Awaiting an Answer

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and everyday have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer O Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

my enemy will say, "I have overcome him,"

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

for he has been good to me.

-Psalm 13

I love this Psalm for the simple fact that the psalmist never receives an answer. These six short verses are filled with pleading and longing for God's intervention into their bleakest hours, with just a glimmer of hope and trust in the faithfulness of the Lord. But when all is said and done, the writer has not heard a reply from the heavens, and we are left with the understanding that he still finds himself in the same desperate situation he began with.

For me, that's where we find the beauty of this Psalm: in the silence from heaven. For in the midst of an unanswered plea, the author retains his faith and trust that the Lord will deliver in accordance with His perfect plan. He responds to the silence by praising God, "for he has been good to me." Although the context of these six verses do not include an answer, they end with worship.

This leads me to the question, how often do I worship in the waiting? I mean, its one thing to worship after receiving an answer (although that is still something I so often fail at), but to praise his name as I am waiting in silence? The thought seems so foreign in my thinking, and in our society's. To thank and praise someone before they have even given a reply to your request? Ridiculous! But that is the reality of our relationship with Christ. He deserves our worship with every moment of our lives, simply for who he is, and even more so for what he has done in our lives, including the times of silence.

"My heart rejoices in your salvation."

"Wow Moment" for the day:

"Prayer is not a matter of pouring out the human heart once and for all in need or joy, but of an unbroken, constant learning, accepting, and impressing upon the mind of God's will in Jesus Christ"

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Life Together"

Distinction

Let's be really honest for a moment: most Christians simply do not devote oodles of time reading through books in the Old Testament like Leviticus or Numbers. They contain pages and pages of long lists of rules, specifications, measurements, population counts, and other such practices of the Israelites that do not have much immediate meaning for those of us walking with Christ today. After all, we do not perform animal sacrifices, worship in a temple, or march into physical battle as we move into the territory God has promised us.

Tonight, however, I was reading through a few chapters in Leviticus as part of my "Through the Bible in a Year" study. I was almost to the end of tonight's portion when I read the following:

You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground- those of which I have set apart as unclean for you. You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.

-Leviticus 20:25-26

Okay, so unclean animals and birds. Don't eat them. Got it. But Jesus declared that was unnecessary as part of the New Covenant God was making with those who chose to follow him in Mark 7:18-20, right? So this all has little application to Christian life today, right? On the surface, of course. We do not have to go through the same rituals the Israelites were succumbed to in the Old Testament in order to retain purity, because we find our identity in Christ. But as I was reading this, something really stuck out to me:

You must therefore make a distinction between clean and unclean animals and between unclean and clean birds. Do not defile yourselves by any animal or bird or anything that moves along the ground- those of which I have set apart as unclean for you. You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own.

Those first six words hit me like a ton of bricks. We are to make a distinction. For the Israelites, these pages and pages of laws were designed to retain their purity and show that they were different, set apart, from the rest of the world and did not conform to the standards of the people groups around them. They were different, and they were different because they were God's people and sought to represent their Lord in the best possible human way. Today, we are called to do the same thing. We are called to be set apart and show the world that we find our identity in Christ and we do not want to be related to anything apart from Him. As Christians, we bear the name of Christ, literally, and that name is something the world can see and immediately make a judgment about us for. How often, though, do we bear the name alone and fail to make any other statement about our Savior? As representatives of Christ, we are called to show the world around us that we are different and that difference comes in our sanctification in Christ.

We are to make a distinction.

Terrifying Submission

Test me, O Lord, and try me,

examine my heart and my mind;

for your love is ever before me,

and I walk continually in your truth.

-Psalm 26:2-3

This verse stands in my mind as such a dichotomy of a wonderful promise and a terrifying invitation. Verse two brings an alarming series of requests to God: Test me. Try me. Examine me. Push me. Stretch me. Bring me through valleys. Lead me over mountains. Show me my failings. Reveal my weaknesses. Asking the almighty creator and ruler of the universe for this and giving total control of your life over to Him for His own plans... that absolutely scares me out of mind! The severity of this lies in total submission to one who you know has the power to both destroy you and lift you up.

But its the promise of verse three that diminishes all those fears: because of God's love, we constantly walk with Him and in His plans. That's what dissolves the fear with handing everything over to God. He promises that what he does in our testing is not going to be more than we can handle with him by our side. Through the pushing, pulling, stretching, trial, difficulties, and hardships comes strength, as God molds and makes you into more and more a picture of His glorified servant. We can have confidence in knowing that His testing and trying can be endured as we walk continually with Him and that He makes us into a stronger child of God.

The Ruined Waistband

Thus the Lord said to me, "Go and buy yourself a linen waistband and put it around your waist, but do not put it in water."

So I bought the waistband in accordance with the word of the Lord and put it around my waist.

Then the word of the lord came to me a second time, saying,

"Take the waistband that you have bought, which is around your waist, and arise, go to the Euphrates and hide it there in a crevice of the rock."

