What Do We Value?

10/29/2007

Where are our priorities in life?
What do we value?
Is it easy to see, to figure out, or is it hidden under all the things life can throw at us?

Today, I sit quiet; I am being still before God, and spending this time doing what I love most…praying and writing. To some it would be work, to me it is pure pleasure— this time causes me to stop and to draw close to Heaven…I value this time. As I stay quiet, I can be more focused on what’s most important…an eternal future that rests with God.

The Hope of every believer is in Jesus Christ, and this Hope is not to be taken lightly. It is not to be taken for granted. It is to be valued! But we can miss its value if we’re not careful, because the enemy’s main job is to distract us from our Lord, and he will. The enemy, Satan, will keep us from knowing God for as long as he can, and once we come to know our Lord, the enemy will keep us from spending time with God if he can because he knows there’s power in times of prayer—a Power that will render Satan’s power useless in our lives. The enemy doesn’t like losing his power over us one bit!

Sin is power in our life; let us fairly understand that
it can only be met by another power… Power to resist
sin is from God.       Henry Drummond

In Luke 10, it talks about the seventy-two disciples reporting to Jesus about the power of using the Lord’s name! And Jesus replied, “Yes, I saw Satan falling from heaven as a flash of lightning! And I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you. But don’t rejoice just because evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered as citizens of heaven.” Luke 10:18 (NLT)

As awesome as it may be to have the Lord’s power over the enemy on this earth, even that will pass away. There will be no need for it one day, because one day the enemy will be done away with, and Heaven will be our dwelling place. I love thinking about that today, praying about that, writing about that, especially today because this day would have been our son’s 22nd birthday…but he is celebrating in Heaven. If there’s nothing else on earth we can be happy about, we can rejoice because Phil’s name was registered as a citizen of Heaven before he left this earth. Everything else we may value here is miniscule compared to this. Everything! If we leave here without be registered there, we have missed the whole point of living here on earth.

Jesus went on to say in Luke 10:21, “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise and clever, and for revealing it to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.”

The wise and the clever…these things just don’t cut it when it comes to God’s Kingdom—to God’s ways and His wisdom. Oh, on earth we value the wise and clever, we promote the wise and clever, success seems to come to the wise and the clever, so we value wise and clever attributes…but we need to be careful not to be distracted with this way of thinking because it will quickly steal our attention, start to confuse us, and doubts will fill our minds about the things of God…that “rabbit trail” is very tempting because it comes from the great Tempter himself, Satan.

Last night as I was sitting here, I glanced at the table and saw a bulletin from our church on Sunday. On the cover it says, “Know, Love, Reflect.” Our church’s mission statement is to, “Know, Love and Reflect Jesus in our communities and world.” And as I looked at those words, the Tempter came in and wanted to make me question the value I put on all this, on Jesus…even the whole God idea. The doubts started coming, and I began wondering, “Is this belief in God craziness?” My mind was filling up with clever thoughts and wise ideas that come from living in this world, and in turn I was tempted to start tearing apart all that I believe in, all that I hope for, all that my life is based on. In years past, I would have chased down that rabbit trail; I would have spent too much time there. I would have looked for the logic and reasoning in these doubts, thinking I needed to “go there” to prove to myself once again that God is real, true and to be trusted. But as the years have passed, I have found that thinking about the doubts is a waste of time and energy. “Been there. Done that!” So last night I said, “No.” I knew it was time to think about the things I know, not the things I doubt. I knew “entertaining doubts” by welcoming them in was not good, especially right now. Not on the night before Phil’s earthly birthday. Satan knows when to strike, he knows where to strike, but he has no power unless we open the “door” and give it to him. We must pray him away when he comes after us!!

Oswald Chambers writes:
“The key is prayer. Naturally, prayer is not practical, it is absurd; we have to
realize that prayer is stupid from the ordinary common-sense point of view.”

How is it to do something that is unnatural?
How is it to realize that prayer is stupid to our flesh?
How is it to look away from the ordinary common-sense point of view and trust in God instead?

It is hard!
But it is worth it every time!!
Every time!!

The ordinary common-sense point of view is what will confuse our faith in God because God is not ordinary. He is not common. And He will usually make no sense in this world, because His ways are above our ways, His thoughts above our thoughts.

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.”
Isaiah 55:8 (NLT)

What are we supposed to do with this?
We are supposed to believe it.
Period.

