God knows

Every word of the Bible is true and speaks with authority and purpose and wisdom. I’ve never read a verse and thought, “Meh, that’s not for me.” But often I will read something that has my name written all over it – like this morning.

“The Lord is a God who knows” (1 Samuel 2:3).

I’ve been sitting here staring at those words for several minutes and pondering all that things that God knows. And I am awestruck.

God knows that I am weary and overwhelmed. David said, “the Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for Joy and I will give thanks to Him in song” (Ps 28:7).

God knows when I am in trouble. “He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters . . . He rescued me because He delighted in me” (Ps 18:16, 19).

God knows when I am struggling with temptation. “God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out . . .” (1 Cor 10:13).

God knows when I’m in need. Jesus said, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matt 6:8).

God knows when I’m confused and don’t know what to do. He says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you” (Ps 32:8).

God knows when I am depressed and discouraged. The Psalmist said, “You hear, O Lord, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry” (Ps 10:17).

God knows when I have been treated unfairly. “But I call to God and the Lord saves me. He ransoms me unharmed from the battle waged against me” (Ps 55:16, 18).

God knows when I have sinned. “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin” (Ps 51:1-2).

God knows, Beloved. And most important of all, God knows you. He hears you. He sees you. He understands you. He cares about you. He loves you. David said, “But I trust in You, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in your hands” (Ps 31:14-15). You can trust Him too. He is your God. You are in His hands. They have your name written all over them (Is 49:16).

In a Dry and Weary Land

Before David became the king of Israel he was a man on the run. He was being pursued by the reigning king, Saul, who was jealous of David’s popularity after the shepherd boy killed Goliath and the women had danced and sang in his honor. He ran for his life, into the desert of Judah. Deserts are harsh places and David lamented this “dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps 63:1b). David was thirsty, but it wasn’t liquid refreshment he craved. Listen to his cry: “O God, You are my God, earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for You, my body longs for You . . .” (v. 1a). Water would have been welcome, but David’s greatest desire was for his God.  He said, “Your love is better than life,” (v. 3).

I understand David’s desert season. It’s been a rough couple of weeks with sickness, struggles, responsibilities, and my granddaughter moving away. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. You’ve also had struggles of one kind or another. It’s so draining. The result is the same: the heart becomes weary and the soul gets dry. What do we do in these desert seasons? The same things David did.

We earnestly seek God. The KJV says “early will I seek thee” and that’s the best time to start – early. Yes, early in the morning, but also early in the dry spell. Don’t wait until your heart is withered and parched. Seek God early, as soon as you feel the sand on your toes. Earnestly also means diligently. Seek God early and often.

We praise God. “My lips will glorify you. I will praise You as long as I live . . . my mouth will praise You.” (v. 3-5 sel). Praise is like vitamin-infused water to our dry hearts. And praise silences the enemy who loves to hit you when you’re down.

We remember God. “On my bed, I remember you; I think of You through the watches of the night” (v. 6). When my heart is heavy, my brain will not shut up at night. Rather than think about all the things that are going wrong, we can choose to think about what is “true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Phil 4:8). In other words, think about God.

We grab hold of God. “My soul clings to you; (v. 8). Remember the old bandaid song, “I am stuck on Bandaid, cause Bandaid’s stuck on me.” Cling to God because “Your right hand upholds me.” He’s got you.

We rejoice in the Lord. “Rejoice in God; all who swear by God’s name will praise Him” (v. 11). We can rejoice because God is faithful. He will come with His refreshing, comforting, powerful presence. We have His Word on it.

Beloved, if your heart is dry and weary, seek God, praise Him, remember Him, hang on to Him, and find Joy in Him. And “sing in the shadow of His wings” (v. 7).

I [Don’t] Got This!

“You hang in there, girl. God will never give you more than you can handle.” I never wanted to call someone a liar as much as I did the woman who made that statement to me.  But I’m southern and we don’t call our elders liars, so I thanked her and hugged her, and flushed her counsel from my brain. While that may sound full of warm fuzzy faith, there’s not a shred of support for it in Scripture. The Bible is clear that God often gives us more than we can handle.  Paul said, “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia.  We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.  Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death” (2 Cor 1:8-9a). Not so warm and fuzzy, is it? Friend, if you’re hanging onto that opening statement as a rock for your life, you are going to be very disappointed.

