Dots on a Page

I have been thinking lately about one awesome aspect of our God:  He has our best interests at heart.

I know that is a highly spoken of topic, and so probably comes as no great surprise to any of you.  But, stop and think about it this way....there are over 7.3 billion people in this world, to get a picture of exactly how many 7.3 billion people are, please take a quick look at this link:

http://www.datapointed.net/visualizations/population/world/seven-billion-plus/

Isn't that an amazing website!?! And now visualize each one of those dots as a person, someone with dreams, someone with hopes, someone with love, and someone with the need for God.  And imagine one of those dots as you. 

We are getting a picture here of how insignificant we really are.  When we were reduced to just a dot on a page, we become small, not noteworthy, and just another number. 

But thank God, we are not just another number.  We know how complicated we are, what our hopes and dreams are, and how the part we have to play in this life is not unworthy...but God knows us more than we even know ourselves.  And He has our best interests at heart. 

Now choose another dot on the page.  That person - wherever they be, whomever they are - is loved by God and their best interests are on God's heart. 

Another dot; another person, another valuable being, another who God has the best planned for.

Move down ten lines and twenty across. That dot too, represents a person who God loves, whose best interests are closest to His heart.

And the it goes on and on and on!  How awesome is our God!  Not only does He love each and every one of us, but He has the blueprint to the perfect life for us, ready for us to reach out and accept His guiding and promises.  And He does it all without compromising anybody else.  

Often, with our human limitations, we prioritized something at the expense of another.  We cannot attend to everything all at once, do everything to the best of our ability, and achieve the highest.  We simply can't.  So we choose, we decide that in order for this to thrive, this idea, dream, or project, will have to either be put on the back burner or left all together.  And that is not a bad thing.  We have to prioritse God's will in our lives and foucs on only what He has for us.

But God doesn't have to make that choice.  He doesn't have to sacrifice the person down the street's best because it is more important that you get the opportunity.  He doesn't prevent us from achieving the best, because the person sitting next to us in church deserves it more.  No, rather He has everybody's best interests at heart so that what is best for you is for you, and what is best for our friend is best for them.

To sum it up: God hasn't forgotten you.  He holds you close to His heart, and he wants the best for you.  But He hasn't forgotten the other 7,000,000,299 people in this world either.  He holds them close and wants the best for them as well.  So we have to trust in Him.  Trust that He knows what He is doing.  Trust that He knows best for you, for your neighbor, and for your friends and family. 

~ 

I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything - so I am just letting you know that I am still alive.  :)  I hope to update soon with things I have been doing, trips to Tahlee, Church, TESOL, etc. etc.  However, this was on my heart, so got typed up first.  Hoped it blessed you today.  <3

The Secret of Contentment

"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do all this through Him who gives me strength."

~ Philippians 4:11-13

Do you ever feel like you are in a stagnant stage of your life?  You know, when you finish school, or studying, or some other milestone in you life.  Milestones are a major point, but it is only until we are passed them that they becomes a marker in our life's journey, not a boulder which we can't seem to get through.

"Just wait on God, you are in a time of waiting at the moment."

"It is easier to steer a moving car; drive in the light you have."

Have these ever been spoken to you?  I have heard both, and what makes life confusing is that they seem to contradict each other.  One is saying to wait for God to show you His plan, while other is saying go forward, and He will direct you has you go.  So do you wait for His guidance, or do you move forward, believing that He will guide your steps?  I believe both are a word in season, and  both are equally true.  But I think it depends on one crucial point: Being content where you are at the moment.  God never ever wastes time, and so if you are following and seeking Him with all your heart, mind and strength, then He will direct your paths.  That's a promise:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.

~Proverbs 3:5-6

You have to trust that God will lead you, when the time is right.  And while it might seem that you are chafing at the bit, and not doing anything for yourself, for Him or for anyone else, the lessons and character which are being built and developed are well worth the wait.  God never wastes time, and so everything you experience, is for a reason and for a benefit.  True, not all circumstances are God's plan, because we live in a broken, fallen world, but

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him who have been called according to His purpose.

~ Romans 8:28

We have all been called.  Some of us are called to the international mission field, others to the mission field in our town, and still others are called to the mission of our house, home and families.  But nonetheless, we are all called and none is more important than the other.  But sometimes it seems that the calling will never come true, and although you are saying yes to God and to whatever His plans are for your life, nothing is happening. 

It is then that we have to learn to Trust.  Simply sit back and learn to trust God.  God won't move us on in life until we have learned the lessons from the situations we are in.  And when there seems not to be any lessons to learn, well, that is a lesson too.  

