Asleep or awake?

I find it amazing at how deep and vast the Scripture is.  Even the most well known bits can surprise me with a new insight into a deep meaning that is being conveyed.  This morning was one of those special times when a familiar passage gave me an ‘aha’ moment.  I was listening to the Gospel of Mark and when it came to the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus asking His disciples if they could not even stay awake for a little while and pray with Him while He was in agony I thought back to the story on the boat where the disciples were wondering how Jesus could sleep through the storm that was so terrifying them.

All of a sudden as I thought of these two different stories I realized how they were linked.  Let’s look at the disciples in the boat with a worn out Jesus asleep.  Many of the disciples were fisherman and had spent most of their lives on boats.  I am sure that during those many nights out fishing they had encountered storms and all kinds of inclement weather.  They had obviously survived those storms and had learned how to handle their boats but they were afraid, which means this was some kind of storm that they were now in the middle of.  They were pros and they were afraid, which I am sure made the non-fishermen of the group even more afraid than they were to begin with.  So what is the answer…they wake up Jesus so He can join them in their fear and they could die together.  They even rebuke Jesus for not caring about their plight.  He then calms the sea with just a word and then asks why they have so little faith. 

Let’s read it from Mark 4:35-41
Jesus Stills the Sea
35 On that day, when evening came, He *said to them, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd, they *took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him. 37 And there *arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up.38 Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they *woke Him and *said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” 39 And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Hush, be still.” And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. 40 And He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”41 They became very much afraid and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

Then we have the scene in the Garden, Jesus has been betrayed and is in the Garden waiting for Judas to bring the guards to arrest Him.  He is praying so hard that drops of blood are oozing from His pores.  He knows that in a matter of hours He will be hanging on the cross atoning for the sins of the world completely cut off from God the Father, alone, in pain, being punished for something He did not do.  And His friends, who He is dying for, are so sleepy they cannot even stay awake with Him for a little while.  He is utterly alone as He wrestles with the consequences of all that is about to take place.

Let’s read Mark 14:32-42
Jesus in Gethsemane
32 They *came to a place named Gethsemane; and He *said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” 33 And He *took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. 34 And He *said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” 35 And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. 36 And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” 37 And He *came and *found them sleeping, and *said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38 Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 Again He went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him. 41 And He *came the third time, and *said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough; the hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!”

So looking at these two passages the question that came to my mind, ‘are we sleeping at the right time?’.  Do we worry and pace when it is time to sleep and do we sleep when it is time to be alert and engaged with what is going on?

Why did Jesus say the disciples had little faith during the storm?  Obviously, a storm that was bad enough to worry the most professional sailor among them is one worthy of fear and worry.  Why could Jesus sleep through the storm?  Let’s think about this.  It was not because He was God because Hebrews tells us that He laid aside His Godness in order to be human and to live His life under human restrictions.  He was able to do all the miracles He did because He listened to the will of God the Father and then the Holy Spirit worked through Him…he was showing us the way it is to be done and promised that if we did it the same way we could also do the same miracles He did and even more amazing things than He did.

He was asleep in the boat because He knew it was not His time to die.  He was not destined to drown or be thrown off a hill by a mob or have an accident.  He was meant to go to the cross the way it had been predicted centuries before.  He knew that even if the boat went down, He and His disciples were safe because God had promised it.  If the disciples had been listening to what He had been telling them they would have realized that for the time being there was no power in heaven or earth that could harm Jesus or those the Father had given to Him.

But they did not understand,  later they had gotten so used to the idea that Jesus could handle any problem that came up that they fell asleep when He was in the agony of the choice that lay before Him.  He could do the will of the Father and go to the cross or He could decide that humanity was not worth the price and go back to the Father and let the world be destroyed.  The very balance of the total future of everyone alive, who had ever lived or who would ever live was being fought for, yet the disciples could not keep their eyes open for even a few moments.

How often are we guilty of being just like these disciples?  Is our faith so little that we worry when God has promised us that we will reach the other shore?  Or are we so tired that we cannot keep our eyes even open when we have been called to do something important like watch and pray?

A while back the Lord gave me a picture of Him asleep in the boat and I could see the storms raging all around me.  I was going through many, many things at that point in my life but I knew that for that time my choice was to either be afraid or to get my blankie and join Jesus in the stern for a nap.  I pictured myself curling up beside my Lord and resting in His presence.  This picture got me through a lot without the stress that I normally would have felt knowing that God had everything under control.  When stress or fear would rear its ugly head I would close my eyes and picture myself curled up like a little child feeling safe and secure while the storms raged.