It is hard!
But it is worth it every time!!
Every time!!

And yes, I did just repeat myself!

We will never, ever figure out all that God is doing. He will give us glimpses from time to time, sometimes these glimpses will even be miracles, but the whole of how it all works is just not for us to know. How can we understand an Omni-present God, in the common-sense, ordinary ways in which our mind works? We can’t, it’s beyond us—the miracles, the answered prayers, the unanswered prayers, the prayers that weren’t even offered up but where God saw a need and worked in ways that can astound us, it’s all beyond us!

I have heard some true stories recently, and I will share them with permission. It’s stories like these that reach beyond the clever and the wise. Oh, there are times when what God does seems very clever, and very wise, but God will not be limited to our ways, to our medicines, to our methods. God will do whatever He pleases. Our responsibility in all of it is only to connect with God in prayer, getting to know Him, and learning to trust in His ways even when they make no earthly sense to us. Even when things hurt, or things are taken from us, or there are great blessings or abundance…through times when some are healed, and some are not…whatever it is, we are called to trust. Yes, it is hard!

Jesus was discussing things in Luke 6 that were hard for His disciples to grasp too. Their comments were not hidden from us; they were recorded for us to read. We don’t need to struggle that we struggle to understand…we are not alone in that. Those that walked with Jesus were stretched beyond the wise and clever in life too.

Even his disciples said, “This is very hard to understand. How can
anyone accept it?” Jesus knew within himself that his disciples were
complaining, so he said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what
will you think if you see me, the Son of Man, return to heaven again?
It is the Spirit who gives eternal life. Human effort accomplishes nothing.”
John 6:60-63 (NLT)

We try too hard most times. We try with human effort to accomplish what only God can do. Even in our prayers…we think that if we pray hard enough, maybe we can make something happen! There’s nothing wrong with focused prayers, they are good. But it’s not the power of our words, or of our focus that causes things to happen, it’s the power of God.

Some friends we had dinner with recently were telling us about a trip to Oregon they made many years ago. On this journey north from California, they had stopped along the way to dig for clams on the beach. They were there, with their children, when the dad slipped on the rocks and severely injured his ankle, slicing it open and exposing the bone. They saw the bone. No question about it. It was a bad cut! But, what did they do? Not the practical. Not the sensible. Not the clever and wise way of how the world would handle this emergency, and not even offering up urgent prayers that there would be miraculous healing…the wife simply told her husband they needed to go down to the water. “Youch!” was my first thought! “Salt water in a wound?” Not a good thing as we know it. But, for unexplainable reasons except that the Holy Spirit was in complete control of the situation, they made their way to the water’s edge about 45 feet away. A painful walk, for sure, but upon arriving at the small surf, the husband placed his foot so that the wave could wash up around it. When the water receded from around his ankle, the wound was gone! Completely healed. Not even a scar remained!

I sat there astounded upon hearing this story!

“What?”

They were calm, and continued on, telling us about how they then went on their way up to Oregon to see their relatives… I wanted to go back, to not pass over this miracle quite so quickly! “Tell me more!” my heart cried. There wasn’t a lot more to tell…it had happened, they had never forgotten it, but they didn’t go up to Oregon and shout it from the rooftops! In my questioning, the husband simply said, “I think it was just something God knew I needed at that time in my life.” It did seem to forever strengthen his faith in the Almighty—the ripple effects of that we probably can’t know until Heaven, if ever.

It reminds me again of Luke 10, and the disciple’s amazement about what happened as they used the power of the Lord’s name…but Jesus wanted them to be more concerned with having their names registered in Heaven. These miracles too would pass away, but Heaven will always be there, and we need to be there one day too!

In thinking of another story, it takes me once again to today’s date, October 16th. Not only because it’s Phil’s birthday today, but also because it’s the birthday of a woman I know who turns 98 today. I ponder this, I pray about this… “Ninety-eight Lord…she already had 92 years on this earth when Phil went Home to You at age 16. She’s still here Lord, and our son is gone. It’s confusing…it doesn’t seem wise…it makes no practical sense to me…” And then I think about this woman’s grandson. As in the story by the ocean, he too has experienced a miraculous healing in his life in the last couple of years. I love hearing about it! I love knowing God works in these ways still! And yet as much as anyone, I know it’s not always the way God works. We prayed for healing for our son, he has gone Home…Your ways Lord, are far beyond anything we can imagine…

