Worship the King

I went to the church to worship the King, but this is what I found:

No preacher preaching, nor grand choir singing, just children standing round.

On the left, some sparkly angels with sweet and nervous faces,

On the right, small shepherd boys were trudging to their places,

And in the back were wise men, with paper crowns upon their head;

And, down in front, is Mary by a little manger bed.

Oh my, look, a tiny shepherd boy has nodded off to sleep.

Giggles are heard, but grandpa steps up, to help this child keep

His place on the stage, and his part in the telling of this vital story,

Of the babe who came to bring men peace, all the way from glory.

So, from the first warbled notes of Silent night,

To the wise men’s tale of the star so bright;

From the inn with no room and a cold manger bed,

All the way thru, til the last lines were said,

The man carried that boy where the shepherd boys went,

To every place that those shepherds were sent.

And so the story was once again told, for every ear to hear,

The message proclaimed for one more time, “O men be of good cheer”.

For a Savior comes to redeem mankind,

And in the manger you will find,

A King wrapped up in swaddling clothes

We tell it now so that each man knows.

Well, That tiny boy has played his part, even sleeping sound,

For twas love that caused the dear old man to carry him around.

Twas love that caused the Christ to come and in a manger lay,

Twas love that caused that Christ to take, our every sin away.

I went to the church to worship the King and this is what I found:

No preacher preaching, nor grand choir singing, just children standing round.

Standing round a manger bed to tell the tale and sing.

And all together we joined hearts and worshiped our great King.

A Broad Spacious Place

Psalm 18

     I am going to take a break from the full and empty series.  I have something else on my mind today.  It probably stems from the mini mission trip to the prison I made last week.  A few of us from church went and did a chapel service for the inmates at Cummings prison in Southern Arkansas.  

     I have to admit I was hesitant at first to participate in this outing.  The thought of clanking doors locking behind me played with my tendency to feel a little claustrophobic at times.  I could picture myself in a panic not able to breathe making quite the fool of myself.  

    I'm not sure why I changed my mind.  Maybe the good Lord had a hand in that and I am quite sure He gave me added strength and stability to meet the challenge.

    While I was there I thought about the hurdles these men would face in putting their lives back in order.  Having a record tagging along with you can't be easy. I wondered about the shame factor. I wondered how hard it would be to get past the stigma of having been a prisoner.

      There are many things in life that can lock us into a flawed mental picture of ourselves.  Messing up, breaking laws, failing to live up to our own expectations, or someone else's expectations of us. There is an endless list of circumstances that can narrow our own view of ourselves.

    Having parents that leave us, or parents that can never be pleased no matter how hard we try. Having a spouse who walks out.  Having a child that wanders way off the beaten trail.  Making bad choices that land us in jail or rehab.  All these things have the power to shrink how we see ourselves into a person of that one circumstance.  I am a failure in this area thus I am a failure.  This person does not accept me probably no one will accept me, I'm unacceptable.  My father left me maybe everyone will leave me.  I'm not worth hanging with.

   Why have I titled this little talk Psalm 18?  Because it is filled with good stuff to counteract narrow vision.  I was doing some major struggling with father/daughter stuff and found much help and strength in this Psalm.

   I love, love, love this song written by David.  David had struggles and battles, failures and regrets, but one thing about David he was real before his God. He did not let his failures, his sin, or other people's view of him steal away his relationship with almighty God, or limit what God had planned for his life.
     God gives us our value.  In the first three verses David identifies his God as: my strength, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my shield, horn of my salvation, and my stronghold.  God was real and personal to David and David knew that He is worthy to be praised.  After the words detailing the role God played in his life, David goes on to document all the ways that God had been faithful.   Right about in the middle of all this recounting, praise and acknowledgement of God's wonderfulness is a rich nugget.

   Verse 19 says: He also brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me.

    This may have been a military situation for David, I'm not sure what the broad place represented in Davids life, but I could tell that a broad place is a good place.

