Empty Sacrifice

I am finally beginning to understand the greatness if David. As I am sure you have heard him described as one of the most prominent Biblical heroes, but it’s not until you look over his life and his response to situations and his words that explain his epic nature. Yes, he was an ordinary man, but God’s extraordinary work was very evident in his life, in spite of his detrimental faults, which spilled over into his son whose life for the most part was honorable and I can see why he was such a ladies man. Getting back to the point, in the last post I referenced the story of David counting the people of Israel and to right his wrong he built an altar, the process of which is my attention this go around.

Long story short David needed a place and supplies to build an altar and make a sacrifice, but the person whom the angel of the Lord led him to purchase from was reluctant to take his money because of a reverent intimidation of David and his entourage. (Read the story for specifics, 1 Chr 21:18f.) Nevertheless, during this exchange, David made this statement:

“I will not take for the Lord what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”

Well I just thought that was the most profound thing ever! So friggin’ deep! But in all seriousness, what it says is much of the heart of being you for a purpose. For starters, you can’t give God your best if what you give Him belongs to someone else, meaning you just took it without aligning it to fit into what God has for you. At times, yes we need help in getting to where God has called us, but not at the expense of others and not in a way that refuses a symbol of gratitude or honor for those who have helped us along the way. I think the heart of David here tells us that as much as we can, what we give should be equally reciprocated in some way or another, if not now then in the future. But, if the motive is strictly refusing what God has already blessed us with and put it aside to take advantage of someone else’s blessing, the fault and wrongdoing is ours and we have utterly missed the mark and in no way are being who God would have us to be.

Likewise, any success book talks about sacrifice and investment and to me David had the same mentality, in that nothing in life worth having is for free, whether in time, energy, money, or anything of the sort. In his particular situation he wanted to make up for the wrong he had done and save the lives of his people as a result, and so I believe that his desire was to give all he could to get the ultimate response. So by not paying, it’s as if to say there was no true investment or he didn’t really give up or sacrifice anything to get back in fellowship with the Lord.

To me that just says so much, and as I’ve done before, I may be completely over-thinking, over-analyzing, or just going way to deep, but I guess the point of these blogs is to share what I took away and what I’ve learned of various things, such as my devotions. I say all that to say, don’t give God anything cheap, lacking any intrinsic or even extrinsic value, or half-hearted, otherwise you psych yourself our because true fellowship and worship will cost something and will require sacrifice, of which the gospels speak about. Don’t try to get over on God or get over on people, because God knows our hearts and motives and because He gave and continuously gives us His best – even if we don’t recognize it at the time – He then deserves our absolute best, not someone else’s because what you give of someone else becomes your worst. But, when the Lord leads you to persons to assist you to further the purpose He has for you, show humility and give them your best, because they sacrificed for you, so don’t make it empty or worth nothing.

Beautiful Mercy for Ugly Sin

This love letter is amazing. As I read it and study more, the more I learn the heart of God and how much He truly loves me in spite of. Anyhow, there are four people that come to mind when I think of those that Satan very specifically targeted, not just a demon: Peter, Job, Judas, and David. Of course there may be others, but they are all I got. The first three I mentioned you are probably familiar with, but still going through Chronicles, I read about Satan’s encounter with David, and the story I knew but Satan’s role was unfamiliar.

Briefly, Satan was attempting to bring down Israel and used David to do so, by swaying him to pride and mistrust. You can read 1 Chronicles 21 for all the details. By counting the people David’s pride caused him to think that his success as the king thus far was by him alone, and what he had attained and accomplished was his doing. On the other hand, in doing so it was another slap in God’s face because it was as if David didn’t really believe the promise God made to multiply. He didn’t trust that God was doing what He said He would do. What I find the most intriguing are the events thereafter.

After David realized what had happened and God dealt with him, he was driven to build an altar and make a sacrifice to compel the Lord to stop the plague. However, in doing so, due to his guilt and shame, he nearly backed out because he was afraid, but the mercy of God is incredible. For the same place where David humbled himself after being so full of himself that God had to correct him, the place that represented one of his most costly mistakes and or sins, God still used it to build His temple.

