GROWING SEEDS: "We Weren't Made For This World"

These last few weeks have allowed us to see life in a way we've never seen it before.  We feel emotions that have no name or title because they're brand new never-before-felt feelings.  And when we look at all that's going on around us....most of us from the safety of our homes and the worries of whats next for our families, it’s hard not to take inventory of just how much we allow ourselves to live only for our life on earth.  

"Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? 

There are better things ahead than any we leave behind."
C.S. Lewis

Let's take a break from the unnamed emotions we are feeling these days and go on a trip.  A trip I go on every chance I get.....a daydream trip to Heaven.

Close your eyes and you can see it.  Do you see the angels...one on each side of you....escorting you through the dark skies of space, past the stars and the moon, past Jupiter and Pluto.  You don't even have a single desire to look back at earth getting further away from you.  Then you see the light up ahead.  It's much like the sunrise in the mornings...a slow progression...getting brighter with each second...until it's the only thing you can see.  It's so bright it's hard to look at...but you can't take your eyes off it.  And suddenly, you pass right through the Light...and you know you have arrived Home.  It "feels" like Home.  Like when you've been on a long trip and you pull into the driveway and your entire being exhales "I'm Home".  It's the Home you have traveled your entire life to get to.  It's familiar...yet spectacularly the most beautiful place you've ever not been to.  And there, smiling are all the people you lived life with that knew the Lord.

And before they can hug the daylights out of you, they step aside...and up walks Jesus between them.  Arms outstretched, sandals on His feet, light radiating from Him as He walks straight towards you...as if He’s lived His whole life just for you.  His eyes are sparkling and He has this love on his face when He says, "I thought you'd never get here, (your name)...Welcome Home."

I don't know if that is what it will be like, friends....or anything like it...but what do I know is it will be far greater than even our greatest daydreams.

"If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world

were precisely those who thought most of the next. 

It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world
that they have become so ineffective in this one."
Unknown

GROWING SEEDS: "Our Back To Normal LIfe"

Each day for the past few weeks, I have continually heard out of my own mouth as well as others, "I can't wait till this Coronavirus has run its course and things get back to normal".  But what if God's plan ISN'T to get things "back to normal"?  What if.....God's plan is to change us...to open eyes that have been closed....that have become complacent.....that haven't daily been fixed on Him?  What if?

It's hard to see the chaos and fear the Coronavirus is causing the world without also remembering Y2K of 01-01-00 and 09-11-01 and the panic of 2008.  Each of these things changed us...some focused their eyes on God....others blamed God.  In some ways, I feel like the modern-day Children of Israel as we welcome the deliverance from tragedy after tragedy only to take our eyes off the Deliverer a few months later when life gets "back to normal" (Psalm 106:6-13). 

Life was never suppose to be "back to normal" from any of these tragedies....nor were the Children of Israel to return "back to normal" and forget the massive miracle when the Red Sea was parted and they walked on dry ground where the Sea had been just seconds before and arrive safely on the other side.  Yet they did forget.  They did go back to life as "normal":

12 "Then they believed His promises
and sang His praise.
13 But they soon FORGOT what He had done
and did not wait for His plan to unfold."

Psalm 106:12-13

God's ultimate plan for our deliverance from this current shaking of the world is to remind us that we need Him.  That this tragedy is bigger than us....that "back to normal" was never part of His plan.  We need Him....every hour, every minute, every second of every day, and we must not forget He is greater than the tragedy. 

He didn't cause the Coronavirus...but He certainly allowed it as another attempt to open our eyes and to show our need to know and to trust Him.  And one of these days, friends, it will be the final tragedy.  Will our eyes be focused on Him....or on our "back to normal" life? That last tragedy will decide your destiny.

He's the only One that can part the waters, find a cure, and deliver us into the Promised Land.  Get to know Him.

GROWING SEEDS: “Navigator Of My Life”

Most early mornings, I write God a letter on this very computer I'm writing to you on; that is, unless I place my eyes elsewhere first.  Facebook, Amazon or YouTube are the bright and shiny things that distract me on my journey.  I’m not proud to admit that to you.....

This past week, I came across a Prayer Letter I wrote God last year.  It went something like this:

"Father, I fear You will actually do what's best for me instead of what I want You to do for me.

*

There.  I said it."

I laughed when I read what I had written Him exactly a year ago.  Funny how our eyesight is so much clearer when we have walked a year ahead of a problem....stopped....turned around....and seen with 20/20 vision how and why His way was best for us all along.

My God-letter continued.....

"Father, remember that show "Lets Make A Deal" with Monty Hall?  Monty would say to the contestant, "You can choose from what's behind Door 1, Door 2 or Door 3".  The contestant choosing had no idea what was behind any of the doors, but Monty Hall knew.
*
Well, my "Will" is kinda like that show.  I ask myself, "Why would you, Liz, choose any of the doors?"
God is fully aware of what is behind ALL the doors of your life.  If I insisted on opening Door #2 because it was decorated the prettiest,  yet You knew, God, that it had a turkey vulture behind it, and Door #1 and Door #3 each had a car and brand new refrigerator behind them,
why wouldn't I let You pick the door for me?
*

Why do I always choose "MY" way when 100% of the time, YOUR way is the right way?"

