The children of Isreal lived in tents for a long time. I, personally, love tenting. The rugged out doors, cooking over a fire, showers heated by solar power; Sand in your sleeping bag, a buddy system for walking to the bathroom because it’s dark. It’s great! For about a week. Could you imagine spending years in a tent? It would be managable, but not comfortable. And tents break. Much more easily than I thought they did. So you would be repairing constantly. So why were the children reduced to tenting? Because tents are mobile. They weren’t where they were supposed to be yet, so God didn’t let them settle down. He wanted to keep them moving so He kept them in tents.
If you are uncomfortable right now with life, it may be because God doesn’t want you to remain where you are, spiritually, financially, geographically; God may be trying to keep you moving. He might be saying to not put dow roots, to stop building a foundation, because you aren’t where He wants you to be yet. Maybe He wants you to toss your tent in your rucksack and keep moving forward.
Category: Devotional
The one with the magic
The Magician’s Assistant
The stage is saturated in fake fog. The lights are set low and a single spot lights up on stage. Out you step to the roar of the crowd and you begin your show. In the backgroud your assistant sweats and works as He pulls the cords and activates the sounds and releases trap doors, meanwhile you make elaborate hand gestures and cascade around the radious of your spotlight. In the end you sit on the edge of the stage signing autographs, and the hard working helper? He is still working to clean up the tricks before anyone comes and sees how the magician pulled it all off.
We are magician. Sitting on the edge of the stage, basking in the glory of what we accomplished. But it wasn’t us. How often do we take credit for what God has done? He sets the stage, He makes all the lights and props do what they are supposed to. He cleans up the mess we make. But do we even give Him the credit He deserves? Shouldn’t He be the one signing autographs?
We all need to remember to give the credit back to God. Because He should be the magician we assist. We are nothing amazing without God. No one is.
What was that God?
It isn’t that God no longer speaks to us, we have just forgotten how to listen.
God has never been very loud. To be honest there are times when I feel like Horton listening to the clover. And usually while listening you get a lot of loud and obnoxious things come up to distract you and then you lose all hope ever hearing what you thought was the voice again so you give up. Yep. That’s me too. But the point is to not give up entirely and to instead try again. You might be surprised at how Good God is at repeating Himself. I was. He doesn’t get annoyed and say, ‘weren’t you listening the first time?’ He just quietly repeats Himself again and again until you nod and go, ‘okay God, I’ve got it now.’ Just keep listening, and when you think you hear God pause and ask, ‘what did you say God?’ See what He says.
Power of a leader
In a land untouched by modern schemes and civilization lived a man. He was in training to be a powerful warrior of his land. Once he passed his final test he would be privalaged to read the tribe’s two scrolls of power, the scrolls were the reason the tribe was so powerful. On a bright and moon filled night the tribe was attacked, the man fled with the two scrolls so that the attackers would chase him and leave the tribe alone. In a desperate flight he managed to avoid the attackers for a very short period of time before being captured, but he managed to hide the scrolls. After several days of suffering the man was rescued. He returned to his tribe a different person until his people found the scrolls and the tribe leader chose to show them to the man. He opened the scrolls with care, in astonishment the man read on one worn scroll the words, kindness, on the other he read, loyalty. The man stared at the tribe leader, who nodded with a smile. “Our power comes from being kind to all our people and being viciously loyal to them also. We would have given the scrolls to the attackers if need be, their presence means nothing to our tribe, but their words are the foundation of our whole existence. Those words are worth protecting. As are those cheractoristics within your heart. Guard your loved ones loyaly and always treat them with kindness and you will always find a helping hand where you need one.” The man’s heart swelled and he realized that it was the kindness of his leader and the loyalty of his people that had rescued him from the attackers, and that when he thought about it, that truly was the heart of his tribe.
To be a powerful leader you require loyalty to your people and your cause, and kindness to those around you. Jesus is the most powerful leader, and He leads with kindness to us and loyalty to His Father. Because, as the little girl in children’s church said, “That’s because our Father God loves all of is equally.”
Siblings with you
As brothers and sisters in Christ I have always felt a certain connection to my ‘siblings.’ As in where when a Christian does something amazing I feel proud of them, but when we do something shameful I have noticed that that reflects on all of us.
I never want to feel shame for being connected to other Christians, and some of the time the Christians doing shameful things are Christian in name only, not always, but sometimes. Sometimes even pastors do things that are shameful to God. In fact all of us do from time to time. But I am sure that we all enjoy that feeling of pride about being Christian and connected to Christ. Proud of who Jesus is and that we know Him. When one of us does something bad it is natural for the world to point a finger at all of us as a whole. I don’t mean those things that we are working through, I mean the things like protests. Sorry guys. That’s not Christ like. Riots. Not a WWJD moment. Slander. Too many do that. I constantly hear non-Christians say, ‘I would like to go to church but the Christians don’t want me there.’
We aren’t better than anyone else guys. Sorry ’bout that, but we aren’t. Jesus is. Only Jesus is.
