God, You are Faithful!

This morning, God used a simple message from church to reach my heart. Today we were talking about God as the Lord of Hosts. We started off with several obscure passages but ended up with the well-known story of David and Goliath in I Samuel 17. A lot of times when it comes to the more "popular" stories in the Bible, I tune out because in my pride I think that God can't possibly have anything new to teach me. Today God showed me how very wrong and prideful I am to think such a thing.

One of my biggest struggles right now is my finances. Every time a new semester rolls around, I go through a cycle of worry and prayer, asking God to provide for me. I have a hard time trusting him and believing that he will, despite the fact that he has provided for me countless times in the past. I worry about paying for books, tuition, and supplies for art for weeks. Time and time again, he always blows my worries away with a laugh and shows me that he is there for me.

Today we read these verses that caught my attention:

You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of host... This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand!

I Samuel 17: 45-46ish

David is talking to a freakishly huge giant with big muscles, and even bigger weapons. Goliath could have squashed him like a bug, but here he is standing up to him and telling him off. The people on the sidelines must have thought he was insane! And yet he wasn't. Why? Because he understood something that Goliath didn't. Victory is not determined by the size of your enemies, but by the size of your allies. God was on his side! When the armies of the living God stand up behind you, there is no way that you can fail. Romans 8:31-32 sums it up by saying,

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

God, the creator of the universe and sustainer of all things, the one who sent his own son to die a brutal death on a cross just so that I could have the opportunity to have a relationship with him, is taking care of me. THAT is the God that I serve. He can and he will provide for me, excedingly and abundantly beyond all that I could ever ask for or imagine (Eph. 3:20).

There Was Once This Creepy, Evil General...

I was reading in the book of Judges today and came across something very interesting. It all starts when the Israelites were being oppressed (as usual... when are they not?) by this group of people called the Canaanites and especially the creepy evil comander of the army named Sisera (Who, for the purposes of this story, looked soemthing like this). Deborah is not exactly okay with all of this and so she sends for her right hand man, Barak, and tells him that God will be with him and will help him defeat the creepy evil Sisera and all of his army. Barak doesn't want to go by himself, but agrees to go if Deborah will go with him. To make a long story short, she agrees and before you know it, they're on the cusp of battle, looking down at the army. Here's the part that caught my eye. Right as Barak is going down the mountain heading towards this army (probably about to wet himself), it says this, "At Barak's advance, the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot." Notice how it says, "At Barak's advance..." God waited until he saw Barak being faithful to him before he did anything. This wasn't because God was somehow not "allowed" to do anything, as if there was some rule book that says he can't show his powers until we trust in him. I think he did it for Barak. If he had blown the calvary away while Barak was still sitting on the hill shaking in his boots, Barak would have certainly been impressed. But would he have learned the value of trusting in God? God gave Barak the opportunity to trust in him so that he could reward him for his faithfulness. Imagine how it would feel to be Barak, racing down that hill, only to watch God kicking Canaanite butt before your very eyes.
The moral of this story isn't trust in God and all your problems will go away. The moral is to have faith in God's plan. Things might not turn out the way you want them to, but you will always be rewarded in the end for the steps that you take towards God's promises to you.

When God says, "Oh tut, tut."

If anyone reads my facebook statuses enough, they will know that I like quotes. I recently stumbled over a quote by Maya Angelou, the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, that said, "A woman's heart should be so hidden in God that a man has to seek Him just to find her." For some reason this just struck home with me. I tend to have the problem of pursuing guys instead of letting them pursue me. I get all these ideas of what a relationship should look like and let my thoughts carry me away. Instead of doing this, I need to be seeking after God. Sometimes I feel like God looks at me and just says, "Martha, martha. You are worried about many things" (Luke 10:41). I get so wrapped up in my own little world and my own little ideas that I forget that he's got me! He holds me in the palm of my hand... why would I be concerned about anything? Compared to the God who created the universe with words, who breathed and life came into existence, and who came back from the dead, my worries about not finding a husband are insulting. He looks at me and says, "Really? Really? You don't think I can take that after parting the Red Sea (Ex. 14) and making a pile of bones into a freaking Irobot army(Ezekiel 37)? Oh tut, tut. Have a little faith." And that's exactly what I need. I want to pursue God. That's it. I don't want to get wrapped up in everything else, I just want him.

Another Puzzle Analogy

God: Do you want to work a puzzle with me?
Me: Sure!
God: Here, start out with this piece.
Me: What... you're only giving me one piece?
God: Well... my puzzle, my rules.
Me: Fine... okay. So it's blue... okay that means it's the sky, right?
God: Nope.
Me: Okay blue things... water?
God: Try again.
Me: blueberries...?
God: Not even close.
Me: Really. Really God? You've got the box! I just have one piece! How do you expect me to try and figure it out?
God: Exactly.
Me: Oh.

We try to come up with all these different scenarios for our lives but we really don't know anything about them other than what God has given us! It's his puzzle and his box. He doesn't expect us to try to figure it out, he just expects us to trust him to give us the right pieces when we need them. Instead of worrying about our lives, surrender them to the One with the box and let him piece them together.

Hold on Tight

My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. (Exodus 33:14)

All we have to do is hold on tight. God's got us, we just have to trust in him. Waves might seem really big to us, but to him they're nothing. Let him pick you up and lift you over them.

All or Nothing

If we aren't giving God everything that we are, we might as well not be giving him anything at all. He says in Revelation to the church at Laodicea that he was about to spit them out of his mouth because the were neither hot nor cold. Just luke warm. They weren't totally on fire for Jesus but they didn't hate him either, they were just kind of chillin' like a villain with Jesus. He's NOT okay with that. He wants us to pursue him passionately with everything that we are, not just give him a little bit here, a little bit there but EVERYTHING. Easier said than done sometimes when it comes to things like finances, relationships and anxiety. But a good friend of mine put it like this: "Not having a good relationship with God is like trying to live in a messy room. You can do it, but it affects every aspect of your life. You can't do your homework as well, you get frustrated when you can't find things, and you trip over things." If we aren't giving our lives completely to God, it affects every aspect of our lives and our "messy room" makes it impossible to function. We may as well have not given him our lives at all if we aren't willing to keep the floor clean and follow after him passionately.