Now, I think I need to learn the other lesson in a new and fresh way…to stay alert to what the Lord has called me to.  To not fall asleep or to rest on the past, but to diligently and earnestly pray for the next step and then with the leading of the Holy Spirit to take those steps….one at a time.

Why study the Old Testament

Why study the Old Testament?  It seems so far removed from our lives and our experiences.  After all we are modern and have such technology that they could never imagine life in the 21^st century.  Our lives are so fast paced, they just worried from day to day whether the crops would grow or the rain would come, we have so much loftier things to worry about, like how to feed our families and how to afford to live in a nice home.  Okay, so those really are the same things…oh I know what’s different…relationships…how are we going to have a successful marriage and raise kids that will have a better life than we do….okay, okay….that’s the same too.

Paul gives this admonition to Timothy…

2 Timothy 3:15-17

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
¹⁶ All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And what is the Holy Scriptures he is talking about?  He is referring to what we call the Old Testament.  Remember at this time the New Testament is being written and has not been put together in one place.  Whenever we see Paul or Jesus talking about Scripture, we must remember what it is they mean.  They are talking about the very part of the Bible that most modern Christians fail to read, let alone study.

Why do we avoid the Old Testament?  I think it is because deep down the Israelites give us a glimpse of the very worst of our character and we do not like to see it.  Mainly because we know that they will be punished and terrible things will happen to them.  Also, it is discouraging to see how a people that have walked in the very shadow of the Most High keep messing up, they are like the silly teenagers in the movies that keep going into the basement when they hear a spooky sound while we yell at the screen to not go down there in the dark.  They go and they are killed and we sit there and say, “I told them to not go down there!”

So why do we study these people that just don’t seem to have any sense at all?  They keep doing the same thing over and over, they cry out to God, God hears them and delivers them, they worship God, they fall into sin, they are punished for sinning (this always involves either worshipping false idols or making alliances with heathen kingdoms) they suffer, they repent and cry out to God for deliverance and the whole process goes on and on.  They keep going into the dark basement or the dark woods and they keep getting killed.  And we read the stories and we yell at them to stay off the high places and to not go into the heathen temple, to not bring the strange idol into the house that will kill them and definitely avoid the strangers that bring in strange ways of worship but they keep doing it and keep getting killed.

So when we do read or teach the OT we stick with the adventure stories where there is a hero and the enemy is destroyed.  We love David and Goliath or Daniel in the Lion’s Den but avoid Lamentations.  In the prophets we go to Jonah and the whale but avoid the locust plagues, being taken captive to Babylon or Assyria starving and stripped naked, parents eating their own children because the famine is so bad or the fact that the people still preferred the carved images to the LORD God who had rescued them over and over again.

We judge them for being so short sighted, for not understanding that only God can rescue them while we lay awake at night worrying we will lose everything we have worked for because we are over our heads in debt, our house is worth half what we owe on it, the car keeps breaking down, our company is down-sizing and our job is either in jeopardy or already gone and our kids are more interested in social networking, reality TV or video games than in following what we taught them was important.

The other problem with the Old Testament, we are afraid of God…that He will treat us like the children of Israel.  We do not want to be chastised when we mess up, we just want things to be fixed or for God to stop us when we are making a bad decision.  That the opportunities of life would miraculously come with a warning label saying do not go down into this basement, scary things are down here, instead go the opposite direction and you will find the hero waiting to rescue you.  We want sunshine and roses without the rains.

A few years back I was asked to teach the Minor Prophets and agreed to do so, not because I wanted to teach them but because I wanted to teach either Romans or Hebrews, and I thought if I did a class that was not my first pick then maybe I would have first pick the next semester.  Little did I know that this would begin a love affair for me with the Old Testament.  What I saw as I began to really dig into the prophets was the amazing love that God the Father has for His people.  Every plague, every invading army, every heartache made it more and more clear to me.  Instead of seeing God waiting to smite with a bolt of lightening, I saw a Father doing everything possible to bring His wayward children back to a place of blessing and security.  I saw God’s heart as I had never seen it before, aching and bleeding, crying out come this way you no longer need to go into the basement, I will protect you and care for you.  You will be safe and nothing can ever hurt you again.

I realize now that I would never have been able to teach Romans or Hebrews back then like I could now; because now I have a glimpse of the Scriptures that are a basis for those two amazing New Testament books.  I can see a little into the back story that makes them so powerful.

And I have come to the realization, that no matter how much I hate the fact, I am exactly like the Israelites.  My memory is very short and I forget from one moment to the next how much the Lord has blessed me.  I let things come between me and God which is idolatry.  I tend to not give God the credit He deserves when things go well which I am finding out is spiritual adultery.  I only cry out when I am in trouble and it takes a crisis for me to know it is time to repent.  No, I am not different at all!  I wish I were, but I am not.  This realization has also brought on another change; I can no longer judge people the same way I used to.  I do not see their sin so much as I see someone that is in bondage and needs to be set free.  Instead of being disgusted by what they do; I am starting to see they are just like me but have chosen to hide their pain in a different way than I did.  That sin is sin and in God’s eyes they are all equally disgusting.