If you’ve walked with Him for very long you know that God indeed allows situations and hardships that are more than we can handle. He does it so that we will turn to the only One who can. Paul continued, “This happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (v. 9b). I almost stopped that verse after the comma but I realized that those last four words are pivotal to the passage. What is harder to handle than death? And who is it that overcame death? If you’ve got a problem that’s bigger than raising a dead man to life, then you may have reason to worry.

Paul goes on to say, “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us” (v. 10). He has. He is. He will continue. He has been faithful. He is still faithful. He will continue to be faithful.  Your circumstances do not define Him. He defines your circumstances. I can’t stress this enough – God WILL give you more than you can handle. But He will never give you more than HE can handle. Stop trying to carry it all yourself, Beloved. Hold tightly to God and He will carry it – and you through. That’s why it’s called FAITH.

Are You Thirsty?

My son came into the kitchen from a long day of working in the summer heat.  He needed a shower.  He needed food.  But at that moment he desperately wanted something cold to drink.  He chugged a bottle of water from the fridge and then headed off to get cleaned up.  When we all sat down to supper, he had a glass of iced tea at his place.  He took a few drinks from it but left the glass half-full when he finished the meal.  His thirst, so intense just an hour before, had been satisfied; he didn’t have the same desire for a drink.

David was running for his life through the desert.  It was Dry.  Hot.  Dusty.  He was desperately thirsty with no water in sight.  But even more than a physical thirst, David was experiencing a desperate desire for God. “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek You, my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Ps 63:1).  Do you hear the intensity of his need?  Earnest. Thirsty.  Longing.  Nothing would satisfy but his God.

The Sons of Korah (think temple worship leaders) had the same passion for God: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” (Ps 42:1-2). It makes me wonder – when was the last time the church desperately panted for God?

Sometimes our lives take a hard turn and we find ourselves dry and desperate for relief.  I believe God allows those times to stir up a thirst for Him.  Just like my son at supper, when we are satisfied with our lives, we don’t drink Him in as deeply as we do when our thirst is intense.  We don’t sense our need for Him.  We don’t pant for Him. But when we’re in the desert we long for Him. That’s when we earnestly seek Him.  Is your heart dry and weary today?  Let that desperate need turn you back to God.  Be refreshed by His grace.  Be satisfied by His love.  Jesus said that whoever drinks from His spring will never thirst again (John 4:14). Come, Beloved, drink deeply from the Living Water.

Hard Things

“He is the God who breaks down walls!” “He is the God who conquers your enemy!” “He is the God who parts the seas and makes the sun stand still and calls the universe into existence!” “Impossible? No not for God! Nothing is impossible for Him!” The speaker was pacing the stage, calling the women in the arena to faith. Hearts were being stirred. “If God is asking the impossible from you, it is because He intends to do the impossible through you! He is the God of the Impossible!” Women were on their feet, hands raised in the air, shouting their agreement. Except for one who sat near me. She wore the face of a weary soul. Sad. Tired. Longing to believe, but too exhausted to hold on. I knew her and I knew her story. I knew about the harsh struggles she faced each day. God pricked my heart for her, so at the break, when everyone ran to the bathrooms and the merchant tables, I walked over and sat beside her.

“Are you enjoying the conference?” I asked her. “Oh, yes!” she said, “It’s all very hopeful and encouraging.” “You don’t look very encouraged,” I gently said. Her hands fell into her lap as she dropped her smiling mask. She sighed. “God hasn’t asked me to do the impossible, just something that’s very hard. Something that requires so much physical and mental energy every single day.” I hugged her and said, “Sweet friend, He is not just the God of the impossible, He’s also the God of this-is-so-hard.”

Some things we face in life are not impossible, but just really difficult. They are the things that wear us down and wear us out. It may be a person – big or small. It may be a demanding job or strained finances. It might be long-standing grief and deafening silence. It may be a physical issue, a nagging disappointment, or an overload of responsibility. It’s not parting the sea or taking down giants. But it’s hard. Every. Single. Day.

