Category Archives: how to be

Delving into God’s plan for us.

about God

One thing I know about us humans is that we’re really good at making everything about us.

Turns out this is an ancient trait. Today I’m reading in early Exodus; God has just called to Moses out of the burning-yet-not-consumed bush and explained His whole plan. Moses is simultaneously in awe and afraid to look at God while standing on holy ground, and obstinately answering Him with excuses. I can’t say I blame him – it’s not a job I’d choose for myself either. Returning to a place where I was a wanted criminal, where my family are slaves, and addressing the king of Egypt to get him to let us leave? Oh and I’ve been living in the wilderness as a shepherd for years – leading just sheep, not masses of people. Oh and I now have a family to think about.

When that’s your life and it’s what you know, it is unnatural to easily adapt to something foreign, a different paradigm, a disruption.

It’s unnatural for us, which is why it has to be supernatural.

Here’s the conversation in a nutshell:

God: I have come down to deliver Israel. I will send you.

Moses: Who am I?

God: I will be with you.

Moses: What if they ask me who You are?

God: I AM who I AM. I will bring you out of the affliction of Egypt. Israel will listen to you. I will strike Egypt. I will give Israel favour.

Moses: They won’t listen to me.

God: I’m giving you signs to do so they listen.

Moses: I am not eloquent.

God: I made your mouth. I will be with you.

Moses: Please send someone else.

(from Exodus 3 and 4)

I’m starting to see a pattern. Both God and Moses are fighting to be the center of the story, the person of consequence in the situation. God has explained His big picture plan to Moses: He wants to bring His people out of slavery into a good land, so Moses will go to Pharaoh and say specific things, then God will strike Egypt with wonders, then Pharaoh will let them go and they will leave with plunder and go to the land of promise. Moses frankly doesn’t agree, or he doesn’t believe God, or maybe both.

Every time God solves a problem, Moses not only doesn’t concede that, he also proposes a new one.

Why? We don’t know all of his motives, but I’m willing to bet there was fear involved, and uncertainty, and some shock, and feeling inadequate, and also some fear.

Initially Moses seems to fear God when they meet, but as conversation ensues he turns out to fear everyone else more. He fears his own people won’t believe him. He fears Pharaoh won’t listen. He fears not having the right answers, not speaking well, and just the whole thing in general. Moses was out of touch with the situation at this point; he didn’t know how Israel felt or what they would believe, but he went with his prediction rather than God’s promise.

I think one thing at the root of this fear and resistance is Moses’ inability to see beyond his own actions and limitations. He’s talking to the God of the universe, and he still thinks that all of this is between him and other people. Whereas God is constantly telling Moses what He will do. God is the one seeing, sending, acting, rescuing, leading, loving. He is the primary actor, but He’s also the story’s author. He moves people where they need to be. He does signs and wonders, He hardens Pharaoh’s heart, He softens Pharaoh’s heart, He lets Israel leave Egypt with an abundance of resources — oh, we can do this all day.

God didn’t need Moses one lick. If He needed only Moses, he wouldn’t have responded to his request to choose someone else by conceding to let Moses’ brother help. This is the God who made a way through a sea on dry land. This is the God who has power over life and death. He didn’t need Moses. But He chose Moses.

I wonder, did Moses know he wasn’t ever supposed to live very far past birth? Did he know he survived beyond the odds such that he would be nursed by his own mother but raised in the royal family not as a slave, so that he would be in a position of freedom giving him the capacity to defend a slave (yes, unfortunately via murder), so that he would flee to where he would come across the daughters of the priest of Midian and assist them, so that he would be invited in and later marry one of those daughters, so that he would stay in Midian as a humble shepherd, so that he would stumble across a burning bush in the wilderness, thereby stumbling into the presence of the living God, leading to this very conversation?

Everything up to this point, and everything after it, was not a series of accidents. That’s as true for you and me as for Moses.

How often do we put limits on what God can do simply because we are limited? How often do we think that what’s happening in our lives and in the world is all between people, and that people are the ones who make things happen?

And when God sends you, or gives you something to do, how easily does it become about you? Are you by default the main character? I am. My needs, my feelings, my actions, my contributions, my deficiencies — they all play a much bigger role in my head and heart than in reality.

This is that different paradigm, the one that’s supernatural. What could change if I believed that God and His doings and His character were of the utmost consequence, and I was only a minor player (if that)?

