Are You All In?

On Wednesday night, Jon and I joined in one of the high school midweek small groups.  Barry, the volunteer leader for this particular group, shared a challenge that we have heard him give to students many times before.  The challenge was to say yes to God before even knowing the question.  Such a challenge should be easy and logical since we know that God is sovereign, good, just, loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful.  Yet, we fear what discomfort, rejection, pain, or loss He might ask us to endure.  Tension creeps into our shoulders as we ponder which dreams He might ask us to delay or sacrifice completely.  Blind to the future, we struggle to overcome the feeling of risk that accompanies that depth of surrender. 

Of course, we desire to see the mighty works of God and His plan brought to fruition, but are we willing to do whatever He asks of us to fulfill our role in that plan?  Joseph became Pharaoh’s right-hand man, saved his family from the famine in Egypt, and was a key component in God’s design to preserve and grow the nation of Israel, but he also endured years of betrayal, slavery, false accusations, imprisonment, and abandonment in the process.  How serious are we about following Jesus?  How dedicated are we to His will?  Is He worth any trial, test, or risk we could face?  Many of us claim to have surrendered to Him completely, and we pray to Him to work miracles in our lives, but we freeze up when He calls us to action.  How can we find the strength and the courage to instead say yes to God, regardless of what He asks?

            After the death of Moses, God called Joshua to the daunting task of leading Israel, a nation of former slaves, to take possession of the promised land, which was inhabited by established cities of idolatrous people and warrior giants.  Joshua had seen the nation say no to God once before out of fear, and he had wandered in the wilderness along with them for forty years as a result.  His “yes” attitude when he first served as a scout (Num. 13:8, 16-14:10) had been overshadowed by the cautious majority.  Now, in the first chapter of the book of Joshua, God encourages His chosen leader and commands Him to be strong and courageous (three times!) as he continues to live with wholehearted surrender to God’s will.  In His charge to Joshua (Josh. 1:2-9), we also see three keys to finding strength and courage for ourselves to have a “yes” attitude toward God. 

        

1.  Believe God’s Promises (vv. 2-6)

           

            God had promised to give the land to Israel.  Joshua knew this, but God reminded Him of it once again.  God has also given us all sorts of promises.  For example, He promises that He will finish the work He started in us (Phil. 1:6) and that He will work all things for the good of those who love Him (Rom. 8:28).  These are promises that we can cling to, and when we believe that God will do what He promised, we can find the strength to keep going.  When we can’t see the whole picture, we can look back on God’s promises and find the courage to keep saying yes to the only One who never breaks His promises. 

2.  Obey God’s Precepts (vv. 7-8)

            Being strong and courageous is very closely tied to obedience in this whole passage and particularly in verses 7 and 8.  God reminds Joshua not only to be obedient in the monumental task of leading a nation to conquer a land, but also to be obedient to the whole Word of God.  As we are obedient to God’s Word in the little things, the truth and goodness of His precepts are made even more evident to us, which emboldens us to continue to be obedient when God gives us radical and life-altering callings.  In addition, God  more often than not works His will in and through us by the means of our individual choices, not by a large display of instant Divine intervention.  We beg God to do a miracle in restoring our marriage, but are we willing to forgive our spouse?  When we feel the weight of financial burdens and plead with God to provide, are we willing to change our spending, saving, giving, and working habits to align with Scripture?  If we are careful to follow His way in all of the little things, we will have more clarity and discernment to obey and find success in the big things. 

3.  Remember God’s Presence (vv. 5, 9)

           

            God’s presence in this passage is found both as a promise (v. 5) and as a comfort (v.9).  This particular promise of God’s presence was directly to Joshua, but we have the same promise and comfort in Hebrews 13:5b-6.  The knowledge that God does not leave us alone to try and do what He wants us to do allows us to boldly step forward in obedience in spite of our fears.  With the God of the universe at our side, what reason could we possibly have to fear man?  The One who split the Red Sea, the One who provided manna in the desert, the One who lowered Himself to the point of infancy for our sake, the One who carried the weight of the punishment for our sin, and the One who conquered the grave is with us.  He is with you. 

