easy task. Those are the exact issues I’ve been struggling to resolve for the past year or so. I don’t have answers yet, nor have I discovered a way to find the answers.
While we’re growing up, our parents tell us exactly what they expect of us. In school, teachers give us detailed assignments and deadlines, and grade our performance. On the job, employers tell us specifically what work they have planned for us and hold us accountable for doing it well and finishing it on time.
But what does God want from us? What are his plans for us? What tasks has he set us? What mission does he want us to fulfill? If you figure out how to get him to answer those questions, let me know.
Someone yesterday pointed out that it looked like I had been under a Satanic attack. I’m usually skeptical when people start talking about “Satanic attacks”—I think they often try to turn a bit of bad luck, a coincidence, or the consequence of a mistake they made into a “Satanic attack.” But the more I have thought about it, the more true it sounds. In March, I came back from the worship seminar with a clear vision for my future. And almost immediately I came under attack in every area of my life. I have sustained several attacks at work. My home business has been under attack. My finances were attacked—especially in April when the IRS wiped out my savings. And the work I do for Christ has been the particular target of sustained attack. (Even going to absurd extremes, like Emmaus losing my team service applications.)
All of this is going on at the time I have been wrestling with large questions of my purpose in life, and what I should do with the years ahead. And because all these attacks have strained many of my personal and family relationships, i’ve had to wrestle with these issues entirely on my own. Only prayer and perseverance have gotten me through the past few months. But the real breakthroughs began to occur about 6 or 7 weeks ago, when I turned to the scriptures, not just to study and learn, but to look for specific instructions that I could apply to my life today. Gradually I began finding some practical answers, especially in the words of Jesus and the letters of Paul. And as I tried acting out some of these instructions, the attacks began to dissipate.
A part of me wishes I had had some wise counselor in my life that could have simply told me where to look and what to do. They could have saved me a great deal of pain and struggle. But apparently God doesn’t want me reliant on any worldly advisers. And the result has been that I cannot remember a time in my life when I have been more utterly dependent on God, when I have thrown myself more completely on His mercy, when I have been more willing to engage fully with Him on matters of the heart, and to act in unquestioning obedience to His commands. As a result, things are happening in my life that I could not have planned or expected. Transformations in my thinking and character are taking place that no adviser, self-help book, or group could ever have brought about.
There’s a passage in 1 Corinthians 3:6-8 where Paul talks about how some till, some plant, some water, some harvest, etc.
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor.
The same is true in our lives. There are times when we are just tilling the soil, other times we are planting the seeds, or watering our garden. I talked in reading group about not feeling God’s presence. It’s easy to feel His presence when you’re enjoying the harvest, not so easy when your tilling the soil. But though I may not have “felt” HIm in a long time, I can see His fingerprint everywhere I look.
Now as the attacks subside, I can get back to the real work—the decisions I need to make about what to do with the rest of my life, the re-examination of my values and mission in life, and the discovery of God’s purpose for it. This is where it all began back in the beginning of March. Looking back at all the problems of the last few months, I can see them as diversions—temporary matters requiring my full attention but causing no permanent harm. Satan has been keeping me busy scurrying about, putting out fires. Sounds to me like God has a plan that Satan doesn’t want me to find out about. Well, “Sorry, Satan. You lose this round.”
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