So it all boils down to this simple point: The Secret of Contentment is to trust in our Lord and our Saviour.  And lastly, look at the last verse of the Philippians passage, verse 13:

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

~Philippians 4:13

All things.  That means everything, the things which are both hard and easy.  It takes just as much strength to sit back and wait for God's plan, seemingly to be doing nothing, than it does to be on the front line everyday and every hour.  There are seasons for both the busy and the quiet.  There are reasons for both.  And there is strength available for us in every season - the seasons of action, and the season of waiting.  

The secret to contentment is to Trust in our Lord, knowing that He is there for us every minute of every day be it full of achievements, battles and breakthroughs, or be it full of the quiet waiting on His promises, His strength, His love, and His peace is there, ours for the t

On Dragon's Skin

C.S Lewis wrote an amazing passage in his book 'Voyage of the Dawn Treader', which I'll get to in a moment.  However, if you are not familiar with the Narnia series, here's a quick run down: In the first book (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) we meet the four children - Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.  They discover a magical land named Narnia, where the white witch rules.  Her wicked reign has caused winter to come over the land, and never Christmas.  However, with the coming of the children, and with the help of Aslan, the great lion who is the true King over Narnia, they hope to set everything right.  There is just one problem - Edmund has turned traitor and betrays his siblings and all of Narnia.  Edmund is rescued from the clutches of the white witch, but she demands blood as payment for treachery.  To save the human boy, Aslan takes Edmund's place.  As the ancient prophecies foretold, the white witch got her moment of victory.  But it is short lived.  Aslan returns to life, bigger and more majestic than ever, and defeats the white witch in the following battle for Narnia.  The four children are crowned high kings and queens over Narnia.

In the second book, Prince Caspian, the children return to fight the wicked usurper king and his cohorts, and restore peace to Narnia.  Prince Caspian, the rightful heir to the throne comes into power, and Narnia remains peaceful and prosperous under his reign.

The third book - from which following passage is taken from, is the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Edmund and Lucy return with their 'beastly' cousin, Eustace Scrub (and yes, he deserved it.) to find Prince Caspian taking a voyage out beyond any maps and charts to discover what happened to seven lords and perhaps even reach Aslan's land.  During the voyage, Eustace, most of all, learns an important lesson.

“I won’t tell you how I became a–a dragon till I can tell the others and get it all over,” said Eustace. “By the way, I didn’t even know it was a dragon till I heard you all using the word when I turned up here the other morning. I want to tell you how I stopped being one.”

“Fire ahead,” said Edmund.

“Well, last night I was more miserable than ever. And that beastly arm-ring was hurting like anything–”

“Is that all right now?”

Eustace laughed–a different laugh from any Edmund had heard him give before–and slipped the bracelet easily off his arm. “There it is,” he said, “and anyone who likes can have it as far as I’m concerned. Well, as I say, I was lying awake and wondering what on earth would become of me. And then–but, mind you, it may have all been a dream. I don’t know.”

“Go on,” said Edmund, with considerable patience.

“Well, anyway, I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it– if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.”

“You mean it spoke?”

“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I’d never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden–trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.

"I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells–like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.

"I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

"But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

"The the lion said–but I don’t know if it spoke–‘You will have to let me undress you,’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know–if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off–just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt–and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me–I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on–and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. You’d think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they’ve no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian’s, but I was so glad to see them.

"After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me–”

“Dressed you. With his paws?”

“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes–the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”

“No. It wasn’t a dream,” said Edmund.

“Why not?”

“Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been–well, un-dragoned, for another.”

“What do you think it was, then?” asked Eustace.

“I think you’ve seen Aslan,” said Edmund.

Without God, we are all dragons of a sort - prickly, ill-shaped, disformed and sometimes downright dangerous.  And we cannot improve ourselves.  We can try, we can try peel back our layers of self, greed, envy, bitterness....but no matter how hard we try we cannot change.  It takes the power of Jesus to peel back all our layers and reveal our true person underneath.  It hurts to have our flaws and failures exposed and removed, and it stings our pride.  But those layers are removed, there is such freedom!  God dresses us anew in His grace and forgiveness.  The old self is gone, and 'we are in Christ a new creation.'

Beyond Fear

Fear is a funny thing.  We can be afraid of someone, something, an event, or even ourselves.  We read in the Bible that ‘perfect loves casts out all fear,’ and that ‘God is love’, leading us to conclude that when God is in us, we should have no fear.  But as imperfect human beings, we forget that He who is in us is greater than he who is defeated in the world, and we become fearful.