So back to the original question, why study the Old Testament?  Several reasons:

• Foundation to the whole Bible
• Explains why we even need a Savior in the first place
• Times and technologies change but people don’t
• It truly shows the love of God the Father for His children
• It shows human nature more clearly than any psychology book ever did
• There are no excuses for our sins or failures
• Only Jesus can save us, there is absolutely no other way
• God has never changed and He never will
• Everything is for the glory of God, always has been and always will be!
• We can only be truly happy when our relationship with God is personal and intimate.
• There is no God but God, everything else is a worthless idol.
• We can be victorious, but never in our own strength.
• It shows the patience God has for us
• God wants to bless us
• We have a deep longing to be connected to something more than us and only God can fulfill that longing.
• Victory is assured
• Promises will be kept

Fighting for Sanctification

I am going through my journals and notes as I prepare to write another Bible Study.  I am thinking this study will deal with Sanctification and when I found this journal entry from last year I thought it appropriate to share.

July 23, 2012

A tweet on the Desiring God website got me to thinking this morning. It said

“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."

Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”

It got me to thinking about what we teach as part of our Tiara Ladies about coming out of bondage and not going back as compared to the Israelites coming out of Egypt, which symbolized the world, and the thought that once we have freedom we are not to return to the bondage.

Well taking the analogy a step farther, we have the Israelites entering into the Promised Land and all that entailed. The land was occupied. Not only was it occupied, it was occupied by giants and very evil people. God told them through Joshua that they were to go in and conquer the land and make it their own.

Why was the land occupied? God told them He had allowed these evil people to live in the land so that it would be cultivated and built up, ready for the Israelites to come in and take possession. It had all been built for them!

How were they to take possession? By following and listening to everything God told them to do. When they did not follow directions, they were defeated. But when they did as they were told, miracles happened.

What does this look like in the Christian life? So this is where I started thinking about how this relates to us coming into the Promised Land….Kingdom Living and walking victoriously in the Spirit.

When we are saved, come to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, it is like crossing over the Jordan. It is miraculous and completely done by God. There was nothing we could do to make our salvation happen. The only thing we could do is believe and accept what Jesus had done for us. So we crossed over from death to life. We are now in the Promised Land but it is not empty, it is full of all kinds of things and people; things that we do not like and may even scare us. Things that we may have naively thought would just disappear if we became a Christian and now we realize are still very much a part of the landscape.


Our Christian lives are therefore full of those things that were a part of our life before our salvation. Why? Because there is no such thing as a vacuum, something must fill the space. As a natural person, we had filled the space with all kinds of things and just because we get saved does not mean those things now leave, creating a vacuum. Instead, just like the Israelites, we must begin the process of removing the old and replacing it with the new. Now our life of sanctification begins. Which means this is the life of conquering that which is not of God, destroying what is evil, replacing it with God and enjoying the fruits of what is good.

But just like the Israelites we must go only in God’s strength and timing. He has a plan for our lives, what we need to conquer first, second, etc. We must follow His directions or we will get in trouble. If we go and try and destroy in our own strength we will be easily defeated or worse, we could think that we do not need God’s help. If we try and hold on to those things we are told to destroy, we will cause destruction to come into our lives and the lives of those around us. We cannot make any treaties with those things from our past, because they will become a snare and a trap in our lives leading us to worship things other than God.

Some of the stories that made me think of our Kingdom walk:

Jericho…followed God’s leading and a great victory

Achan…coveted things from the past and destroyed his family

Ai…went into battle without God because it was a little battle, thought they could handle it…lost many people

Jebusites…tricked into a treaty leaving behind a people in the land that were not Godly

Inter-marriage…allowed the customs of the people to influence them

Not completing the task….lead to following after the false gods, also leading lives of fear and bondage from invading groups of people

Getting tired…not having their own relationship with God but relying on Joshua, as soon as a strong leader died they would go back to sinning and worshiping false gods.

How then can we possibly live the victorious life that we desire to live? The answer is actually quite simple. The same way we were saved!!!! There is nothing we can do to become more like Jesus; which is the ultimate end for our Christian walk anymore than there was anything we could do to earn our salvation.