     I had put myself into a very small place.  It was a place controlled by how one person treated me. This wonderful little verse reminded me that's not all there is to me.  In reality how God sees me is the real thing.  When I became a child of God, He brought me out into a broad place.  I'm not just a "cast aside" daughter.  I'm a wife, a mother, a grandmother.  My broad place began to get broader and broader. I'm a sister, an aunt, a friend, a Sunday school teacher. The paralyzing emphasis I had been putting on one painful area of my life started to shrink. 

  With the wonderful reminder that God delights in me it became easier to put things into perspective.  The sting of rejection, the shame of mistakes, the weight of regret can cause us to not be able to see past those circumstances.  God delights in you and He has a future and a broad place for you.  Blessings.

Filled or Empty Series #4: Filled with Complaints

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#4  Filled or Empty of Series

Filled with complaints

  You will find in chapter 14 of Exodus the account of the miraculous way that God brought deliverance through the Red sea. In chapter 15 you will find the song that Moses and the people sang to the Lord. What a glorious time of celebration and praise. Then they traveled on and three days later instead of praise we hear complaining about no water. God took care of that for them and on they went.

Then in Chapter 16 we find the Israelites in quite a state. It has been about a month and a half since they left the bondage of Egypt and now the horrors of the bondage is starting to dim and they have lost their vision of the Promised Land. This was taking too long. Maybe what they had wasn't so bad. The here and now was beginning to feel intolerable so the complaining began in earnest.

There are plenty of situations in scripture that deal with being filled or being empty that have really good life lessons for us and quite honestly I wanted to skip this one about being filled with murmuring and complaining and jump ahead to the next one, but God slowed me down and showed me some things in my own life and guided me not to skip over this.

When I read this section of scripture, I can't help but wonder; did it not occur to any of these complainers to suggest a prayer meeting about the problems that came up? I mean come on. What on earth happened to their faith? Did they not have one speck of faith that the God who had done all those things in Egypt and parted the Red Sea could still meet their needs?

It is so easy to think these people were crazy. They were witness to some of the greatest miracles of all times and yet they were saying "we should have stayed where we were." Really? Back into bondage? Back to slavery? Back to where the ruler's population control program meant your boy children were thrown into the river. Really? Go back? What a bunch of whiners.


Exodus 16: 1-10The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?” 8 Moses also said, “You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.”
9 Then Moses told Aaron, “Say to the entire Israelite community, ‘Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’”
10 While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud. NIV


I imagine their lack of faith irritated the almighty. It irritates me and I don't even know those people. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Ok, now I have to get real. I don't know those whiners but I do know the one I see in the mirror every day. I told you God didn't want me to skip this one. He knows I need this reminder.

I have to admit that often I complain instead of pray. It seems so innocent, like....I wish this situation would be different, or I wish that person would stop being....whatever. I wish things would happen faster. I wish our leaders would do things differently. I wish this or that for this person or that person. (I am putting this all mildly of course.)

I have to ask myself, do I just wish things were different or do I have a little prayer meeting and pray and ask God to change things that need to change. Do I pray believing that He cares about the situations around me, and do I pray believing He can change things?

Complaining and whining is kind of the opposite of faith and it is offensive to God. Dear Lord, help me to be strong in my faith and diligent in my prayer life trusting You.

Those folks that left Egypt and got discouraged, lost faith, and lost sight of what God had already done. Think for a minute what He has done for us. He delivered us from bondage. He parted the waters of death making a path to our Promised Land. Jesus is our bread of life supplied daily for us and He is in us a fountain springing up. How do I forget these things even for a moment and lapse into times of worry and fretting and complaining?

We all (me mostly) need to remember what God has done for us and trust Him every day.

