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Jesus also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A rainstorm is coming,’ and it does. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,’ and there is. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky, but how can you not know how to interpret the present time?  Luke 12:54-59

How is it possible for someone close to God to miss the obvious? This was Jesus’ message to the crowd. They were skillful at interpreting weather-related signs but inept at interpreting the times.

When Saul pursued David to kill him, the number of those who stood by David was small.  But a group of men called the ‘sons of Issachar’ perceived things correctly.  They saw Saul for who he was ~ a disobedient king under God’s judgment.  They saw David for who he was ~ God’s anointed man who should ascend the throne.  From all circumstantial evidence, it would appear that Saul was suffering the threat of a coup led by a renegade named David. However, these 200 men read the two men accurately.  

The children of Issachar, men who understood their times, knew what Israel ought to do.  I Chronicles 12:32

What kind of spiritual acumen do I possess?  The men of Issachar looked at Saul the way God looked at Saul.  His throne or his crown did not sway them.  They could see his behavior and leadership style and know he was out of God’s favor.  They looked for the anointing but couldn’t find it.  They also looked at David and saw past his poverty and rag-tag militia.  They perceived the spiritual markings of a kingly anointing.

Not everything is as it appears. Influential people are often a house of cards.  They can crumble after just one confrontation.  The meek are often perceived as weak but may rise to rule over us if God promotes them.  Jesus is coming soon, and understanding the times has never been more critical.

Oh, for divine eyesight.  Train me.  Amen

God chose you as the first fruits for salvation, through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth, to which he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Thess. 2: 13-14

How about this quote?  “Your past is not God’s future for you.”   Many would argue that.  They say that so much of what they have suffered continues to visit them. They continue to get sick.  They continue to sustain disappointments.  They continue to get fooled by people.  They continue to face losses.  They continue to work with challenging financial parameters.  Life appears to be a cruel cycle.  

How am I to regard my life when painful things keep repeating themselves?  I must remember that things are often the same on the outside.  But on the inside?  I am constantly changing.  

Here’s an example.  When my mother died, I was thirty years old.  I did not have a solid connection to God.  I had no idea how to draw close to Him to weather the trauma of losing a mother.  I floundered, grew depressed and inconsolable, and my faith suffered for another decade.  

Much further down the road, my father died of cancer.  My relationship with God was more alive.  I was able to implement some spiritual skills to weather the long goodbye.

Everything was really tested, however, when our son ended his life.  But by then, scripture had driven my root system deeper into the person of Jesus.  I knew how to live in hope and trust God with unanswered questions.  Suicide was excruciating but it didn’t kill my faith.  

Three deaths.  Same external realities.  But each was met with a different internal world.

My past is not my future.  Nor is yours.  Our internal worlds can resemble eternity with Jesus.  Right now.  In Christ, God has enabled our souls to live in paradise.  

You walk with me and talk with me.  You tell me I am your own.  That changes today entirely no matter my affliction.  Amen

The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.  Psalm 23:3

This doesn’t mean I won’t want for anything.  God is not a ‘fix it’ God.  My spiritual forefathers said ~

We are pressed on every side… 2 Corinthians 4:8

For your sake, we are being killed all day long…Romans 8:36

All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution…2 Timothy 3:11

So, when I’m persecuted ~ I shall not want.  When hungry ~ I shall not want.  When strung out and under pressure ~ I shall not want.  

The phrase before ‘I shall not want. . .’ is the key to the verse.  The Lord is my shepherd.    

I shall not want for a shepherd.   

He is a companion, one who isn’t scared off by adversity.  Unlike the propensity of people, He inches closer as times get tougher.  Though I walk with a thorn in the flesh, I will not want for the grace to bear it.  Jesus is as intimate as I need Him to be.  He’s already given His whole heart and waits for me to invest all of mine. 

Jesus is doing what a Shepherd does.  He is guiding.  He is dispensing grace.  He is counseling and comforting.  He is protecting.   ‘The Lord is my shepherd.  I shall not want.’   Oh, I recite it in the darkness.  Even through my tears. 

Life isn’t perfect yet but my provision of a Savior and constant Shepherd is perfect.  I’m tearfully humble and grateful.  Amen

He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.  2 Corinthians 5:15

Some words are so powerful that we shy away from them.  Our voices get soft to the point of whispering when we speak specific phrases for the first time.  We avoid them until we have the strength to say them out loud.  When we do, mountains move.  We are changed in those split seconds.

I just returned from visiting my childhood home in upstate New York.  I slept in my old bedroom, a privilege few are afforded at my age.  So much of life was experienced in that house.  I was thirty years old when my mother died of cancer.  I was there visiting and can remember walking upstairs to say goodbye just minutes after she passed.  Even though I saw death up close, I shied away from words associated with death.  

When telling someone that she was gone, I would use every descriptor except the word ‘died.’  I would say that she passed away or that she went home to be with Jesus.  It wasn’t until a year later that I finally admitted, ‘My mother died.’  As soon as I said the words, I sank into a chair and sobbed.  My blank and stoic exterior melted. 

This morning, while talking with Jesus, I said, “Thank you for dying for me.”  I realized that I said it way too easily, like a cliché.  Familiar from childhood.  Familiar from hymns and pulpits.  Familiar as well-worn nursery rhymes.  Should this phrase not have caused more of a reaction?

Religious language can sit so comfortably on my tongue.  God wants to shake it loose from stoic mental crevices. His death is not just part of ancient history.  It is part of my personal history.  There was once a moment when it became real.  The love that propelled Him to the cross penetrated my heart to the point of repentance and gratitude.  It still can and it still should.

