Another Plan

Proverbs 14:12 NIV

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

Do You Know What To Do?

Our youngest son recently played in his baseball league’s all-star game and he did well.  He drove in the tying run with a base hit to center and he was brought in to pitch the 7^th inning with the game tied and got the batter to ground out to second with the bases loaded to end the threat.  The bottom of that inning, our first batter grounded out and our second hitter came up with nobody on base.  He hit a drive deep into right field and got all the way around to third base for a triple.  Now the winning run was at third base with only one out and a left handed hitter up to bat.  He was in the ninth slot which meant he was the worst hitter in the line-up.  As I stood behind home plate watching the action, almost immediately a plan came to my mind.  I knew exactly what strategic move the manager should make to try to get the winning run home.  It was not my call though and so I waited to see what the batter would do.  Our team had been killed all year by the team we were playing so it was a monumental moment for them.  What would the manager do?  What was his plan for trying to score the winning run?  Was he thinking like me?

Perhaps you have had a tough time trying to figure out what to do.  It’s not easy sorting through all the options.  Maybe it’s more of a binary decision…this or that.  Here or there.  Yes or no.  The idea that God cares about what you do and has input into your decisions and decision-making is not universally accepted and outright rejected by many.  One of the primary arguments for abortion rights is the position that a woman has a right to do with her body as she wishes.  Without addressing the specious basis of that contention, we must consider the theological issue here.  Is God in the abortion equation?  Does He play a part in the decision-making of what to do?  Now that is a critical question to ask, and not just with regard to abortion but in every area of life!  Is there room for God to have a say in what you do?  It matters what you decide on this.  Either God guides you or He doesn’t and how you land on this can have huge ramifications for you and others.

The Bible certainly has a lot to say about this but let’s look at some particular case studies in Scripture that illustrate the ways others have dealt with this issue.  Rebekah is certainly not a well-known figure in the Bible but she plays an important part in the lineage of the nation of Israel as well as for Jesus Himself.  She seems to have been a young bride who married an older man in a quasi-arranged marriage.  After twenty years of going childless, finally she conceived and it was not a single child but twins in her womb.  She wasn’t sure why she felt so much turmoil in her womb so she went to the Lord to see what was happening in her.  The Lord said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger." (Genesis 25:23 NIV)  That of course was surprising news but before we move off this, let us take a closer look at Rebekah’s response to the prophecy.  We don’t know how Rebekah heard what God said to her or why she knew God said it.  Perhaps there was an audible voice or maybe like many of us, somehow the Lord got this message to her in an inaudible but knowable way.  Regardless, the point to be made is that the Lord declared to her the future of her still unborn twins and Rebekah knew it was really God who put it in her brain.

Over the course of the next forty years, Rebekah grew more attached to her younger son Jacob than her older boy Esau.  This happens.  It isn’t shocking to us that parents develop favorites among their kids.  Of course it is sad and in this case it led to great turmoil and pain for the entire family.  Rather than trusting God to do what He said He would do and make the younger stronger than the older in due time, Rebekah decided to rush the process along in her own way.  Believing perhaps she was acting for God, she got her son Jacob to trick her husband Isaac to give the blessing he planned on giving to the older son Esau to Jacob.  Rebekah took advantage of her husband Isaac’s blindness by having Jacob dress up in his brother’s clothes and lie that he was Esau.  Then Rebekah took the best clothes of Esau her older son, which she had in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob.  She also covered his hands and the smooth part of his neck with the goatskins. Then she handed to her son Jacob the tasty food and the bread she had made.  He went to his father and said, "My father."  "Yes, my son," he answered. "Who is it?"  Jacob said to his father, "I am Esau your firstborn. I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of my game so that you may give me your blessing."  (Genesis 27:15-19 NIV)

Rebekah heard the voice of God.  He spoke to her about both the present and the future and she knew it really was God saying it all after she did give birth to twins like God said she would.  But then something happened that takes place a million times across generations.  Rebekah went off on her own without God.  Perhaps you have done this too.  God spoke to you about something.  It was undeniably Him.  You were certain of it.  But then time passed and you stopped waiting for Christ to lead you.  You trusted your own wits.  You believed in your intuition, your understanding of things.  And then, without you even really knowing it, you were on your own…without God…without Him showing you the way.  It happened with Mary the mother of Jesus.  She knew God told her that Jesus was the Messiah, God in flesh.  It was a great miracle, His conception.  Mary bravely bore the child and raised Him to believe He was the Messiah.  But then something went wrong in Mary.  She watched Jesus as He moved among the crowds, heard what He was saying to them and grew concerned about Him.  The work of Jesus wasn’t going as she thought it would and Jesus wasn’t saying the kinds of things Mary expected.  Mary thought something wasn’t quite right with Jesus; that maybe He was losing His mind and so she decided to take matters into her own hands.  Without consulting God or even knowing what the Father wanted of her, Mary gathered her other sons and brought them to where Jesus was sitting with His disciples, teaching a small crowd in a home.  Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat.  When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind." … Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him.  (Mark 3:20-21, 31)