This woman’s grandson suffers from a serious bone disease. He is a teenager now, but all his life he has had to live with knowing that any sort of fall could shatter a bone. While attending a prayer meeting, he experienced healing. To what extent he wasn’t even sure, and it seems still that only time and God will make clear all the details of what happened that day, but the constant pain of this young boy’s disease was instantly gone. His ability to bend over and touch his toes, never before physically possible for him, now is. And when exams were recently done, the bones that were once dark in the center, clearly hollow on x-rays, are now white in the center and strong. Further tests show that the enzyme level needed to have this happen, to fill in hollow bones, is still missing. The enzymes are still way below the normal range; the levels were not “healed,” thus giving no medical reason for this change in bone density. When mother and son were asked what had happened, what had they done? They could only reply, “Prayer.” One doctor said to another, “Note that on his chart.” This teenage boy now enjoys lifting weights that before would have snapped his bones easily. This is a modern-day miracle, without a doubt!

Why do some children die, while others are healed? Why are some prayers seemingly unanswered, and other situations remedied that weren’t even prayed for? Why do some live to be 100, and others don’t get to take a first breath? It makes no sense and could cause long-lasting distress and fill us with huge doubts unless we focus on something else…that our names are registered as citizens of Heaven! Knowing this helps us hold onto the Hope we have been given when we just don’t understand and the wise and clever ways of this world try to crowd out the workings of our Lord.

We can read about miraculous stories in the Bible, as I did this morning in Acts. It told of how Peter had been locked in prison, chained between two soldiers. (Acts 12:6) It told about an angel who came and stood before him, and told him to, “Quick! Get up!” The chains fell off Peter’s wrists, and then he followed the angel out of the cell. It took Peter a while to realize what had happened. He thought it was just a vision, but in verse 12:11, he said, “It’s really true! The Lord has sent his angel and saved me from Herod and from what the Jews were hoping to do to me!”

When it was discovered that Peter was free, people were amazed! He told them how the Lord had led him out of jail. We can read this story many times, but it can seem like only a Bible story of old…it seems we live in a practical world now…that these things don’t happen today, we’re much too “modern” for that, but they do! We just have to make sure we don’t become so wise and so clever that we miss them! Sometimes they can be hard to see, to realize, without time spent in prayer.

As I thought about these miraculous stories, and about sharing them with you, I prayed for another example…I asked God if there was some other story I have heard about that could round out this message with another one of God’s modern-day miracles? My mind was blank—with all those that I talk to and correspond with, it seemed there wasn’t one—at least that God was revealing to me just then, and then very gently God reminded me of my own story. “But God,” I wanted to argue, “my story isn’t worthy like these other stories because my story is about a healed heart and that doesn’t WOW people like the others.” My story seems to be without the miraculous healing of a deep wound, or a hollow bone that has been filled, or an escape from chains and a cell…and yet in writing about all this just now, God started reminding me that His healing in my life includes all these things…God has healed the deep wound of a loss with the washing of His Living Water that springs from the Holy Spirit within! He has filled up the hollowness that comes when someone is missing in this life, with Who Jesus is and the Hope we have in Him as believers! In following God instead of “rabbit trails,” He alone has set me free from the chains of grief that could have held me captive, and the cell of darkness that could have surrounded me until my last day on earth!

God’s miraculous workings—either through a physical healing or an emotional healing—is all healing! It’s all a WOW story as far as God is concerned! It is to be shared!

That’s one reason why we need to spend time alone with God, praying! Because, as was written in the beginning of this message, there is “power in that time.” The power of God is there to reveal what might get hidden in our wise and clever ways. The power is there in connecting with God in prayer to heal what can be very broken in our lives, our hearts. We can miss that, especially when we start to chalk up the healing of our emotions to time, because it seems time by itself will help—but only God has the power during that time to bring good news to the poor, to comfort the brokenhearted, to announce that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. God alone will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning and praise instead of despair. (Isaiah 61) Time cannot give that! Time by itself can cause us to be filled with fear, depression, anguish, heartache, missing and a sense of hopelessness. It’s hard enough to resist these emotional temptations with God in our lives, because the prince of this world, Satan, is hard at work to try and destroy us. Without God in our lives, where would we even begin to fight this battle? Where would we find our miracles? And if they did come, would we even recognize them?