We need to act in a way that cause other Christians to be pleased about their Christ Saved identity and to not hide their heads and appomogize for being Christian.
All of us do great things for God too. Big things and little things. We are capable of amazing. Let’s aim for that. Or at the very least, can we aim for being more Christian in our actions. Not in a ‘holier than thou way.’ But in an, ‘trying my best to be my best’ way.
Let’s be proud again to be Christian.
What did our triumphs grow in us?
As our trials bleed into triumphs, what do we look like on the inside? A little worn? A little battered? A little stronger? A little braver?
It’s okay if your trials have left damage behind, God can easily clean that up, and Jesus has that damage on him too because He was going through the trial with you. Muscle gets stronger by being torn down and built up again. Our hearts are the same. Every time we are torn apart we come back stronger. Aren’t we stronger than we were as children? As pre-teens? As teenagers? As adults? We are enduring creatures. We grow. We are stronger than yesterday. Stronger than a week ago. Even stronger than we were five minutes ago, because our strong God is giving us His strength to live on. Thank you Jesus for never leaving me torn down, but for instead making me grow stronger and giving me your strength. Amen.
Be my neighbor…
Are we neighbor’s?
Who are you a neighbor to?
Mr. Roger’s theme song was always the best part of his show, to me at least.
what a beautiful day in the neighborhood, what a beautiful day for neighbors, won’t you be mine?
So, how are we neighborly?
The pastor I heard this week said something really good, he said ‘we are neihbors by being selfless.’
Jesus was a great neighbor because He worked through compassion, but our thoughts get in they way and say, ‘but that person deserves what they get.’ Or ‘oh well, I tried.’ Or the most common, ‘I have problems too.’
Guess what? Jesus also had problems. And He knew better than anyone that we deserved what we got, but He never stops trying. He always reaches out a hand, no matter how many times we swat it away and say, ‘I’m doing it alone!’ He never turns away from our cries. He never gives up on us.
Jesus is our neighbor. Who are we neighbors to?
Where is Jesus?
My aunt told me a story once. Her Church had put on a skit about Jesus and His relationship with us. In the skit, the main character decides to have his prayer time, he hadn’t done it all day and knew he needed to knuckle down. First a friend calls and offers to take the person to a football game. ‘Jesus’ puts on a jersey and gets ready to go, but the person tells the friend that he can’t go and needs to pray, so Jesus takes off the jersey and sits down. Next a friend offers to take the person to a concert, Jesus starts to put on his shoes to go but the person refuses the friend because he needs to pray. Jesus takes His shoes off and sits down again. A third time a friend calls and this time invites the person to a party and says that the person’s crush will be there, that convinces the person to give in and go, Jesus gets up to put His shoes back on but the person turns to him and says, ‘no, you stay here.’ Before leaving.
What’s the point?
Jesus isn’t the God of the moment you choose to read your Bible, but not God of the drive to work, the marathon you choose to run for cancer, or the afternoon you spend binging Netflix with your friend. He is the God of all of it. He wants you to have fun, but He wants you take him with you when you go to have that fun. He doesn’t want to be left behind to guard the sanctuary of your prayer room, He wants to go with you so He can guard the sanctuary of your heart. Jesus wants to be with you. And if you feel like you are going someplace you can’t take Him, then should you be going there in the first place?
Don’t leave Jesus on the cross. Let Him live in your heart and follow you where you go, as you follow where He leads you.
It hurts, help me God
Giving over to God’s will is perfect, it is what needs to happen. -But-. There are areas where God’s will hurts. Or where we aren’t sure what His will is. What then? Then we submit to the unknown of God. The mystery. The power that you can’t see. Thy will be done God. In everything in my life.
(Knowing that God asks you to live a certain way for your own benefit….will help you desire to know His ways and to live in them. -Stormie Omartain)
Controlled by a slug
I am often surprised at how Studio Ghibli manages to hit it on the nose. Today as I re-watched Spirited Away for the first time since blockbuster rentals shut down, I was again amazed at how they make a pointed relation between the characters and we everyday humans who cannot turn into dragons. In the movie Haku (the secondary main cheractor) becomes sick and (through a magical medicine) ends up coughing out a black slug. When the slug comes out the old man that is there says how no one knew where the boy had come from, he had just showed up one day, but claimed he could never go home. Then the witch got ahold of him and made him her henchman, after that his skin turned pale and his eyes grew steely. Isn’t that just like us? How often have we wondered from our home? From our God, And found ourselves feeling we could never go back? How often have we been taken by evil and had a black slug planted in us, the slug could have many names; hate, jealousy, pride, guilt, shame, so on and so on. Suddenly we are controlled by a witch who yanks us about and forces us to do their will, but we tell ourselves that we can’t go home. How badly we need the healing medicine of Jesus’ love to wrench the slug out of our hearts so we can be free again. He is waiting for us to come to Him and ask for him to heal us, but we have to be the ones to turn to him. Jesus isn’t afraid of your black slugs. He isn’t disgusted by what they have made you do. He loves you. He wants you back home. Turn to Him and go home.
Carried in the cross 