Filled or Empty Series #3:Filled with Israelites

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Filled and Emptied and Filled 

#3 in series

   Exodus 1: 1-7 says: These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5 The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy[a] in all; Joseph was already in Egypt. 6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. NIV
    Time marches on.  Generations come and go.  The generation of Joseph and his brothers came and went.  Pretty soon the land was filled with Israelites.  I’m not sure, I’m not a king you see, never have been a king and don’t hope to ever be a king, so I don’t know how kings think, but to me this seems like one of those “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” kind of things.
   But, the king in this account imagined that he had a problem or a potential one and he decided to fix it.  He decided to nip it in the bud. Nip it, nip it, nip it as Barney Fife would say.  This king did not like the land being filled with Israelites.
   It might have been wiser to have made them friends, but he chose to make them enemies.  But the almighty, sovereign, God of all wisdom had His own plan in the midst of the king’s plan.  God always has a plan in the midst of all circumstances, in your circumstances.  It is good if our plans match God’s plans.  It works out better for us that way.
   Verses 8-14: 8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” 11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly. NIV
  When the king tried to remedy his “filled” problem it became even more “filled”.  So he doubled down.  I wonder if he ever once thought, “Maybe I should have left them alone.”  But no he proceeds to plan C.
Verses 15-19: 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”NIV
  These were some gutsy midwives.  I think they must have feared God more than they feared the king. They lied to the king.  The king was asking them to preform partial birth abortions and they said no.  If you have ever wondered what God’s view on abortion is I think we can safely assume He is pro-life.
Verses 20-22: 20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”NIV
   The king was not giving up. Population control plan D would begin.  He was getting down right crazy now.  The boy children were hunted down and cast into the river.
   On a side note, let me remind everyone right here that a Savior Redeemer was to come from this chosen group of persons, through the heritage of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and then Joseph/Israel.   God had made a promise to Abraham that all peoples on earth would be blessed through him. Genesis 12:3 NIV.   My side note is this; someone else was taking note of this plan.  Our spiritual enemy was lurking around taking notes.  Just maybe it was the enemy’s influence that caused this king to be so “threatened” by the peaceful people living among them.  “Kill the boy babies” came the evil order.  Does that have a familiar ring to it?  For Bible readers it should.  Another day, another king, these same evil words were spoken when the prophesied  Savior, Redeemer was born in Bethlehem.  King Herod gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.
   God’s hand of provision was clearly seen in Egypt.  His intent was to provide a deliverer for the Israelites and free them from their bondage, and, in doing so He would paint a big historical picture that would point to another deliverer who would come from these delivered people and who would free mankind from the bondage of sin. This awesome God that I love so dearly is so wonderfully complex and at the same time so beautifully simple with His plan to bring me and you into his fold.
  Back to my main story, in the midst of the lunatic ruler’s demands, we have a mama who hides her boy child from the authorities.  She puts him in a basket and hides him in the reeds of the river.  The daughter of Pharaoh finds him and takes him home. “Look what I found Daddy.  Can I keep him?  Please Daddy.”
   She gets to keep him, but she has a problem, how will she feed him?  Her body was empty of sustenance and there was no Wal-Mart nearby with shelves of infant formula.  It just so happened that a girl by the river had the solution.  “I know a woman who can nurse a child,” she says.  Unknown to the Pharaoh's daughter, this woman just happened to be the child’s own mother whose body is filled with nutrition for her baby.  The child is named Moses and eventually grows up to face Pharoah and demand that he let the people go.
  According to Christian writer Glenn Miller from The Christian Think Tank, it could have been 80 years that boy babies were being killed and the total numbers could easily range from 1.2 million to 4.3 million babies put to death.  That is very sobering.
  Well, when Moses comes on the scene as a grown man in tune to what God is directing, some interesting things start to happen.  Water is turned to blood, and then frogs take over.  After the frogs come lice, then flies. (I think right about here, if I were an Egyptian, I would be saying “Can’t we vote this guy out?”)
   After the flies, then the livestock was stricken. (Only the livestock of the Egyptians though, not the livestock belonging to the Israelites.)  Then came boils on man and beast.  After that came hail, big hail mixed with fire.  After that came locusts, then darkness, a deep penetrating darkness that scripture says could even be felt. The claustrophobics went crazy with that one.
   After that was the judgment of the firstborn.  The Israelites were told to kill a lamb and put the blood over their doors.  The death angel would not stop at the homes with the blood of a lamb.  The death angel came and swept thru Egypt claiming all the firstborn sons.  Finally Pharaoh was ready to relent and freedom came.
Exodus 12:31-3631 During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested.32 Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”
33 The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!” 34 So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughswrapped in clothing. 35 The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. 36 The LORD had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.NIV
  Well, the land was no longer filled with Israelites.  It was now empty of them.  It was also empty of a good portion of its silver, gold and other plunder.
   Don't we all love a good story that ends well with the bad guy losing.  Well, there is so much more to this story than a foolish king getting his just rewards.  The whole exodus from the land of Egypt is a picture.  God wanted the picture to last so He told them to celebrate the Passover from then on.