As I was reading Judges one day, I came across the story of Gideon – how he defeated the Midianites with only three hundred men, how he trusted God, even when His plans seemed rather weak by man’s standards.  But something else stood out that I hadn’t noticed before.  Gideon was scared, every step of God’s plan.  (The following passages are from Judges 6 and 7)

     ...while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from the Midianites

        So he said to Him, “O my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.”

    Now Gideon perceived that He was the Angel of the Lord. So Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord God! For I have seen the Angel of the Lord face to face.”  Then the Lord said to him, “Peace be with you; do not fear, you shall not die.”

   So Gideon took ten men from among his servants and did as the Lord had said to him. But because he feared his father’s household and the men of the city too much to do it by day, he did it by night.

     Now therefore, proclaim in the hearing of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and afraid, let him turn and depart at once from Mount Gilead.’” And twenty-two thousand of the people returned, and ten thousand remained.

   It happened on the same night that the Lord said to him, “Arise, go down against the camp, for I have delivered it into your hand.  But if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant and you shall hear what they say; and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp.”

      And so it was, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, that he worshiped.

At every stage, Gideon had some fear, something he had to overcome.  First, it was the threshing wheat in the wine press.  He didn’t want to let anyone know that he had grain; he feared someone would take it away. 

            Secondly, he doubted he could lead Israel at all.  He claimed his family was least in the tribe of Manasseh, and he was the least of his family.  He made an excuse to cover his fear – because the Israelites have been oppressed by the Midianites for seven years.  The Midianites had driven the Israelites out of their homes, they were living in caves, and they had destroyed everything they owned.  And yet, we see that Gideon’s family had grain (Gideon was threshing it), animals (he makes sacrifices to the L_ORD), and in a later verse, God says “take your servant Purah…” indicating that Gideon ‘the least in his household’ had a servant as well.  It would appear that Gideon’s family was not doing too badly, but once again, his fear of the Midianites had overcome him, as he made excuses not to follow the Angel of the Lord’s directions.        

            Gideon speaks to the Angel of the Lord, and when he realizes who it is, he fears for his life.  This fear, however, is not cowardly.  Many other times, people have feared for their lives when God speaks to them. He is so holy that we can’t handle it.  “For no man shall see Me, and live.” (Exodus 33:20b)  Nearly every an Angel, or the Angel of the Lord, visited people, they have said, ‘Do not fear.’ It is normal to have a healthy fear and respect for our God, because He is beyond and above anything we can ever be or imagine. 

            Fourth, God told Gideon to tear down the statue of Baal and the high places his father had set up.  These were obviously sinful, and had to go, to signify that Gideon was now following God wholeheartedly.  Gideon did so, but he did it at night, so no one could see him, know it was him, and condemn him.  He was afraid to take a public stand for God.  He had convictions in his heart, but wasn't prepared to let anyone else know about them, not yet anyways.

            Next, God allows anyone in Gideon’s army who is afraid to step down.  He didn’t want men who couldn't trust in Him enough, so He allowed them to go home.  The fact that God pointed this out shows that Gideon is changing.  He still might be afraid, but his faith is growing, and when 22,000 people go home, he is not one of them.

            Sixth, God is gave Gideon an extra sign, one that will strength his faith, one that will keep him strong until the end.  But this time God also addresses Gideon’s fear, “If you are afraid to go down…”  Gideon had to overcome his fear of visiting the enemy camp before he was able to hear God’s promise on the victory.  However, he didn’t have to go alone, God provided someone who was willing to go with him, Gideon’s trusty servant, Purah.  Purah was obviously not afraid to go down to the camp with Gideon, and, by surrounding himself with people who were strong than he was, Gideon too overcame his fear of the Midianite camp.

            And finally, when Gideon heard God’s promise - heard the dream which the Midianite had had, he fell down and worshiped God.  He had no fear now.  His eyes were totally focused on God, and Gideon knew that God, not he, would accomplish the task. 

Reflecting upon this, I realized that it is okay to be frightened.  It is okay to be nervous about what tomorrow may bring because God can and will still use frightened people.  We don’t have to be brave and strong before He will use us.  If our hearts are seeking Him, then He will make us brave.  But we must not stay in that place of fear instead we need to allow our faith to be strengthened and grow strong.  If our eyes are fixed on Him, our fear will melt like snow at the sight of the Son. 

Fear not, for I am with you;

Be not dismayed, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you,

Yes, I will help you,

I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’  (Isaiah 41:10)

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love.  (2 Timothy 1:7)