GROWING SEEDS: When There's Water In The Desert

I always thought it was my job to be responsible for someone else's coming to Jesus.....their walk with the Lord....their very salvation.  But one day, a friend said these words to me: "It's not your job, Liz, to save people.  That's God's job.  Your job....if you choose to accept it (sounds a little like Mission Impossible, doesn't it??) is to be obedient.  Your job is to live out Christ daily to the people He places on your path."

It was like someone released every single ounce of anxiety I was carrying around inside of me.  Really?  It's not my job to save them?  Really?

I love the story of Philip and the Eunuch-dude.  Check it out at Acts 8:26-40.  Long story short, an angel came and told Philip to scoot on over to a road in the desert..  It's my understanding that Philip was quite happy where he was.....and heading to the desert wasn't exactly in his top 5 places to go.  But....without questioning, he packed up his stuff, buckled his sandals, and headed to the desert.

We are only called to OBEDIENCE, not to the creation of the moment.

Here's the short version:  While Philip was walking along the dusty desert road, a chariot passed him with the eunuch dude sitting reading the book of Isaiah, not understanding a word of what he was reading (sound familiar??).  The Holy Spirit said to Philip, "Go over and walk along beside the carriage." So Philip obediently did.  And as he ran beside the chariot not fully understanding why, he asks eunuch-dude if he understands what he's reading.  He says "No, how can I without someone to explain it to me?"  At this point Philip hops in the chariot and rides through the DESERT (important point here, folks) explaining the Good News about Jesus.  They then came to some WATER (pay attention...) and the eunuch asked Philip to baptize him...which he promptly did.

There's a lot happening in this awesome story.....but the thing that makes me smile the most is the connection between it being a DESERT and them coming to WATER to be baptized at just the right moment.  It's not like there's water on every street corner in the desert, friends.  God always provides.  It's not our job to save those around us.....but it IS our job to be obedient.  When we hear the still small voice telling us to go to the desert...or help that family down the street....or share your testimony with the person at the laundromat cause your washing machine crashed and burned, That - Is - Our - Job.

Be Present.....Be Obedient.....first and foremost with God, then in the precious lives of those around you.

GROWING SEEDS: A Mary-Hicks-Kind-of-Psalm

"God....my Best Friend,

You are my GPS, the One in the drivers seat of my life!

There is nothing I need that You haven't already provided.

You have brought me rest in the most beautiful of places,

And You have provided cool, fresh water (& coffee!) for me to drink from.

You have never lied to me,

And You remind me to BREATHE as I sit and watch the sunrise each morning.

You whisper when to go right and when to go left

Even when that direction sends me through hardship and darkness,

You promise to always be by my side.

The cool breeze on my face is Your breath and a reminder I am safe with You.

You provide food not just on my table, but in my very soul,

So when the enemy arrives, I will be strong and ready.

Your hand lifts my chin when the darkness is too much

and You wipe the tears from my face.

You pursue me like a Shepherd with a wayward sheep

And bring me back into Your arms 

For the rest of my life."

Psalm 23 (Liz-version)

As I was reading Psalm 23 this week in my Bible, I noticed a handwritten note to the side I must have jotted down many years ago.  It read, "Per Mary Hicks: 'You can't avoid the darkest valley; you can't go under it, nor over it, nor around it.  But you can walk through it with the comfort of knowing that God is by your side."

Many of us knew Mary Hicks......and we knew the dark valley she herself walked through.  Her death was not an easy death....and I have to believe the 23rd Psalm were words that comforted her as she and God walked through the darkness together.  I didn't know her well.....but I knew her well enough.  She lived these words.

As the winds blow and the storm clouds gather above you, do what King David and Mary Hicks did;  lift your face to the sky and feel the breeze and know it is God's reminder that He is walking with you.....not in front of you; not behind you.....but beside you.

Be at peace.

GROWING SEEDS; When Satan Attacks"

It was around this time two years ago, Chuck and I were preparing to move into yet another neighbor's house while our house was being rebuilt from damage caused from a 350-year flood.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, my husband was also noticing various signs that we eventually discovered were cancer.  Serious cancer.  

"Why?  Haven't we been through enough this year?", I remember asking God at the time.

Fear would grip me most every morning at 2:00 am.  It felt like a full scale Satan attack we were in and I prayed (and cried) harder than I have ever prayed (and cried) before or since. I felt completely helpless, hopeless and scared.

"He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?"

Luke 24:38

I wrote scriptures of Hope and Peace and Faith everywhere....on my wrist, sticky notes on the Jeep dash and yes, all over our wall studs and sub floor.  I needed that constant reassurance that the attacks on our lives had more to do with who we might be in the future than who we were right then.  During the day, I could "see" the enemy was shooting arrows of distraction at us....wanting us to doubt....wanting us to remember the fear of that fateful day when we huddled in the bed listening to the water entering in and feeling the battle going on underneath us.  But at night, Fear continually whispered in my ear that I must have done something to deserve this.

And then I remembered reading these words, "The enemy does not attack you according to your history...he attacks you according to your destiny."

It's so easy to let the deceptive thoughts of Satan tell us we deserve what we're going through....that we must have done something to anger God and this was our punishment.  But friends, God is a God of love.....and Satan doesn't care about your past....he cares about your future.  He knows you better than you know yourself.  He sees patterns, he sees things you do when no ones looking....and oh, he's so strategic. 

So if you find yourself in the middle of the battlefield with Satan and his friends Fear and Doubt,  your best defense...your best ammunition....is to bend those knees, lift those eyes upwards and remember....

NO ONE launches that kind of attack on someone they are not threatened by.

GROWING SEEDS: "The Monday after THE Sunday"

It's the Monday after THE Sunday.  Easter Sunday. 

And everyone has moved on.  

No more talk about Jesus dying....and the day droplets of blood fell with each of our names on them from his body.  No more Easter eggs filled with coins, chocolate bunnies and a bizarre game called Chubby Bunny, and I woke that Monday-after-the-Sunday wondering what, in this world, Jesus was doing the Monday after He rose.  

As for me, I was planting impatiens and picking up glazed donuts for my friend Pam and myself....a tradition we do most every-other-Monday.

Pam talked of how her late husband, James, never had much to do with church.  "He'd just as well spit in a fire than go to church", she said.  But one day a new preacher came to town....a preacher determined to bring Jesus to her husband James even when the deacons of her little church shook their heads and told the new preacher he was wasting his time.  

So each week, this new preacher would show up outside the barn where James spent much of his days, and ask him when he thought he'd make it to church.  And James would assure the new preacher he'd better not hold his breath.....and yet, each passing week, the new preacher continued to stop by James' barn....to help him change a clutch on the tractor......or birth a calf......and asking him when he reckoned he'd make it to church.

This went on for over a year.  Then one Sunday....and it wasn't even Easter.....James got up, put on a suit and drove to church with his wife Pam.  The next week he did the same.  He never stopped.  And a few months later, James made the long walk down the aisle to the front of the church and accepted Jesus as his Savior.  Pam said there wasn't a dry eye in the place and everyone was rejoicing.  It had been a long journey for James to walk down that aisle, but the One who went looking for him, never gave up on him.  And much like the woman who had 10 silver coins and loses one in Luke 15, she "lit a lamp" (don't miss the symbolism of the Light)....searched and then rejoiced when it was found.  "She gathered her friends and family around her and they celebrated," my Bible says in verse 9.

Three years later, Pam buried James from cancer. 

Jesus says the whole community of Heaven dances the night away when each person figures it out, turns from their own ways and walks into God's arms.  I don't know about you, but I can just hear them rejoicing, "Thank God he's found; that was too much to lose."