Month: June 2022

Am I more determined to navigate my own course than leaving it to Him?

I read something similar to this the other day, and it gave me pause.  After careful consideration, I’d have to say a lot of times…yes, or maybe even most times.  I know, that shouldn’t be the case.  I should be relying on God to steer me through life’s happenings instead of trying to pilot my own course and trying to control the outcomes for myself and others.  When I’m piloting the course and trying to control the outcomes, which by-the-way I can’t do anyhow, that means I have a trust problem.

If I’m navigating my own course, or some might say trying anxiously to control, it means I do not trust Him.  Plain and simple.  Wait! No, I do trust Him, but…  We either trust Him or we don’t.  Granted, there is a disconnect sometimes between our minds and our hearts, sometimes we don’t always line up, remember the hind’s feet?  It is perilous when our back feet (heart and mind) don’t land in the front feet (soul and strength) steps?  We risk falling on the treacherous terrain.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. Luke 10:27

Trust.  Reliance.  Confidence.  Hope.  Faith.  Whatever you want to call it, we cannot stumble through life with half-trust, picking and choosing the situations that God is capable of handling and those that we must handle for Him.  This creates so many bad decisions on our part.

Trust is a tricky thing though.  We may feel it with our minds but don’t know it with our hearts.  Or, we may feel it with our hearts, but don’t know it in our minds.  Trust is getting it all to line up and that’s a process.

If I am more determined to navigate my own course, my life will be a constant battle, kind of like a Pushmi-Pullyu.  My head and my heart are connected to one body but constantly battling for control.  Visualize that.  Only when we give up control are we given freedom from the tug of war.  Freedom to trust.  Freedom to allow Him to navigate our lives.    If we are constantly trying to control the outcomes of life, we will never have freedom.

When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him.  Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was engulfed by the waves; but Jesus was sleeping.  The disciples went and woke Him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!”

“You of little faith,” Jesus replied, “why are you so afraid?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it was perfectly calm.

The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey Him!”

Matthew 8:23:27

Do we not think that the One that controls the waters of the earth cannot control the seas of our lives?  We are so like the Disciples charting our own course and then being engulfed by the waves.  Here’s the thing I love about this passage.  He rebuked the winds and the waves, but He did not rebuke the Disciples for their little faith!  I can’t imagine that the Disciples were not trying to control their boat during this storm.  I can’t imagine that they were not trying to navigate the waters, control the sails and bailing the water out of the boat.  I can’t imagine that they didn’t wake Jesus until they had tried everything they knew to do and nothing was working. I can’t imagine that they didn’t wake Him as a last resort. Only when they saw they were not able to manage the crisis did they cry out to Him.  I can relate!

And He answered. 

Freedom comes when we cry out to Him.  Our freedom comes when we trust Him enough to take control.  It is a process.  But just like the Disciples, we can breathe a sigh of relief when we see He is true to His promises and we can trust Him more.

Our eyes are peeled.  It’s that beautiful time of year when new life emerges.  We are so privileged to be able to witness, sometimes on a daily basis, new life.   You see it’s drop time.  That time when the does start dropping their fawns.  We spend time watching the fields to see if the pregnant doe yesterday is nursing a fawn today.  Nature teaches us some amazing things about our God. 

After a doe has delivered, it is her job to protect that baby.  I’m sure mother deer love their babies, but it’s not like we love our babies.  They love their babies out of instinct, out of a need to survive, or maybe it is the same. 

We know that in the animal kingdom it is definitely survival of the fittest, we all remember Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha’s…W-i-l-d K-i-n-g-d-o-m.  Frankly, W-i-l-d K-i-n-g-d-o-m was pretty ferocious and predictable.  We knew the ending every week, beautiful innocent animals just wandering around out for a meal, minding their own business, when suddenly something swoops in and the fittest prevails, yet we watched.  Brutal.  Back to the does.

So after a mother deer delivers, she’s right back to what we usually see her doing, eating.  She must stay strong in order to provide for her baby.  Oft times we don’t immediately see the fawn until it’s a few days old.  So, where is it?  Right where the mother leaves it.  You see a mother deer will bed down her fawn during the day.  She places it in a safe place, tells it to stay there and then heads off for sustenance.  It’s interesting to watch a mother deer bed down her baby.  She finds a protected, safe spot, pushes her baby down, and if it moves before she tells it to, she takes her nose and baps the baby on the head.  It only takes a bap or two for that baby to stay put.  It will stay put until the mother deer comes and retrieves it many hours later.  Some does put their babies down in the morning, head out for a day of foraging returning at the end of the day.  We once watched a retrieval.  It was amazing.  A mother deer returned to her bedded down baby under one of our fences (the one in the pic).  She paced back and forth the opposite fence line to make sure the coast was clear.  She then bleated from about 20 feet out and that baby jumped up and ran to her.  It recognized her voice. But, that baby would not move until called, under no circumstance.