Maybe you don’t need the impossible – you just need some strength to get through the next day. God’s got you, Beloved. Genesis 18:14 asks, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” I can assure you, on the authority of God’s Word and personal experience, that the answer is “No.”

The Week after Covid

This is a repeat and I apologize for that, but I am tired. Weary-to-my-bones kind of tired. Needing-more-than-a-day-off kind of tired. The tired that drains you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. After a week of battling Covid in my entire family, I’m drained body, mind, and spirit. At times like this, it’s really easy to sink into despair and cry “Woe is me!” and post my feelings all over social media. But how does that serve the cause of Christ?

Paul, who had every right to whine, choose instead to look at his life from a different perspective. “We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:7-9). He acknowledged that his circumstances were hard – he was being pressed from many different directions by people who all wanted something from him (boy can I relate). He was perplexed; he couldn’t understand why his own people were rejecting the Messiah they had so long sought. He was persecuted – his life was often in danger, his ministry was detested by the Jewish leaders and even by certain factions of the church. He was struck down – beaten and stoned more than once for his dogged devotion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Despite all that, he refused to give in to misery. He knew that no human could crush him because he belonged to the Lord. He rejected despair. He reminded himself that his Lord and Savior would never abandon him, and had even come to stand beside him in prison (Acts 23:11). He knew that the Lord he served with all his heart would not allow him to be destroyed.

Beloved – this is YOUR testimony too if you are in Christ. You are not a victim—you are a victor! Yes, life gets very hard sometimes, but you and I need not give in to despair because our Lord will not let us be crushed or destroyed. He has promised to never abandon His own, not even in our darkest, hardest moments. Like Paul, we must learn to hold fast to Jesus and trust Him despite our circumstances or feelings. I am tired, but the Lord promises to give me strength. I am overwhelmed, but He will carry my burdens for me. I am weary, but He will sustain me. I can focus on my fatigue, or on my faithful Father. The choice is mine. The choice is yours too. Where will your thoughts take you today?

Does God Ever Get Tired of Me?

Which is harder to deal with – a big storm in your life or lots of ongoing frustrations? On the Sea of Galilee, fishermen are constantly on guard for storms. A big storm raging on the lake can overwhelm the strongest fishermen and take out a whole fleet of boats. But equally destructive are the constant waves that are driven across the sea’s surface by the wind, slap, slap, slapping the side of the boat. They wear away the boat’s hull and can eventually bring the boat down.

Sometimes life hits us with an unexpected crisis – the sudden death of a loved one, a health crisis, a job loss, a betrayal – we are overwhelmed and shell-shocked. We need the support of our friends and family. We need prayer. We need help. And thankfully the Body of Christ meets those needs. I can’t imagine where I would be without my church family and Christian friends. But for many of us, the damage comes from a continual struggle, that long-term problem that slap, slap, slaps us day after day after day. The wayward child, an ongoing health issue, the juggle of too many responsibilities, financial struggles, or a frustrating work situation. We still need support and prayer and help, but we’re hesitant to keep asking – or maybe just too weary to talk about it anymore. We feel like we’re just a cumbersome weight. Oh, I know this one well.

But “The Lord will not grow tired or weary . . .” (Isaiah 40:28). His patience never wears thin. He never sighs when we approach His throne of grace with our hands full of needs. He doesn’t dodge us because He’s tired of hearing our woes. I have often come to him over an issue I’ve struggled with for many years, saying, “Father, I know You’ve heard this before . . .” and I sense Him saying, “Yes, but I don’t mind if you tell me again.”

The Bible tells us to “cast all your cares on the Lord because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). He will bear the weight of your burdens – and you. What concerns you, Beloved, concerns God because He loves you. He cares about the big storms and He cares about the constant daily battles. If you’re like me, that’s very good news.

To the One Who Is Weary

I am tired. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. And yes, spiritually. I know you are as well. It’s the kind of tired that not even a long nap can cure. If there’s any consolation, we’re in good company.

King David pleaded “O God you are my God, earnestly I seek You; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for You in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1). David is on the run in the desert from the evil King Saul, who is seeking to take his life. He is thirsty and weary in the dry desert heat, and in his physical needs, he turns to God. Yes, he needs water and rest, but it is the ache in his soul that causes him to cry out to the Lord, to seek his God. His is not just a passing prayer, but an earnest seeking, a passionate longing, a determined searching. David knows that only God can satisfy him, only God can fill the empty places. God is what David craves. God is what our own weary hearts crave.