What happened with Mary happens over and over in the hearts of people who genuinely love Jesus and want Him to be in charge.  Something doesn’t seem right.  Plans aren’t going as expected.  It is tougher than you thought it would be.  The career isn’t taking off.  Family isn’t what you had hoped.  You aren’t what you envisioned.  It is hard and God is not fixing things.  Or, it could be too easy for you.  You’ve got everything together and you unconsciously don’t need God anymore.  He is just not on the list of things that matter most to you.  We don’t see this in ourselves, the impatience, the eroding faith in God, the nonchalance about His will and direction but it happens.  We slowly stop going to Christ for guidance.  We start figuring things out ourselves and without warning we are on our own, the master of our ship.  What comes of this growing independence, this “self-actualization”?  We are on our own!  We are like all others who have no God to guide them, no Spirit to help them along.

There is something heartwarming about the Israelites as they stood at the edge of the Red Sea with the terrifying Egyptian army and all their chariots and weaponry barreling down upon them.  Logic insisted they surrender.  As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord.  They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?  Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!"  (Exodus 14:10-12 NIV)  We mustn’t forget what a frightening sight the parted Red Sea must have been as an escape route the LORD had chosen for them.  It could not have been inviting to see hundreds of feet of water piled up on each side of the path but they took it because the Israelites believed, even if it was just a bit of faith, that God knew the way for them.

Within you, if you have been born again, the Spirit of God lives and He is ready to guide you.  He can show you the right way to go at each moment if you are willing to let Him be in charge.  If though you turn your back to Him or ignore Him or reject Him, the Spirit will be silent and let you go along on your own.  He will give you the opportunity to see just what it is like without God putting your life together.  Rebekah found out  how great her plan was when a few days later she watched her beloved son Jacob walk out the door, never in her lifetime to return.  We need Christ to lead us, to show us the way.  It is the greatest of gifts to have the Lord of the Universe living inside us, ready to open doors for us, give us wisdom that is supernatural and make things work out that couldn’t without Him. 

The Moment of Discovery

John 20:8 NIV

 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.

What Did You Just See?

When I was young, maybe five years old, I heard on our porch a loud stomping and a male voice calling out, “Ho, Ho, Ho!”  I was in shock.  It was night time and Christmas Eve and the thought that Santa Claus was actually tramping around on our porch was astounding to me.  Was it possible that Santa Claus was out there?  Had he come to my home?  What did this mean?  I stood there dumbfounded in front of the door trying to decide if I would go outside and see if it was him.  I must have looked over at my mom to see what she thought.  Was it safe to go out on the porch?  What should I do?  Finally I opened the door and there before me was a brand new tricycle.  I was astonished.  So it was true!  Santa Claus did exist and he left me the grandest of all presents.  How could I ever have doubted Santa Claus?  Of course I later discovered that it was my dad who made all the noise, left the tricycle on the porch and slipped in the house through the back door but in my childhood, seeing was believing for me!

There is a moment when you stand in the gap between belief and disbelief, when you are not certain of what you just saw or heard.  It could be good news like that you were “lucky caller number ten” or that your cancer is gone.  It could be something dreadfully horrible like that a close friend just died in a car accident or that you have been let go from your job of twenty years.  You cannot anticipate such moments.  They come like a bolt of lightning and shatter whatever comfortable plans you had for the day or the week or your life.  You have seen pictures of people who stand in dumbfounded shock with their eyes blinking wildly as they try to process what just happened.  Maybe you have been like that.  Your boyfriend just asked you to marry him.  Your dad just handed you the keys to a new car.  Your mother just told you she was divorcing your father.  Most of your days are pretty normal but then all of a sudden it isn’t normal.  It is shocking.

The account of Jacob found in the Bible is just that sort of matter.  He was fleeing for his life.  Jacob had just tricked his dad into giving him the blessing intended for his twin brother and now that older brother was plotting his murder back at home.  Exhausted from his panicked flight, Jacob found a boulder and put his head down on it as if it were a cushy pillow and fell asleep.  Jacob could not have predicted what happened that night.