So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me.

After many days the Lord said to me, "Arise, go to the Euphrates and take from there the waistband which I commanded you to hide there."

Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the waistband from the place where I had hidden it; and lo, the waistband was ruined, it was totally worthless.

Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

"Thus says the Lord, 'Just so will I destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem.

'This wicked people, who refuse to listen to My words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts and have gone after other gods to serve them and to bow down to them, let them be just like this waistband which is totally worthless.

'For as the waistband clings to the waist of a man, so I made the whole household of Israel and the whole household of Judah cling to Me,' declares the Lord, 'that they might be for Me a people, for renown, for praise and for glory; but they did not listen.'"

-Jeremiah 13:1-11

Tonight as I was doing my devotion, I came across this story in Jeremiah. It was one I don't ever remember reading or hearing before and I just loved the message God was teaching Jeremiah through it.

In the book of Jeremiah leading up to this point, God has been revealing to Jeremiah the future of the Israelites, warning him that because of they have repeatedly turned away from Him they will be facing destruction like they had never before experienced. The first twelve chapters have been a conversation between God and Jeremiah involving God's decision and Jeremiah's questioning and pleading. This chapter interrupts the conversation as God intends to show Jeremiah exactly what He means. Since he can't seem to comprehend the God's reasoning, He walks him through a real life example.

Like the waistband is made to cling to the waist of its wearer, we are God's prized creation, designed to fit perfectly into His arms. When cling to Him as we were made to do and we walk with Him and never leave his ways. But like the waistband, when we separate ourselves from Him we become ruined. Hiding far away from our original intent, we become worthless.

I love this example God gives Jeremiah. We are so perfect and complete when we are with our Savior, but without Him we can never accomplish what he has so perfectly designed us to do.

For as the waistband clings to the waist of a man, so I made [my people] cling to me... that they might be for Me a people, for renown, for praise and for glory...

IDK, my BFF Lord.

Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name;
Bring an offering, and come before Him;
Worship the Lord in holy array.
-1 Chronicles 16:29

Have you ever sat and wondered at the amazement that God thought you worthy to die for? I don’t think I do often enough. This amazing sacrifice allows us to have such an intimate relationship that we can talk to Him, walk with Him, and spend every minute in His presence. He is my best friend and I love the fact that we can have that kind of relationship with Him. But then it hits me: My best friend is the Creator and Lord of the entire universe! I speak with Him, sing with Him, read with the King of Kings on a daily basis! Talk about wondrous love! This verse reminds me, however, that He is just that: Lord of Lords. Flipping through my prayer journal, I realized just how often I write “Lord” as a comfortable name for my savior. And while I am so grateful for the intimate relationship He made the way for, I don’t want “Lord” to become just another name. I want to remember that He is Lord and give Him the worship and honor and glory worth to Him just for being who He is. Before I even consider the fact that He is my savior and creator of everything, He is God and deserves more praise than I could ever possibly give Him. I don’t want to ever forget to “ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name” alone.

This Far

Who am I, O Lord God, and what is my house that You have brought me this far?
-1 Chronicles 17:16b

Tonight as I was reading, I came across this passage in 1 Chronicles. David is King over Israel and has just brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem. He erects a tent to house the ark and realizes that while he resides in a grand house built of wood, the house of the Lord is merely a tent, a collection of curtains. David declares that he will build a temple for the Lord. That night, however, the prophet Nathan hears a message from God that he is to deliver to King David: God does not want David to build the temple, but rather intends for David’s son, the next king, to do so. The following morning, Nathan delivers the news and the first thing David responds with is verse 16.
Although this story is also found a few chapters earlier in 2 Samuel 7 and I had read it a few months ago, it struck me in a very different way. Being the nostalgic that I am, I was thinking back on where I was a year ago. Getting ready to move away from home and go to college, I was excited to begin the next chapter of my life and start what I assumed was God’s perfect plan for my life. The summer before my junior year of high school I had felt called to ministry as a worship leader, so I declared myself a music major and was preparing myself for college life. I could not have even begun to image all the amazing things I was going to encounter over the next year, however.
If I could sum up my walk with God over the last year, it would simply be that He has showed me over and over again that His plan is infinitely better than my own. Like David, I was so excited to do the work I thought God intended for me. And like David, I was surprised to find that He had something different in mind. Although my plan was filled with the best intentions of serving Him, it had never even crossed my mind that God might have something entirely different. Although I still feel that full-time ministry is something God is calling me into after college, I really can’t say where he is going to lead me. I am only beginning to see Him shaping me and my life into what He intends me to be. I only hope I can be humbled like David when He does show me His plans and responds to them with the praise and worship he deserves. Like David, I sometimes can’t even believe that He would chose me to be his servant.

“This was a small thing in Your eyes, O God; but You have spoken of Your servant’s house for a great while to come, and have regarded me according to the standard of man of high degree, O Lord God.
What more can David still say to you concerning the honor bestowed on Your servant? For You know your servant”
-verse 17-18