So often in our own lives we mess up big and God has to deal with us, but when He does it’s in such a way that only He can get glory. God takes our mistakes and creates miracles. He uses our faults and failures as building blocks to an amazing testimony of His faithfulness, mercy and power. And truth be told, like David, it can be scary coming to God knowing just how flat out wrong we were, but His compassions are new every morning and His love endures forever. Coming to Him with a repented and humbled heart, the Lord is always willing to receive us with open arms. God will take the very thing hurt us and use it as a platform to help us and to see His promises come to fruition. David prepared the way for his son, Solomon, to build the temple of the Lord in the same place he built an altar.

In the end of his preparations for the next generation who would build the temple, David encouraged them. (See 1 Chronicles 22:17-19). He reminded them that the Lord was with them and everything was taken care of, so all they needed to do was focus on the task. He told them to devote and seek the Lord and begin to build the sanctuary so that things could be set in place.

The same speaks for us. We must continually seek the kingdom of God (Matt. 6:33) and surrender all of who we are to Him, heart, mind, body and soul (Matt. 22:37). As we do so, we begin to build our temples, our bodies, the place where the Holy Spirit resides (1 Cor. 3:16) and we allow those precious fruit and sacred things of God to fill our hearts and minds that will give witness to the name of Christ, like joy, peace, forgiveness, love, and hope. These things will give room for the work of God to go forth in our lives and through our lives that the Name of the Lord may be known by whoever interacts with us as we use our gifts, talents, passions, and abilities to usher in His presence and leave His sweet aroma wherever we go. We have to prepare the way and give God the ugly things, the broken things, the sin that hinders the process, so that His beautiful mercy and love can cover it and be our foundation to build on. In doing so we have mastered the art of being ourselves for a purpose.

Listen Again: Did God Really Say That?

One of the biggest challenges in my walk is knowing when God is speaking. Being a big thinker, I tend to find myself creating scenarios and writing scripts in my head of what could and or should happen concerning situations I go through, good and bad. I have heard enough times people who have so clearly heard the voice of God, many times that were in fact audible, and so I tend to pretend hear the voice of God or rather say to myself what I think He would say, or just imagine what it would be like to hear His voice commanding me to run into a fire and save a little girl, or reach into the casket and touch someone and raise them from the dead, or to evacuate everyone out of a building to save them from an impending explosion or gunman…yeah that’s only a small portion of what is happening in my head on a regular basis.

You see, for me I think that having something like that happen is proof to the outside world that God’s power is dwelling within me and that we have that close of a relationship. It’s like a stamp of approval. But even as I am writing this now, I remind myself that my relationship with Him is secure and that my gifts are irrevocable, and that He speaks to me in ways that He knows I will hear, listen, receive, and respond to His word best, but more importantly that what He has allowed me to experience in our communion is perfect for what He has called me to and the story it is creating.

I mean, if you don’t know by now, this Christian walk is a journey, full of ups and downs, and anyone would be foolish to think they could walk this walk and get it right every single time, and crazy to think that they will never misunderstand God, or read signs that don’t exist even though we are so certain that it was the Lord speaking to us. Now don’t get me wrong, in His own way He does give us signs, but we have to nurture our spirit to recognize what is truly a divine message. And in the same breath, there are a few times I know for a fact that the Lord did speak to me, a gentle voice, usually when I least expected it and wasn’t making things up in my head.

One of the last times I heard something that was so vivid and caught me off guard was, “I said where, but not when.” And in my last devotion reading through Chronicles, chapter 17 verse 6, I found this phrase “did I ever say.” And it struck me and just confirmed how often I have made up in my mind God had said this or that about whatever the situation and have just been flat out wrong. Like God never said He would be your husband (on more than two occasions). He never said you would get that job. He never said…

The problem is we get wrapped up in our own desires, which may not actually be bad, but they just aren’t what God had in mind. What I am learning is that what we think is best, God has something or someone else far better in mind for what He wants for our lives that He may receive the ultimate glory. If you are like me you like control, knowing what is going on with your life, and you don’t have to be in fellowship with God long to know that He often likes to take the plans we have and rip them up. We get worked up and bent out of shape, questioning God when things don’t work out the way we wanted and the whole time God is saying “if you only knew,” and there are times God will show you why it didn’t happen like you thought it would, like He has done with me. I am a thousand percent positive that God is constantly shaking His head at me fussing at the angels, “I wish this chic would just trust me and know I own the stars and unlike so many others that have, I keep my promises.”