Like all of us each and every night, Jacob had a dream.  Most of our dreams we never remember when we get up out of bed.  Some keep us thinking for a while.  Most are completely forgettable.  Jacob had a dream that made its way into the Bible.  He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.  There above it stood the Lord, and he said: "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.  Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.  I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you." (Genesis 28:12-15 NIV)

Jacob was so convinced that he had just met God in His sleep that he created a monument to honor the Lord and named the place where he was, “House of God”. Jacob even made a vow at the spot to give God a tenth of all he gained if the Lord took care of him and brought him back to his father’s house.  Most of us never give much thought to our dreams and rarely do even the most ardent of Christians think their dreams are sent to them by God.  Dreams are just too chaotic, too bizarre to take seriously.  Yet Jacob believed his dream was a God moment; that the Lord met with Him that night, the actual and real Lord.

If you had the exact same dream, would you have taken it seriously?  Would you have worshiped the Lord as soon as you climbed out of bed?  Would you have been convinced God had spoken directly to you?  Don’t misrepresent what happened with Jacob.  It was in the end just a dream.  It was no less a dream than you might have had, seeing yourself standing in front of a group without any pants or meeting in some restaurant with a long gone relative or having a raccoon talk to you on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  It was a dream but Jacob knew it was not just something that sprang up from his own unconscious; it was from beyond him, it was God coming to him within his heart.

It is hard to believe that God is really real and that He speaks to people like you and me.  Great intellects like Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan insist God does not exist.  You have friends and neighbors that pay no attention to God.  People you respect ignore Him.  The popular movies do not mention Him or include God in the plot lines.  Even “deep and meaningful” song lyrics have no place for God in them.  The anticipation of God making His way into the normal day you have is nearly dead.  Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, we have lost our way and don’t know how we can get back to our place of real life with God.

What do you make of this casually mentioned moment in the Apostle Paul’s normal life?  He was on one of his missionary trips and needed to know where he and his companions should go after they left the region of Galatia, just north of Paul’s hometown.  The book of Acts has an interesting comment on this.   Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. (Acts 16:6 NIV)  How did Paul know the Holy Spirit did not want him and his partners in the province of Asia?  We aren’t told!  It is not clear how God got this across to them.  It could have been through a dream or a prophet or a sign of some sort or just an impression they had that God was directing them.  What we do know though is that Paul and the others all were prepared for God to guide them and ready to believe He was.  This is no small matter, believing that God can and does direct your steps.  It is in fact for many an insurmountable barrier.  They do not accept this to be so and live without any thought given to what God wants them to do.

Imagine what it would be like if you took seriously Jesus’ statement in John 15: 5.  "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (NIV)  The “if” of this proclamation indicates that you may or may not remain in Him.  That is completely up to you.  No one including God will force you to remain connected to Christ.  You can cut yourself off from Him like an angry daughter who refuses to talk with her parents.  A famous porn star who has been in the news recently has for twenty years refused to have anything to do with either of her parents.  You can do that, ignoring Christ and making no effort at being connected to Him.  But the consequence of that is that you can do nothing.  You don’t matter, what you do, how you think, what you accomplish does not matter.  You go nowhere, do nothing, make nothing of your life.  That is an option that you can take and many are completely satisfied doing this.  They are thoroughly disconnected from Christ and happy living that way.

To be connected to Christ, you must pay attention to Him.  Look for Him to guide you.  Ask Him to direct you.  Listen for Him to speak to you.  There are a thousand different ways Christ can show you something and make your life matter.  Who can know what it will be next?  Was Moses expecting a burning bush?  Did David expect the high priest of Israel to come to his house?  Could Elijah have anticipated the small still voice?  Was Nathaniel prepared for someone from Nazareth to be the Messiah?  God does not announce His presence with trumpets and does not shake you out of your sleep to get you to notice Him.  He will come to you at any moment with any sort of way of getting through to you that He chooses.  One thing though is clear.  If you do not keep your mind on Christ and set your heart on being directed by Him, nothing you do will matter.  That is certain.

Don’t be embarrassed that you haven’t been paying attention to Christ.  Admit it.  Start over.  Pray and ask the Lord to guide you, to show you what to do next.  Perhaps you are lost and don’t know how to find your way.  Turn to Christ and ask Him what to do.  He will guide you.  Somehow, you will know what to do and it will be the Lord who will make it clear.  Just like the sparrow knows somehow where to look for food, Christ will direct you too.  You must trust Him though to guide you perfectly and as you follow Him, everything you do will matter, whether it is how you make your bed or the way you respond at a board meeting or what you say to your kids at home.  With Christ in you directing your life, you are no ordinary mortal; you have all the glory of God living through you!