I would engage in arguments differently, knowing that a) God is the one who will change a mind or a heart, b) whatever we’re arguing about is far smaller than what God is doing eternally, and c) each of us is part of that eternal story.

I would regret less at the end of an unproductive day, because I believe that God did what He wanted to today, and His plans can’t be hindered by my failure. But I’d also be encouraged to start a new day, not feeling the pressure of changing the world but the invitation to be faithful in the next thing, and the next.

My prayers would change. I’d ask God what He’s doing and how He wants me to be part of it (if He does). I’d do that before making plans to fill a calendar.

I’d respond to assignments and invitations from Him more joyfully, knowing that even though I feel stretched to the point of pain and have nothing to give anyone, He is working, will sustain me, and will do all the giving the other person needs. Dying to self includes acknowledging that whatever God is doing is more important than what I want or think I need. Yet how kind He is, that He gives me Himself and all I need when I seek Him and His kingdom.

The implications are too many to enumerate. But let’s go back to Moses for a second. We gave him a hard time.

Spoiler: he did it. He did what God instructed, after all those obstacles he furnished. He went to Egypt and met with his people and showed them the signs. And did he have to argue with them about whether God had sent him? NO. They believed and worshiped, because God had seen them. Now that is the way to respond to God. That’s one of Israel’s best moments, in my opinion. They believed, and they worshiped – two things that make total sense when God is the center of the story. The humility of gratitude when you realize the Lord of creation has seen you; what mercy is this?!

And Moses kept doing the things given to him to do. Yep, he did them imperfectly, enough that he saw the promised land but ended his days outside of it. Yet God continually brought him into His presence, spoke to him, and chose him to lead His people. And we see that this was the plan all along, and that even in his early life he demonstrated he would be a protector and an advocate as God had designed him. He defended a fellow Israelite, and he defended Jethro’s daughters against attacking shepherds. The former made him a fugitive, but the latter brought him into a family – what an improvement in a short time. 😉

And over the years, God shaped him and would neither let him get away with anything, nor let him go. He advocated for his people to Pharaoh and to God Himself. He went on for the rest of his life that way, and then when God chose, he died. Deuteronomy 34 tells us that “his eye was undimmed, and his vigor unabated” at 120 years old, yet God decided it was time. Because God is the author. And though he was flawed and had failed in many ways, “there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face…”

Notice there that it was the Lord who knew Moses; God is still the subject, even in this poignant description of Moses.

Friend, whether you do signs and wonders, whether you’re famous or unknown at your death, whether you raise children or watch others’ grow up, whether you succeed at everything you set your hand to or face constant frustration, whether you have a retirement savings and an inheritance to give or can barely afford your bills, whether you make it to the promised land or everything comes crashing down around you, whether you can speak well or fumble every time, whether you’re respected or ignored or disdained or adored —

Let it be said of you that the Lord knew you face to face, that you believed and worshiped, and that your life testified that your life and the world and the universe and all eternity is always and forever about God.

soon. not yet.

40 days after Christ’s resurrection, He met His followers one last time.

So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.

(Acts 1:6-9)

Jesus’ ascension must have been confounding. After all His disciples had seen Him do, surely restoring Israel to her former glory and freedom would have been easy and swift. Instead, He left them with the promise of His presence and the massive undertaking of what we call the Great Commission. Like them, we are told to be faithful and ready… and to wait in the incompletion, in the middle of the story. While Christ’s work on the cross is finished, not everything is yet renewed or whole. 

I have this image in my mind of sitting on a cozy sofa under a blanket, against a window, holding a cup of hot drink, reading a book. To me, this seems like The Best Activity. But when I try to recreate it for myself, it’s always more complicated than that; the way I initially sat down isn’t optimally comfy, my leg itches, I spill on myself, the blanket isn’t over my feet, I suddenly need a tissue, my drink cools quickly. But my mind remembers how it’s supposed to be because it’s clinging to the picture. I end up longing for my ideal rather than engaging contentedly with my present experience.

You’ve seen photos of people at the tops of mountains – glorious views behind them, wide smiles, triumphant postures, satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. We see these and forget that they’re only halfway done – they will need to descend. And when I hike, I remember acutely the cost of the climb – sweat, effort, stumbles, hard breaths, pain. And often, the descent is trickier, depending on conditions. There’s of course beauty along the way, but the mountaintop photo op doesn’t show the process.