That mother’s instinct is to protect her baby.  That mother enforced obedience with a bap on the head because she knew that her baby’s life depended on it.   That baby wandering from a safe place could end up the next episode of  W-i-l-d K-i-n-g-d-o-m. 

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve certainly had my share of baps on the head and there’ve been times when I should have had a bap on the head and the Lord was merciful.  Just like in the animal kingdom, obedience to Him is a matter of survival.  It is a matter of life or death.  And it is the exact same for us. 

At the end of the day, the doe calls to her young, they move off into the evening, the baby nurses and gains strength from the mother’s milk, and they bed down together.  It is absolutely no different for us.  We do not have to live out W-i-l-d K-i-n-g-d-o-m, but if we are not obedient to the Lord, we will.  This world is full of predators just waiting to attack the weak and defenseless.  Predators swoop in and the fittest will prevail.  When we are not obedient to Him we are the weak and defenseless.

The Israelites had traveled in the wilderness for forty years until all the men who were old enough to fight in battle when they left Egypt had died. For they had disobeyed the LORD, and the LORD vowed he would not let them enter the land he had sworn to give us—a land flowing with milk and honey.

Joshua 5:6

The Israelites are a great example.  Yet we probably don’t have to look that far.  Obedience to Him, for our own protection, keeps us from being devoured by this world.

The New Testament in Modern English, under the heading “Your knowledge of the truth should be your safeguard” states:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the faith and correcting error, for re-setting the direction of a man’s life and training him in good living.  The scriptures are the comprehensive equipment of the man of God, and fit him fully for all branches of his work.

2 Timothy 3:16

All we need to know to be obedient is in the Word.  All we need for life everlasting is in the Word of God.  Obedience is a choice. Every choice comes with consequences.  If we are not obedient to God, through His Word, we subject ourselves to the consequences and it won’t be a bap on the head.

Another walking revelation.  I don’t know why God’s promises are such a surprise to us sometimes.  Worst/Best and I were strolling along.  She can’t do much more than that these days and that’s just fine.  If we were out beating the pavement, we may have missed God’s teaching moment.

It was the wildest thing.  Looking at the mountain yesterday morning, I noticed the clouds rolling in north to south.  At first I thought it was smoke because the clouds were billowing,  they were in front of the mountain and not on top, and they were moving at a visible clip.  As I looked, it was as if a cloud machine had exploded.  It was surreal to watch the clouds rolling along in real time.  Within a matter of a minute the visible mountain was invisible.  The clouds had rolled in and completely masked the mountain.  If you didn’t know there was a mountain there, you wouldn’t know there was a mountain there.

But, in another minute, the clouds had moved on, and the mountain was visible again and as I looked north to south I could see that what was once visible and then invisible was now visible again.  For literally 90 seconds I stood and watched the cloud crossing – mountain, no mountain, mountain.  It dawned on me then that this is exactly what life is like, maybe for you too.

One minute we can see the mountain clearly.  The next minute it is completely hidden.  The next the view is open.  Clouds constantly rolling through our lives.   Sometimes we can see clearly, sometimes not so much.  We may lose our focus and it may be a little hard for us to see Jesus.  Not because He has moved, but because we have allowed the clouds of our lives to move in front of Him.   Our focus has shifted.

The LORD is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him in truth.  Psalm 149:18

Even though the clouds roll in, Jesus is always there, ever present.  The answer to call on Him seems too simple to us.  It’s not dramatic enough.  It’s as easy as whispering His name.  Even though we may not see Him working in the cloud moment, He has promised that He will never stop working the miracle of healing, the miracle of salvation, the miracle of life for His children, even when the clouds obstruct our view.

My father never stops working, so why should I?

John 5:16

He’s true to His promises.

Does Kingdom work sometimes seem daunting to you? How to talk to others about Christ, how to tell of His glory to people who don’t want to listen? What do I say? What do I do? How do I do it? Who do I talk to? How do I talk to them? It’s sometimes tough to think that our soul mission on this earth is to reach other people for Christ and just not knowing what to do, how to do it, when to do it.

We all roughly know the story of David and Goliath. David a boy of 16-19 years old, hit a man nine feet tall with a stone and dropped him.  In a nutshell, that’s how the story goes, right?

