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MUFHH: do you now believe?

We need to rely on the resurrection life of Jesus on a much deeper level than we do now. We should get in the habit of continually seeking His counsel on everything, instead of making our own commonsense decisions and then asking Him to bless them. (Oswald Chambers, MUFHH)

just this morning, before i turned on the computer, i was thinking about the fact that i seldom seek God's counsel on everything in my life. in my mind, it almost seems excessive. after all, doesn't he have better things to do than have to deal with the minute areas of my life? didn't he give me common sense and a relatively intelligent mind to use?

one of the people i work for loves to tell me to 'make it go away' when we talk about certain tasks. and for the most part, i can usually do just that. which is why the sensible, responsible, independent side of me balks at the idea of taking everything to God. i should be able to handle some things myself.

so, first i read today's reading from MUFHH, and you can see where that got me. then, i switched over the youversion.com bible reading plan, and today's psalm is number 104. and at first it seemed to strengthen my argument, that God is great and mighty, and has so many more important things to do than to take care of all the small details of my life... and then the psalmist goes from talking about the creation of the heavens, to birds building nests, rocks as shelter for animals, making wine to make us glad, and bread and oil to keep us fed and happy, and then suddenly, my argument fell to pieces.

Psalm 104
Let all that I am praise the LORD.
O LORD my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and majesty.
You are dressed in a robe of light.You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens;
you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds. You make the clouds your chariot; you ride upon the wings of the wind.
The winds are your messengers; flames of fire are your servants.
You placed the world on its foundation so it would never be moved.
You clothed the earth with floods of water, water that covered even the mountains.
At your command, the water fled; at the sound of your thunder, it hurried away.
Mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels you decreed.
Then you set a firm boundary for the seas, so they would never again cover the earth.
You make springs pour water into the ravines, so streams gush down from the mountains.
They provide water for all the animals, and the wild donkeys quench their thirst.
The birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the trees.
You send rain on the mountains from your heavenly home, and you fill the earth with the fruit of your labor.
You cause grass to grow for the livestock and plants for people to use. You allow them to produce food from the earth—
wine to make them glad, olive oil to soothe their skin, and bread to give them strength.
The trees of the LORD are well cared for— the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.
There the birds make their nests, and the storks make their homes in the cypresses.
High in the mountains live the wild goats, and the rocks form a refuge for the hyraxes.
You made the moon to mark the seasons, and the sun knows when to set.
You send the darkness, and it becomes night, when all the forest animals prowl about.
Then the young lions roar for their prey, stalking the food provided by God.
At dawn they slink back into their dens to rest.
Then people go off to their work, where they labor until evening.
O LORD, what a variety of things you have made! In wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your creatures.
Here is the ocean, vast and wide, teeming with life of every kind, both large and small.
See the ships sailing along, and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea.
They all depend on you to give them food as they need it.
When you supply it, they gather it. You open your hand to feed them, and they are richly satisfied.
But if you turn away from them, they panic. When you take away their breath, they die and turn again to dust.
When you give them your breath, life is created, and you renew the face of the earth.
May the glory of the LORD continue forever! The LORD takes pleasure in all he has made!
The earth trembles at his glance; the mountains smoke at his touch.
I will sing to the LORD as long as I live. I will praise my God to my last breath!
May all my thoughts be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD.
Let all sinners vanish from the face of the earth; let the wicked disappear forever. Let all that I am praise the LORD. Praise the LORD!

day 9: choosing to trust

reading: genesis 17, 18; psalms 19-21; matthew 11

something that God has been working on in me {for a while now} is the bigger question of trust. of course, if you asked me if i trusted God, my immediate answer would be yes, and in the quick second, it would be true. there are many things that i trust God for.

but in the following seconds, when i actually thought about my life, the bigger aspects of my life, health, family, finances, job, etc., my answer would begin to waver. yes, i want to trust God with everything, but that age-old question keeps rearing its ugly head, can God be trusted? does God think important the things that i do? are we on the same page? {which basically translates, to am i on God's page.}

i wrote a post last month about whether or not it matters why we choose to trust God. while i'm still not sure of the answer, i think all i can do is in this moment, even when all my fears and failures are haunting me, choose to trust him. and in five minutes, i will need to make the choice again. and probably a thousand other times today, will i need to choose to trust in God, and not in all the horses and chariots of my life that tempt me to trust in them instead of God.

like so many things in life, it comes down to a choice...

okay...