   We have an enemy much like that king, actually way worse.  He holds people in bondage to sin owning them.  Jesus is our Passover lamb whose blood protects us.  We can come out of the bondage of sin and the domain of the enemy and into new life.  The best “empty” is to be empty of sin.  The best “filled” is to be filled with God’s Spirit.  For God so loved that world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 NIV

Filled or Empty Series #2:Filled With Plenty, Filled with Famine

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#2

    Today I am going to bring attention to a very dysfunctional family.  Most families are dysfunctional, some more than others.  Having an imperfect family does not disqualify a person from being valuable to God and capable of achieving great accomplishments.

   Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, is the father in this dysfunctional family.  He had twelve sons by four different women.  These twelve sons became the twelve tribes of Israel.  After a heart wrenching competition of who can give the husband the most sons, the favorite wife, Rachel, finally gives Jacob two favored sons, Joseph and Benjamin.  Jealousy gets way out of hand and favored brother Joseph is sold into slavery by revengeful uncaring brothers.  Israel is allowed to believe that Joseph had died.  

   The days ahead are hard difficult days for Joseph, but God is with him.  We find him now in prison after being falsely accused of attacking his boss’s wife. While he was there, it was discovered among the prisoners that Joseph had the ability to interpret dreams.  He'd had this ability from childhood.  It got him in trouble with his jealous brothers.  They really didn't like his cocky prediction that someday they would bow down to him.

   In Genesis 41 we learn that the Pharaoh was troubled.  He had dreamed a dream that disturbed him. He learned that a man named Joseph in the prison could interpret dreams, so Joseph was cleaned up and brought to him. 

     It turned out that the Pharaoh's confusing dream about cows and corn was a prediction the years to come. There would be seven full years and seven empty years.  It starts to make sense why God allowed Joseph to be positioned where he was with all the ups and downs it took to get him in position.  We like the ups of life but not the downs, but maybe those downs are serving a purpose to position us.  Joseph was put in charge and he was able to store grain from the seven years of plenty so there would be food in the seven years of drought.

   I like the song the orphans sing in the movie Annie.  “It’s a hard knock life for us…Empty belly life…rotten smelly life.” Unfortunately there are children with empty bellies, empty futures. Maybe God has positioned you to bring relief to someone’s emptiness. Just a thought.

   The best part of this story is yet to come.  The drought and famine spread over a large area and people were forced to go to Egypt to buy grain.  Joseph’s brothers came looking for food unaware of who was in charge of food rations.  Another kind of emptiness was about to be filled.  Joseph had a very lonely empty home, empty of family.  God orchestrated a wonderful blessed reunion. Joseph forgave his brothers.  God cares about restoring relationships.  He went to great lengths to restore relationship with us. Forgiveness is powerful and reconciliation is sweet.  Blessings to you.