Resurrect the language of the Gospel until it has full effect in me.  Amen

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him.  Psalm 103:11

God’s heart aches when He draws us with gentle cords of love only to find us unresponsive to His overtures.  He offers everything but, surprisingly, we can be bored and distracted.  

Have you ever loved someone more than they loved you?  Maybe it was your parents.  There is a standard narrative in some families.  The ones who cause trouble can get all the love and attention, while the children who love to please are overlooked.  There are few things more painful than to be the child with arms extended only to be refused.  

There have also been many broken engagements because one cared more than the other.  Only one of them loved with their whole heart.  The other couldn’t generate anything but casual friendship.   

And what about marriages where the love in one spouse has grown cold!  The other keeps loving, hoping, and dreaming of mutual love re-kindled.  

While we will manipulate to get the love we want, God will not.  He could, though.  He could scare us with a demonstration of His power and extort anything from us that He wanted.   But He woos gently and gives us the freedom to choose Him.  He gives everything He has and hopes we’ll respond with a love of the same kind ~ a love that abandons all other loves ~ just to have Him.  

Tearfully and joyfully, I love You with my life.  Amen

The LORD preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me. Psalm 116:6

Reading King David’s words, I wonder what he felt as he played his harp for the demented King Saul.  A little earlier, David had been anointed king.  He knew God chose him for the throne, but at that moment in time, he was a palace musician, not a king.  He was asked to serve the very one who wore the crown that had been promised to him.  When God makes a promise, it is often hard to believe it’s still true when it feels like we’ve taken two steps backward.

How has God brought you low?  Do you feel like you’ve gone backward instead of forward?  Are you being asked to serve someone who is jealous of you?  Pray for someone who despises you?  Work for someone who takes advantage of you? 

God teaches two things when He brings His child to a low place. 

1.) Humility. It is imperative for me to learn to serve others as Jesus served. 

2.) The nature of evil.  Seasons in which I’m asked to draw close to someone who has it in for me give me an ‘up close and personal’ experience with ungodliness.  It makes me street-smart about those who will cross my path in the future.  If I can see this time as being in God’s schoolroom, learning life skills that will be life-saving, then I will find peace. 

When I see the wilderness as punishment, this is spiritual immaturity.  God never takes His child backward.  The journey is always upward and steady.

Teach me humility through obedience and wisdom through observing.  Amen

One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard: ‘Power belongs to you God, and with you, Lord, is unfailing love.’  Psalm 62:11

God is a kind Father.  He is also gracious.  He is a whispering God, and His voice is heard in the wind of the Holy Spirit.  He is an encourager and patient with us as we grow.  He is specific in His instruction, enabling us on to make decisive and wise decisions.  My experience of Him as Abba encompasses all of this.  Even when He has had to correct me, I have known Him to be kind. 

I am puzzled when a brother or sister in Christ says, “I’m just hard-headed.  God has to hit me upside the head to get me to listen.”  The manner in which this is communicated makes it seem as though this kind of stubbornness is a badge of honor.  Perhaps Jesus would want to ask, “Wouldn’t you want a whispering Father instead?” 

The question may be posed, “Doesn’t God deal differently with different types of people?”  I’m sure that’s true in many respects.  There are larger-than-life personalities.  There are wall flowers.  There are strong-willed saints.  There are compliant believers.  Each could, I guess, require a different approach from their Heavenly Father.  Yet my question is this ~ If each of us is called to be humble before God no matter who we are or how we’re wired, wouldn’t His whisper suffice?  I recall that the prophets who encountered the revelation of God fell on their face and were undone. 

The word humility comes from the word ‘humus’ – meaning ‘dirt.’  That does not mean we are worthless as dirt, but we are face down in the dirt as we are prostrate before a holy God.  

To whom will the Lord be revealed?  The one who walks humbly with their God.  Elijah, the larger-than-life prophet, heard God in the wind.  He exemplified Deuteronomy 8:6. It’s paramount that you keep the commandments of God, your God, and that you walk down the roads he shows you and reverently respect him.  The Message

May You never have to raise Your voice to my stubbornness.  Amen

He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.  Psalm 91:4

Mention God’s wings, and I think of Ruth. 

Her life had taken some dark turns, and loss had become her companion.  She had no husband, no heritage, and no children.  She lived in a land as a vulnerable widow but one day, she looked up from her circumstances long enough to cry out to the one who could redeem her story.  She approached Boaz as he was sleeping on the threshing floor to protect his store of grain from being robbed.  She startled him, and then did something outrageous.  She asked him to spread the edge of his garment over her.  It was an intimate request.  To be under His garment, his tallit, was to be united to him in covenant love.  In Hebrew, the account reads like this ~ ‘She pulled his wing over her.’ The four corners of a Jewish man’s tallit symbolize being under God’s wings.

Move forward in Jewish history. Jesus’ tallit was touched by many who were sick and they became well.  He spread his garment over Jairus’ daughter and raised her from the dead.  The woman with the issue of blood touched the fringe of Jesus’ tallit and in doing so, she was healed.  And the good news is this ~ God makes this covering available to me.

These days, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.  God’s tallit beckons.  He lifts me up out of the shadows and hides me under His wings, a place of protection, perspective, and healing. 

David said, “I will stay in Your tent forever: I will trust in the cover of Your wings.”  Psalm 61

There is an invitation to dwell under God’s wings.  In doing so, I am lifted from tortuous thoughts to praise.  He lifts me up to the cliffs, away from the carnage of the valley, where the billows of His wings descend upon the shoulders of the afflicted. 

Jesus, I’ve learned not to just make a visit to the shelter of Your wings; I’ve learned to live there.  I am hidden in You.  Amen