This post is a little more personal, but I just want to challenge you as I challenge myself to listen again. There are times we really just don’t hear it right, or we misinterpret what was said, and that is okay. Learn from it and keep it moving. Understand His word and His will are perfect and won’t steer us in the wrong direction unless we grab hold of the wheel while He is trying to drive. Know how God speaks to you specifically and realize that what He didn’t say is just as important as what He has said to you. It’s a growing process and the closer we get and the more mature we become in our faith, the clearer the voice of God is and the more we are able to discern messages meant for us. These precious words of God will lead us on the awesome path to becoming all of who He has called us to be for His amazing purpose.

Lessons from Eden: Part III

So recently in a weekly group I attend we’ve discussed the first three chapters of Genesis, creation and the fall of man, and oh my, there is so much more to the story. I have written in the past about lessons from the Garden, but there are some more that I want to share that my eyes were just opened to see.

tree of the kgeFirst off, one of the lingering questions in the story is where Adam was during the whole conversation between Eve and the Serpent. Well in reading, the Bible does assume he was there, but how close is up for discussion. Nevertheless, lets assume that he in fact was there beside Eve as she was talking to the snake. The first lesson here is that silence is not always golden. Especially considering that he was the leader of that home, he should have spoken up when the Serpent began to misquote God’s word, but he didn’t because maybe he was just shocked that the snake was speaking or intrigued by what it was saying. Still, as we often do today, he didn’t speak up because he possibly didn’t see the threat in the lie that Serpent was speaking or in the Serpent himself who was said to be subtle and cunning. This very act of silence that we see here has shown it’s effects on our society. These subtle lies and doubts that the Enemy has whispered in our ears to make us question or reinvent the Word of God has desensitized us and confused even Christians as to what is right and wrong, and our society has greatly fallen because of it. It emphasizes our need to have continuous fellowship with God, as they did in the Garden, because for that brief time they were apart from God for one reason or the other, Satan slipped in and well, here we are today. God’s word is the truth and we must speak up for Christians have been silent for far too long and sin has prevailed in this society because of it, but yet we want to be popular and accepted and don’t want people to look at us weird or call us names, yet that is what was promised when we signed up to be followers of Christ. Now more than ever we need to not only speak up with the Word of God no matter how small or trivial the matter seems, but live a corresponding life showing that right is right and wrong is wrong.

As just said, for that brief moment Adam and Eve were not walking with God as they had done pretty much every day, so what happened? I don’t know, but what I do know is that we all miss the mark at times and for one reason or another we get out of touch with God. That doesn’t mean we just become heathens overnight, but perhaps we get too busy or life gets so chill that we forget our need for God, yet it’s that time we are out of fellowship that the Enemy likes to attack us and makes us question who God is, who we are and what we are supposed to do as he did with Eve. Our priorities get mixed up, we become anxious and worrisome, questioning the power and provision of God, pride sets in, and or we become apathetic, and before we even realize it, our thinking begins to change and that space between us and God thickens, our language changes, and sooner or later we fall into sin, whether worry, cussing, fornication, getting drunk, pride, bitterness, anger, jealousy, or whatever your vice may be.

So we mess up to some degree or another and feel so icky that we do the worse thing and pull away from God completely out of guilt, like Adam and Eve. We try to hide ourselves and our sin as if God doesn’t already know. We are afraid to pray, stop listening to devotionals, block out people from our lives, stop going to church because we feel so ashamed of what we did or how far off track we’ve gotten, because we don’t want people’s perceptions to change about us or let down those that looked up to us. So like Adam and Eve, we go under a rock or hide in a bush and put on a mask so no one can really see us. But God in His awesome love, grace, and mercy went out looking for them even though he was well aware of what they had done. He does the same with us, we just have to be willing to respond like Adam. God didn’t jump on their case or write them off from history because of their sin, but instead he covered them, though there were still consequences. As a body of believers, we should have the same mindset of God and should someone go missing from church or you notice a different pattern of behavior or attitude, reach out to them and show them the way home without automatically condemning or judging them, but show them the same grace, mercy, and love God showed to you. Yet, we neglect to do that far too often for a long time now and so many have slipped through the cracks and have been forgotten. So as much as you are able, check up on each other.