I tend to experience many of these dissonant moments, wherein the tension between the real and the ideal pains me, and my disappointment distracts me from gratitude. And I see this being the case for the Church as well. Dietrich Bonhoeffer notes that if we love our ideal of community, we will kill the real thing.1 Scripture provides us an ideal, but also acknowledges that we will encounter much that falls short of that, including ourselves; and it gives us guidance for moving forward in that reality, knowing that we are being sanctified all the time.

Bonhoeffer also provides insight to reframe our experiences, to redirect our attention. Rather than harping on someone’s sin, remember that you, like her/him, are in need of Christ’s saving grace, and He died for both of you. What a thing to have in common with your brother or sister! So disappointment and frustration can turn to gratitude for the other and for God’s kindness to both of you. And the experience is transformed.

Friend, even on the mountaintop, do we feel really finished? When I’m up there, I still find myself longing for more, wishing I could fully take in the beauty that lies before me. But it feels too big. Every sweet and beautiful moment feels simultaneously like too much goodness tangled with a yearning. And if I listen to the yearning, it’s drawing me toward God. In Whom there is so much more of the beauty, the fullness, the shalom.

Why does some beauty hurt so much? Is any beauty in this world separate from pain? Some beauty emerges from or in spite of pain. But some causes it. It’s like the pain of stretching a little more than you’re used to, like you’re trying to hold what is before you with what is to come. There’s that tension; we’re tearfully grateful and indignantly angry. We think we know how things should be, but it cannot be achieved just yet.

So here’s some stuff I know now.

  • Nothing will be perfect or perfectly just.
  • I cannot ultimately meet anyone’s needs.
  • I will not always succeed.
  • I won’t be quite complete, a finished product, nor will I be as special as I wish.
  • I won’t always understand or know what I want to know.
  • Not everything will be awesome.
  • People will let me down and hurt me.
  • There will not always be peace.

Because this isn’t it. This isn’t the end. This is barely the beginning.

Jesus is in the business of transformation, and one day, the ideal – the fullness of His glory, the perfection of creation – will be the real, and what a wonder that will be. For now, we are in-between. We are redeemed, and we are being renewed. Until then, He has given us to pursue the ideal, but to love the real.

We will never achieve the ideal until Christ Himself does it by making all things new once and for all.

And beloved, He will do it.

Let’s long for Him. Only Him.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Posterity shall serve him;
    it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
    that he has done it.   (Psalm 22:30-31 ESV)

“Do not look sad. We shall meet soon again.”

“Please, Aslan,” said Lucy, “what do you call soon?”

“I call all times soon,” said Aslan; and instantly he was vanished away.

– C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

(John 14:3)

1 Life Together

look up, soul

It sounds silly but I’m starting to read Scripture looking for God, not for my next assignment. I’m trying to take myself out of the picture for a minute. I’ve been reading through Isaiah, which can confound me every time, but since I’ve been looking for God, I’ve seen so much in these chapters. I might not understand what’s happening in the prophecies and stories, but I have a clear picture of who God is and what He is like, and this leads me straight into prayer, which is really where I need to be.

So I thought I’d share a glimpse into what this looks like, in the event that it is at all helpful or insightful for you. I’ve written a conversation that I had with God one day. He’s in bold italics, and I’m in regular type.

…………..

Lord, what did you wake me up to do today?

Trust me.

How do I trust you?

Believe what I say about Myself.

[What I found in Isaiah 26: 

source of salvation

source of peace

everlasting

immovable

trustworthy

all-powerful

just

righteous

majestic

loving

passionate

completer of our works

the only living God

glorified

source of life and resurrection

wrathful

Then I thought about myself again.]

Am I any of those? Even “loving” and “passionate” make me question if I really am.

These properties belong to God alone. Soul, hear and listen and learn – why tremble at what life brings when your God is the source of salvation? What shall you fear? Where else will you go? Be still, my heart, and know that He is God. He will neither abandon nor condemn you. But He will raise you to new life every new day. Will you not give over your fears, your wounds, your despair?

Will you trust Me?

…………..

See, I didn’t get very far. He said the same thing at the beginning and the end of the conversation. But He was patient, wasn’t He? He gave me exactly what I needed: more of Himself. To see Him. I didn’t need a next action; I needed another glimpse of Him.

So often, we want answers, direction, clarity. So often, God chooses to give us just what we need, instead.

#lookup