But there is hope in His precious promise to the seeking heart – “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Listen to the very next verse: “I will be found by you” (v. 14). God is inviting us to seek Him, and in the same breath promises we will find Him. He said, “I have not spoken in secret… I have not said… ‘seek me in vain’” (Isaiah 45:19). Our Heavenly Father doesn’t play a divine game of “hide and seek.” He says we can “seek and find.”

What are you looking for, Beloved? Listen to your aching heart. Hear the cries of your empty soul. It isn’t wealth or pleasure or power or things that you want. Deep within, you are longing for God, because you were made for Him. Seek Him, and you will find Him. Then go take a nap.

Hebrews: Do You Need Some Rest?

My sleeping angel, Joy.

I kept my phone close, anticipating a call about a test I had undergone. Cancer took my mom away too soon – and I knew that increased my risk. The call finally came late in the afternoon. “The images were clear. There was no sign of cancer.” Relief filled my heart and that night I got some much-needed rest.  But what if I decided the doctor was wrong? What if I doubted the results? What if I continued to worry and toss and turn at night?

The writer of Hebrews drew from the Psalmist’s recollection of the Israelite’s in the wilderness and God’s declaration that this unbelieving people “Shall never enter my rest” (Psalm 95:11; Hebrews 3:11; 4:3). At the threshold of the Promised Land, Moses sent out twelve spies into Canaan to explore the territory and assess the inhabitants from a military standpoint. They returned with a glowing report of “the land of milk and honey” (Numbers 13:27), and an alarming report of the people they would have to defeat to take the land. They said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are!” (13:31) The people grumbled and wanted to turn back to Egypt – to slavery. Only Joshua and Caleb urged them to trust the Lord and proceed – and only Joshua and Caleb survived God’s judgment.  Because of their unbelief, the whole company would wander for forty years until the last of the unbelieving generation fell in the desert.

The author used them as an example of people who “had the gospel . . . but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith” (Hebrews 4:2).  Faith, as the Bible uses it means belief and trust – with the implication that actions based on that trust will follow. Faith is not just ethereal thoughts – it is acting with confidence in what God has said. The Israelites heard about the Promised Land, but they doubted they could get the victory so they gave up on God’s rest. When the gospel is declared some will have faith and some will not. Some will rest in the promise of salvation and eternal life and some will live in hopelessness and anxiety.  The author adds, “Now we who have believed enter that rest . . .” (4:3a).

Beloved, are you weary? There is rest for those who trust in Jesus. Today and eternally.

Can’t I Just Get Some Rest?

I’m not very spiritual or eloquent this morning. What I am is tired. Joy had oral surgery this week and we have been taking care of her for the past couple of days. I say taking care of her, but really we’ve been keeping up with her. She has been going wide open since the second day. Plus, I have a Bible study lesson to prepare and teach today. Laundry needs to get done. Floors need mopping. And there is always that 2-year-old ball of sweetness and fire that wants Nana’s attention.

What I want to do is follow Jesus’ advice to His disciples to “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6:31). Rest is important. It was modeled for us by God Himself in the creation week when He rested on the seventh day (Genesis 2:2). Yes, rest would be so nice. Let me just sit with Jesus in a quiet place as the disciples did. Or did they?

Let’s look a little farther into this story. “But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them” (v. 33). What happened to their solitary, quiet place alone with Jesus? What happened to their day of rest? It got swallowed up by needy people. “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (v. 34).

I want to talk to those of you who are tired. I’d love for this story to say that Jesus sent the crowd away so His disciples could rest. But it doesn’t. He taught them and then He fed them. More than five thousand of them. And the disciples were right there helping Him. Then Jesus sent them off in a boat and into a storm. When they got to the other side of the lake, more people were waiting. Oh, how I relate! But He showed up for all of them. The needy people and the disciples. And He will show up for you and me. Weary, beloved servant, Jesus knows. He cares. And He is with you.

Before I could finish this post, Joy woke up and came running into my study. Laundry and floors can wait. My girl needs morning snuggles. Jesus knows.