The last thing I want to point out that was pointed out to me is that God said not to eat of the tree originally, yet Eve told the Serpent that they were not to touch it nor eat it. Credit to her. Why? From Eve, this simple recall shows a great sense of maturity that we can apply today by not touching sin. Far too often we tease sin and put ourselves in compromising situations because we want the experience or we want to see how far we can get without actually sinning, but how much does that go as planned. More times than not we go further then we desired and do what we said we wouldn’t do and things get messy. We just wanted to touch it. This lesson from Eve urges us to just completely abstain from sin as much as we can, whatever is in our control, the choices we make every day. Though we can only control so much and get tempted, through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God we are able to not touch, preventing us from tasting the fruit.

This is one of the more lengthy posts I’m sorry, but I’m glad I was able to share and I hope and pray it blessed and encouraged you. Take these lessons from Eden and use them every day to more and more be you for a purpose.

If you want to check out other lessons from Eden, check them out on the links below:

Lessons from Eden

Lessons from Eden: Part II

Jewel of the Garden

The Numbing Effect: Positivity

One the biggest mantras today for success and self-preservation is positivity. Think positive, be positive, and do positive things, while having a positive attitude. And don’t get me wrong, I know there are times I allude to that philosophy and worldview, and I do think that positivity and the essence of it is great and definitely has a place in the culture and society today, simply because of all of the negativity that goes on, and to be honest, not many people enjoy actually being around people who are always negative. So, yeah, I get it. But for some time now it’s began to bother me.

The problem that I have witnessed is that when people are so positive, they disassociate from their own emotion it seems. As much as we want it to be, life is not all peaches and cream, smelling of strawberries, and what a lot of people do is they seem to negate that life is tough. And a person like me, it’s hard to open up to a person that is so positive as to where it seems as if nothing is ever wrong and if I try to share, I’ll be hit with a positivity speech. It’s hard to connect with people when the response to the pain of life and struggles is a simple “stay positive,” because either I’ll think they are full of it or I’ll build up a wall because they show no possibility of honesty or wisdom…I’m sorry. I got carried away, so moving on.

Now like I said previously, it definitely has it’s place, but so does negativity. And truth be told, often times negativity is reality, so we wind up in a conundrum when we disregard reality, because often times that means that things are not confronted or dealt with and all we do in turn is create more masks to wear, and things aren’t dealt with. On the flip side, positivity often forgets that things will not always turn out the way we want them, no matter how positive we were or how optimistic we are.

There is a saying that goes “to blessed to be stressed” that was referenced in a sermon I heard as a bad philosophy and that is so true! In theory it sounds nice, but it further pushes a gospel that assumes being a Christian means you will never be stressed out, have a bad day, or have any trying times, that life will be honky dory and if you feel stressed or anything of the liking, you are not doing something right. That is so far from the truth. Yes, the Bible has plenty of scriptures of God’s promises associated with positivity, but there are just as many that remind us of the hardships in life that shouldn’t be overlooked. I mean look at Jesus. There were many times he was stressed, tired, sad, and weary, but his livelihood was rested in that fact he knew who his Father was, and at the same time, he was vulnerable with other people so they could see that it was okay to cry or be angry.

Bottom line, if we aren’t careful and guard our hearts, positivity will numb us to the reality of the world around us and we will miss the opportunities to really minister effectively and or share Christ. It can truly desensitize us to deal with issues mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, and even physically, because more times than not, people don’t need positivity, but a sincere raw truth about their situation spoken in love, which means it won’t always tickle their ears, although ear tickling is what many people are getting these days. Furthermore, there are some things, situations, and people that don’t deserve a positive response or there truly is not one that can be given for one reason or another. I mean Scripture points out that the obtaining of peace often comes by way of war, and some times a negative action does require a negative response (through wisdom, discernment, and direction), but I digress, I don’t want to go to deep of the trail here, plus I feel like I am beginning to ramble again.

With all that said, be positive as you strive to be your best self for a purpose, just be careful not to allow positivity to cloud your sight and the dire realities around you, that you become an anesthetic or band-aid, to the problem(s) you were meant to be an answer to.