...so the advent thing didn't work out. it's funny how you can plan and plan, and decide to finally do something that you've been wanting to forever, and then the busyness/insanity of life takes over and totally derails you.

so...i have a new plan.

based on either the youversion.com bible reading plan or the TBoTB bible reading plan, i will post the day's readings, and what i've been learning, and anyone wanting to follow along can share their thoughts of what they've been learning, and we can all grow together!

you can find the youversion bible reading plan here.

and the TBoTB reading guides here. (i'm going with the 'whole bible experience'- 6 days/week, average 15 minutes/day, all the books in the given order)

i hope you join me.

advent day three

readings: Isaiah 63:16-64:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

how are you waiting?

when you read the passage in 1 corinthians & contrast it with the one from the gospel of mark, you notice that there are two very different types of waiting going on. in 1 corinthians, paul speaks of 'eagerly' waiting for Jesus to be revealed. while in mark, Jesus talks about a less than eager type of waiting. waiting when you're tired. waiting when it's dark and you cannot see anything. waiting when you're tired of waiting.

the reality is that we can wait both ways for the same thing. sometimes it's easy to start out eagerly waiting for something, hoping that it's right around the corner. and then days go by. then weeks. somehow it becomes years, and still we find ourselves waiting. it's easy at this point to think that if it hasn't happened yet, then the probability of it happening today isn't very likely, so we decide to not watch. to not keep guard.

we humans can be entirely too fickle with anything that isn't right in front of our faces. if we are not constantly reminded of something, we have a grave tendency to simply forget it... and then believe that if we forgot it, then God must have forgotten it as well, so it really doesn't matter if we are waiting and being faithful where we are when we wait.

so i ask again, how are you waiting for whatever it is you are waiting for? are you waiting eagerly, or are you falling asleep, losing focus, forgetting the very thing on which you are waiting?

blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For those who find me find life and receive favor from the Lord.

~proverbs 8:34-35

advent day two

readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25; Luke 21:25-28, 34-36

who do you trust the most?

the psalmist in psalm 25 talks about trusting in God. he writes, "i trust in you...no one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame..."

is your hope in God, or in the things that you want from him? the israelites had hoped for a mighty king to come in and free them from the oppression of the romans, but what they got was a baby in a manger, who 33 years later would die to pave their way back to God. definitely not what they were hoping for.

but no one would deny that this was the much better option.

O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. (Psalm 130:7)

first sunday of advent

readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Matthew 24:37-44

advent is a time of expectation and waiting. the word itself means 'coming' or 'arrival', both signifying the lack of something for those doing the waiting. originally it was the israelites, awaiting their Savior. today, the bride of Christ awaits his return. but if we are honest with ourselves, we are all waiting for something in our lives.

• a family member to return.
• a dream to be realized.
• healing.
• reconciliation.
• a promise to be fulfilled.

waiting is not an easy pass time, because it reminds us that we are lacking something now. many don't want to be reminded of what they wait for, or even acknowledge it, as it almost seems like setting oneself up for failure, if the awaited thing never actually arrives.

advent asks us to slow down, and remember that as long as we are on earth, we will be lacking something. there is no way around it. and this paying attention can be painful. when you slow down enough that you can almost hear the israelites' heart cry, 'o come, o come Emmanuel', you can hear your own heart's hollow echo of the things that it still waits for.

but the beauty of advent is this: the awaited Messiah came. even though he was waited on for centuries... four hundred long years of waiting, painful silence between God and man, and even though he did not come as he was expected, Jesus still arrived right on time. the Messiah came, and while he was nothing that we thought he should be, he was everything that we needed.

so, whatever it is that you find yourself waiting for, take heart. the God who has his own timetable, who is more concerned with what we need than what we want, who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine {eph. 3:20} has not forgotten you.