Filled or Empty Series #1: Empty Water Bottle

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#1 in series

  It is not a good thing to have an empty gas tank on a remote road, or an empty pantry three days before payday. It is a nice thing to have an empty trash can under the kitchen sink and empty dirty clothes baskets in the laundry room. An empty bank account, that's not good. An empty "bills to be paid" basket, that's very good. (If you haven't thrown them all away that is.) 

  An empty tummy, not good.  An empty schedule, well that can be refreshing.  Empty headed, that's never a good thing.  I haven't decided yet if I want my bug traps empty or full.  Maybe empty means the bugs are somewhere else lurking and ready to attack, and maybe full means I have too many bugs to keep under control. Last week I saw a spider in the basement the size of a mouse.  It was a "get the gun and shoot it" variety.  And then, if you missed, it became the "run like crazy" variety.  I don't even want to think about that spider, so like Scarlet O'hare I will worry about such things another day.  Anyway, sometimes emptiness is good and sometimes emptiness is not so good. I know one thing, emptiness of spirit is never good. And I know, point # 1: God cares about emptiness.

Genesis 1:2 says:  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.NIV

   God did something miraculous and wonderful about this emptiness.  God said, "Let there be light" and there was light.  God said, "Let there be a firmament.  Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. Let the earth bring forth plants. Let there be stars and a moon shining.  Let there be fish and birds. Let there be living creatures."

   

   And then finally God said, Let Us (notice that God refers to Himself in a plural form) make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.  Then verse 28 says:  Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over it."

Voila; the emptiness was filled. Well, let me tell you, it didn't take long untill the earth was like my worrisome bug traps. God was asking Himself, "Is the earth being filled a good thing or a bad thing?"  Five chapters later, Genesis 6:11 we read: The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. The earth went from being filled with God's wonderful creation to being filled with violence. 

   Wow, five chapters, that didn't take long.  Well actually it was a matter of about one thousand six hundred and fifty six years, give or take a few years.  We can know this because God very wisely documented accurate linage records.  We don't know exact to the day because it is not documented in months and days, just years.  Adam lived one hundred and thirty years and begat Seth.  Seth lived one hundred and five years and begat Enosh.  Etc, etc.  Adam could have been 130 years and 4 months.  Seth could have been 105 years and 6 months. You get the picture.  Anyway, 1656 years is a very close estimate of time from Adam to the flood. I would say that demonstrates God's patience. 

   Point # two, God acts in response to emptiness and fullness.  Now instead of an "emptiness" problem there was a "filled" problem. The earth was filled with corruption and violence. Let's see what God did.  Back to Genesis 6 verses 12-13 God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.  So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.  I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. NIV

   God could have hit a rewind button and gone back to total emptiness, but He did not.  He kept alive His creation even a tiny portion of His creation that had been made in His image. That is worth noting.

  Now, let's bring this in a little closer, like with a microscope.  In Genesis 16 we read about a woman in a sad predicament.  The humans in the story tried to do things their own way instead of trusting God and it didn't pan out too well.  It caused a lot of bad feelings for everyone.  This story is continued in Genesis chapter 21. At this point we find the woman and her son in the desert with an empty water skin waiting to die. verse 19 says: Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water.  So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.NIV

   God always sees our areas of emptiness and need.  He always knows when we sit in despair with empty water skins.  Sometimes God has to do for us what He did for this woman, He opened her eyes and showed her the well. What a beautiful picture this is. We are very much like this woman.  We need our eyes opened to see the well of living water that quenches the thirst of our souls.

   John 4:14 says: but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.  Indeed, the water  I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." NIV 

  God cares about every kind of emptiness we endure. Empty arms, empty places at the table, empty wallets, but  I believe His highest priority is to take care of our spiritual emptiness. God wants to do something miraculous and wonderful about our emptiness.  He wants to say, "Let there be light." The Holy Spirit will open our spiritual eyes so we can see the water that God provides that will quench the thirst for forgiveness and love and acceptance.  Open our eyes Lord.