Then Goliath, a Philistine champion from Gath, came out of the Philistine ranks to face the forces of Israel.  He was a giant of a man, measuring over nine feet tall!  He wore a bronze helmet and a coat of mail that weighed 125 pounds.  He also wore bronze leggings, and he slung a bronze javelin over his back.  The shaft of his spear was as heavy and thick as a weaver’s bean, tipped with an iron spearhead that weighed fifteen pounds.  An armor bearer walked ahead of him carrying a huge shield.  1 Samuel 17:4-7

Goliath was one huge dude.  It’s hard to even imagine what he looked like.  He was intimidating.  He was also confident, full of himself.  Twice a day for 40 days (sounds like the wilderness again, doesn’t it?) Goliath would come out and taunt the Israelites.  They were scared to death.   But it took something very small in the hands of someone very faithful to remedy the situation.  One stone.  Not a rock, or a boulder, but a small stone.

The Lord involves ordinary people when he does extraordinary things.  David, powered by God felled Goliath with just one stone.  The stone, without the power of God would never have sufficed.  You see, it wasn’t the stone.  It was the power of God through David.  Just like when Moses led the people to the sea, it wasn’t the staff that parted the waters.  It was the power of God through Moses.  Over and over in the scriptures – I feel like I say that a lot, but it’s true – The Lord gives us examples of His mighty power at work through us.  He worked through David.  He worked through Moses.

One of them was Lydia from Thyatira, a merchant of expensive purple cloth.  She was a worshiper of God.  As she listened to us, the Lord opened her heart and she accepted what Paul was saying.  Acts 16:14

He worked through Paul.  Paul was the messenger, but the Lord did the work.

“When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me by Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must all come true.”  Then he opened their minds to understand these many Scriptures.  “Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah must suffer and die and rise again for the dead on the third day.  With my authority, take this message of repentance to all the nations, beginning in Jerusalem.  There is forgiveness of sins for all who turn to me.”

Luke 24:44-45

It happened again.  The scriptures of old gave the message, but Jesus did the work.  He opened the minds of the disciples to understand the scriptures.  Had he not done so, the scriptures would have just been words on a scroll, nice stories, history. 

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news of peace and salvation, the news that the God of Israel reigns!  Isaiah 52:7

It happened again.  The feet on the mountain brought the news,  but Jesus did the work.  Isaiah foretold of the deliverance to come.  He became sin who was sinless in our place so that we may be saved.  Hallelujah!  That’s good news those feet were taking everywhere.  We are to be tellers of the peace, salvation and deliverance that has come!

The smallest tract may be the stone in David’s sling.

In the hands of Christ, it may bring down a giant soul.

Robert Murray McCheyne

That’s how it will work with us as well.  The smallest word.  The smallest gift.  The smallest gesture.  The smallest act.  All may bring down a giant soul.  Not a comparable sized giant, not an expert sling shot operator, but a faithful shepherd stepping up and allowing Jesus to d the work in and through him.  Not because of what we do, but because of who He is.  We speak only to the ear but God speaks to the heart.

This is our field that was just planted.  Just a week ago the fields were dead, they looked just terrible.  The farmer had come in and sprayed the fields to get rid of all the weeds before planting.  The weeds had taken over the field leaving it brown and scraggly looking.  You would think nothing would be able to grow in them. Then they came in and right on top of that dead looking field they planted soybean seeds.  The amazing thing about it is that the seeds are growing, even with all the dead weeds around them.  The water from the rains and the heat from the sun have caused the seeds in the soil to burst open.  The soybeans are growing among the weeds.  Soon the green, bushy soybean plants will completely choke out the dead weeds.

This reminds me of our walk with Jesus.  With the right amount of water and Son, we can grow where He plants us.  Maybe to the soybean plants that have just popped through it looks a little daunting, all those overpowering weeds around.  But, we’ve felt that way a time or two, haven’t we?

As I walk and look out at that field, so many lessons for me come to mind.  The seeds are planted deep in the soil.  He sends the rains to nourish, refresh and cleanse the soil of impurities, and He sends the Son to draw us upward to Him.  God doesn’t wait until our lives are completely cleaned up to move in.  God’s grace and mercy can grow in our hearts even when we still have weeds that need plucked.  In fact, God will help us with the weeds because the more the freshly planted seed grows, the less weeds there will be in our lives.  Growth is an amazing process.  Just like the soybean seeds, if they are not growing we are dying.  We must consciously absorb the water and reach for the Son so that we’re not choked out by the weeds.

Just like God can change a field that is completely overrun with weeds and scraggly brush, He can change our hearts, one row at a time.