It is this very simplicity that becomes a stumbling block to us. We think we must do something, we must prove our love, we should at least clean ourselves up a little if we are going to serve Jesus. All the things that may have kept us from accepting the free gift of salvation are again trying to keep us from enjoying that salvation. This is why the Israelites kept failing in taking possession of the land, they were unwilling to go to God individually and accepting from God’s hand what He had for them. We cannot hope to live in freedom if we too refuse to go directly to God and accept what it is He has for us.

Stop striving! Stop trying to be good enough! Stop hiding! Realize that you are unique and God loves you right where you are. That Jesus longs to lead you step by step in the path that has been set out just for you. He will not leave you in the wilderness and He certainly will not leave you in bondage to anything you are willing to let Him free you from. All you need to do is believe and accept what He has for you.

Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying it will not be hard or take a lot of effort on your part once you accept and believe what Jesus has for you. But it will look more like the march around Jericho. The Israelites had to walk around the city everyday, in the heat and the dust with thousands of others. So you can imagine what a massive ordeal it could have been just getting everyone lined up each day and then marching. But you could tell it was God because at the end of the time of obedience the walls just fell down. Then they had the job of going into the fallen city and finish conquering what was left.

Our sins, faults, bondages, addictions, whatever, may live in walled and fortified cities or have chariots of iron and warriors that are giants, but if we realize what we have been saying here and that according to God’s Word they are defeated. We will be so far ahead that there will be no stopping us on our way to complete freedom. As was stated in the opening tweet:

“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."

Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”

God has a gift of freedom for you today, will you believe Him at His word and accept it?

Victory for past hurts

January 7, 2014

I am reading an amazing book by Beth Moore at this time.  It is called When Godly People Do Ungodly Things.  This is a question that has been burning in my heart for the last several years.  In fact, many of the studies I have done and the things I have taught and written about deal with this question or a variation on the question.  I look around and try to figure out why so many Christians live such a life of powerlessness.

Beth made a statement about how we defeat those things from our past that we have never dealt with completely.  The idea of her thought was to see that time and then see Jesus there with us through whatever had caused us to be victimized.  This same strategy was in something that I had read just a day before on powerful spiritual warfare and defeating the strongholds that Satan has set up in our lives.

So if I understand both these thoughts, when we remember a hurt that has happened and it is causing us to sin, or be in bondage, or keep us from living that victorious life we so desire, we stop and then look at that time in history once more, but this time we see Jesus being there with us through the horrors of what we had lived through.  I have had people share how effective this has been in their lives on overcoming past hurts and going on to healing.

As I was thinking about this I got a picture of why this is so effective.  Here we are remembering how we were used or abused.  The pain is as real as the first time, maybe we have learned to stand back in detachment and not feel it as much, but still it is real and it still has power over us.  If it does not cause us to sin directly, it has caused a weak place in our life that the enemy will come and attack us through. Then we change our focus, look and we are able to see Jesus there with us.  His eyes are full of tenderness and love.  His tears show us that he feels the pain and deep hurt that we do.  He gently folds his arms around us and draws us into his heart.  But why is this healing?  Why does this give us the power to overcome whatever terrible thing we have lived through?  How does this defeat all of Satan’s schemes?

One of the answers to these questions is found in Isaiah 53.  We read this scripture and see a picture of what Jesus went through on the cross in order to purchase salvation for us.  But more than salvation he has purchased our healing and our restoration.  So the reason that realizing Jesus was indeed with us through the darkest of the darkest times is because he was there in the victory he had purchased for us on the cross.  He had already taken our pain and our brokenness onto his own body.  We were not alone, have never been alone. 

Isaiah 53:4-6

Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
⁵ But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
⁶ All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him. (NASB)

Not only have our sins been forgiven but he carried our sorrows, he bore our grief, he was beaten for our well-being, we are healed completely (body, soul and spirit) and whatever part we had in the sin or we fell into later because of what was done to us is gone, laid onto him.

Jesus was there with us in victory, the price already paid, the healing already purchased, the enemy already defeated.  Instead of remembering with pain, we can now remember the cost that was paid for us by our Savior and Lord.  The lover of our soul was there with us making us whole and pure and showing us his amazing love.

We can still cry “why me?” to the universe but now the question should be “why me, why does Jesus love me so?”  Victory is already there for us, we just need to realize and believe God at his word. 

I can tell you one thing, if you start seeing Jesus there with you in these horrible times with victory as well as compassion the devil will stop bringing it up so often.  After all, why would he want you to remember those things where you have found victory in overcoming his evil intentions?  So a double victory is won.

Another important step is to share this victory with someone you can trust.  Satan loses his grip even more when we bring things out into the light.  He seeks to keep things hidden so that our sisters in Christ will not know that there is power and victory available to all of us. And if you cannot quite get the victory yet, be sure to have someone pray with you as you learn to see God’s truth in your life. Having prayer surrounding you will always be a good idea.