So my God-Letter this morning is to have the same Will as God.  That what He wants....I want.  He knows when I reach the fork in the road, which way I need to go....even when its not the prettiest road.  I pray I hear His whispers in my ear on whether to turn right or left, and not ignore His constant "Make A Safe And Legal U-Turn, Liz"  when I choose the wrong road. 

I am the driver of my journey...He is my Navigator, and I am grateful He maps out the right roads on this trip to my eternal Home.

GROWING SEEDS: "Wounds and Wells"

Every Saturday morning when I was a kid, our family of five would pile into Mom's Buick and head down Central Expressway to a nondescript beige brick building for church.  One Saturday after church, instead of heading north towards home, Dad pointed the Buick south towards Oak Cliff.  At the time, Oak Cliff was a place you avoided at all costs.  But here was Dad.....driving his young family straight into the "danger zone". 

He turned the car through a neighborhood of falling-down houses, unpaved roads and a woman chasing a chicken through her yard with a hatchet.  It was Dad’s unique way of showing us kids “the other side”.

I was reminded of this family adventure when I read John 4 this week....the story of the Woman at the Well.

"He HAD to go through Samaria on the way”, it said.

I always just figured Jesus literally had to go through Samaria to get from Judea to Galilee....kind of like going from downtown Dallas through Oak Cliff to get to Duncanville.  But it turns out that most Jews in Jesus' day went out of their way to avoid Samaria because they considered any contact with Samaritans as contamination.  They were scum to the Jews.  (I'm guessing they hadn't heard the story of the Good Samaritan just yet.  Just sayin'....)

And then it dawned on me:  Jesus HAD to go to the Samaritans because......they wouldn't come to Him!

You and me....WE are the Samaritans.

The Jews turned their backs on Him, so He came to us....unworthy and filthy as we are....He came to us!  And like the Woman at the Well, it didn't matter that she had been married 5 or 50 times.....or that she was living a life of sin at that very moment.  He offered her His living water.....and she accepted.

Have you, like the Woman at the Well, during the hardest parts of your life, found yourself in the wilderness alone with all your junk, running in a very dark and lonely place?  Ya, me too.  Do you feel unworthy and too far away from God to accept that drink of refreshing living water?

At the very moment she accepted, broken pieces of her life and her heart were washed clean by the love of that refreshing living water....water that washes away OUR sin.  Jesus knew every blemish, but loved her (us) anyway.

As for me, I can confidently tell you that during the darkest times of my life when I felt so alone, He found me there...in an ugly, rolled-up-in-a-ball mess...and offered me His living water of peace. 

You simply need to accept it.

GROWING SEEDS: "I Know The Way Out"

"A man was walking down the street when he fell into a hole.  The walls were so steep he couldn't get out.  The man in the hole began to cry out for help.  Soon, a doctor walked by, heard the man's cries for help, wrote him a prescription, tossed it down the hole, and walked away.  Before long, a priest walked by and heard the man calling out, "Father, can you help me?"  The priest wrote a prayer, threw it in the hole, and walked away.  Finally, a friend came along.  And the man asked the friend for help.  The friend then made a bold, brave move:  He jumped into the hole.  The man who had been trapped was shocked.  "Are you stupid?  Now we're both stuck down here."  But the friend said, "Yeah, but I've been down here before, and I know the way out."

This is the gospel, folks.  God stood at the edge of a hole, and He heard people crying for help.  But He didn't write us a prescription and throw it down the hole.  He didn't pray and then walk away.  He jumped into the hole.  Jesus gave up heaven, put on skin and lived on the inside of every hole, every mess, every valley you could imagine.

He lived your life here on earth.  He knows what its like to be you.  He knows its impossible for you to get out of that hole without His help...and He hears your cries.  He WANTS to jump into that hole you're in and help you find your way out. 

JESUS IS THE LADDER. 

And He uses us, the Church, to be Hole-Hunters....Cry-Hearers....Jumper-in-ers.  And if you've ever been in a hole and are standing on the street, it means you know the way out.  Right now, all of us are in one of two places; we are either stuck in a hole.....or we're walking along the street, seeing holes all around and hearing only cries for help.

I don't know where you're at today.  Whether you're inside the hole begging for help out with a pile of prescriptions and prayers at your feet.....or whether you're on the street safe, free and rescued.  All I do know is that Jesus wants to rescue you....He wants a RELATIONSHIP with you....whether its building a ladder side-by-side or jumping down into that hole together.....

It's just that simple. 





*Thanks to Jennifer Dukes Lee for the story above