We look too many times for outward signs of God’s miraculous works, and they are awesome, don’t get me wrong, but we don’t always get outward displays of God’s power. Many times, the sick do die. The lame stay lame. The blind never see actual light. But if we would stop and take an inward look at ourselves, looking deep into our hearts, what would we see? Would we start to see our own modern-day miracles? Would we see that we have not been overlooked in the “miracle department” of God? In time, with prayer, we would see that God is always hard at work in our lives.

Prayer is not there to give us another job to do, or to weigh us down with guilt. It is there so we can have precious time with God, and see His inner workings. God wants us to! That’s why it’s important to value our relationship with God as He calls us into His Throne Room of Grace…all else flows from there. The world can offer us many things, but not miracles. Those belong to God, and we need to be careful with the counterfeit helps, the wolves in sheep’s clothing, the lies that will be very close to the truth, but not actual truth…we need to seek God’s Truth above all else. As I recently heard, Truth is a Person—Father, Son and Holy Spirit! We need to daily walk with Truth so we don’t end up on rabbit trails that waste our time!

How can we know that God is real? One way is to get to know Him ourselves through prayer. But we can also know He is real by taking a look at some of His miracles—because salty ocean water does not heal a deep cut. Time can heal a cut, but when this happens without the use of time—we have to ask what healed our friend’s ankle on that day? The question might be better phrased, “Who healed our friend’s ankle?” There is no clever explanation for it other than God.

And what about hollow bones? Bones that are lacking the ingredient of enzymes to make them strong? Bones that had been hollow for close to 15 years? Who injected the filling into them to make them appear solid on the x-rays? Who took the pain away that had been there for years? Who unlocked the simple act of bending over and touching toes? When medicine could not cure, God could.

The stories in the Bible of miracles are many. We can read them any time we want to, and we can believe them if we will. That is our choice. In Jesus’ name, bodies were healed, sight was given to the blind, hearts were made whole…it’s all there.

In this modern day and age, every heart has its own degree of brokenness, because life will do that to a person. As I watched the beating heart of our newest grandchild this last Saturday during a 3-D ultrasound, it was an amazing thing to witness. To see inside the womb, to watch a fresh new heart beating…to see the eyes, the hands, the chin, the nose…two months before this baby girl is supposed to enter this world… Who formed this child in utter seclusion? Time alone? Ask that question of a Mom and Dad who are still waiting for their miracle…time will not fill an empty womb without an act of God—try as we might with all our wise and clever ways—just as time will not fill an empty heart without an act of God.

The very best thing we can do in life is to value God and our time spent with Him. That’s where miracles happen every day! It’s where the blind see, as God opens our eyes to His ways! When we give God our full attention, the return for our investment is awesome! And I believe it pleases God above all else, because that is where He will grow our faith! It is where we will find His care, His concern, and His love—all undeserved miracles!

It seems God gave me a glimpse of what valuing our time with Him looks like when I called my best friend the other day in Florida. We talk frequently, and many times we are on the run, in our car, taking care of things around home, or out with other people and unable to answer, letting it go to voice mail…but on this day when I called her, she said, “I’m going to go and sit down while we talk.” Being that I’m a person whose “Love Language” is quality time, this spoke volumes to me about being valued. It helped me to see that God wants us to value Him in the same way. To take that time with Him, to be still, so that we can speak to Him and He can speak to us, intimately.

I recently mentioned to another friend, who I had just had lunch with, how much I appreciate her consistency. If we have set up a day and time to meet, more times than not, we will. I thanked her on this day for that. Her response to me conveyed the message, “I value our time together.” Should we treat God with any less respect? Should we not value our time with Him in an even greater way—to set up a time with Him, and then show up when we’ve said we will?

We’ve all seen different sides of how God works in this life…some of His ways are easy, some are hard. Through it all, we can come to know God more when we value our relationship with Him. Most everything in this world will fight that quest, against spending time with God, because the devil is hard at work too. But we must resist the devil…and he will flee! Let the enemy chase down the rabbit trails, while we stay on the path of God! That’s where the miracles of life are found!

He rescues and saves his people; he performs miraculous
signs and wonders in the heavens and on earth.
Daniel 6:27 (NLT)

Nobody said a close, personal relationship with God would be easy or instantaneous…except the devil…and he is full of LIES!!

Getting to know anyone, even God, takes time and effort.

“Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.”

Until we meet again,
Diane