            In our relationship with God, He is in – He is all in.  If you have any doubts about that fact, go back to the cross.  Even while we were directly opposed to Him and even when we spat in His face with our disobedience and unbelief, He left heaven to come down in the lowest and most dependent of positions just to grow up and be tortured and killed by the ones He came to save.  Now, He is alive, and He reminds us that He is still all in – we need only to believe.  As the truth of His love sinks into our hearts, how could our natural response be anything other than reciprocation?  No one wants to be in a one-sided relationship.  No one wants to give their all to someone only to receive a fraction of that person’s heart in return.  He has given us all that we need to find the strength and the courage to say yes to Him.  Are you willing to go all in with Jesus?  

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Love Keeps No Records

Record-keeping is my jam.  If it can be quantified, listed, color-coded, or categorized, I’ve got a spreadsheet, an app, a binder, or a file for it.  For our Pope Paul VI testing alone, I have a journal, a hard file (with dividers, of course), and an e-file (with sub-files and sub-sub-files).  The information pack-rat inside of me insists on keeping anything that may be necessary to reference in the future, and my firstborn tendencies demand that I keep it all organized enough that it can be readily and easily accessed.  Such is the life of an accountant’s daughter.

My passion for keeping neat, accurate records arises, at least in part, from my beaver personality (read The Two Sides of Love by Gary Smalley & John Trent).  We beavers are known for our affinity for precision, accuracy, and detail, but we are also characterized by our emphasis on the past.  We put a lot of stock into what has already happened, and our thoughts and decisions are often rooted in the past.  Before jumping in, we like to see that an idea or method has been tested and proven to be practical and effective over time.  Shady track records and patterns of inconsistency are nearly impossible for us to overlook.  These God-given traits are good and necessary for many aspects of society, work, and life to function.  However, as with any other personality traits, they lend themselves to certain weaknesses when misused or taken to extremes.       

Last week, we started a series at The Crossing Fellowship titled “The New Rules for Love, Sex, & Dating.”  On a side note, my husband is going to be delivering the message on sex; I haven’t decided for sure whether or not I should go MIA that weekend (kidding…sort of …).  Anyway, during last week’s message we talked about chemistry problems versus relationship problems, becoming the right person instead of looking for (or trying to make your spouse into) the “right” person, and what love in a relationship really looks like.  Check out the full message here, or visit The Crossing’s Facebook page here.  We spent some time in 1 Corinthians 13, and the end of one verse grabbed onto me in a way that it never has before: “[love] keeps no record of being wronged” (NLT).

I rarely lash out, and I am not easily provoked to all-out anger, but we’ve already established that I am assuredly a record-keeper, and this area is no exception.  Of course I don’t keep physical, written records of all the ways I’ve been hurt or irritated, but they are written in my heart and mind just the same.  When I am not very careful and intentional to keep short accounts by dealing with the hurt, sealing up those records with forgiveness, and letting them go through trust in my God, they simmer and intensify with bitterness as the record lengthens.  I have some golden retriever (another Smalley/Trent reference) in me too that prefers to keep the peace and avoid confrontation as much as possible, which only exacerbates the problem.  As I reach the boiling point, smaller things upset me much more quickly, and I begin to burn everyone around me as the turmoil in my heart inevitably bubbles to the surface (we talked about this extensively at The Crossing in the series “Me & My Big Mouth”). 

I have a long way to go, but God is teaching me to love better.  He is constantly reminding me that He does not keep a record of my sins and that I need to love and forgive as He loves and forgives.  He tugs at my heart and lets me know when I need to deal with something, and I’m trying to listen and be more eagerly obedient to that nudge.  I am also learning that sometimes I have to be willing to look past the track record and see people as God sees them.  In His eyes, I am already glorified in Christ (Rom. 8:29, 30).  In His eyes, they are either glorified in Christ or lost in their unbelief.  Either way, they are a work in progress just as I am, they are valuable, and they need to be shown love and respect.  Our lead pastor, Eric, has often encouraged us to treat our spouses (or anyone, for that matter) as if they are already the person we hope they will become.  Isn’t that how we want to be treated?  We all need people to believe in us and who we can become through Christ.  Even though I naturally look to the past, I am learning to turn my eyes instead to the future – to ditch my records and, with hope, trust in God and what He can and will do in me and in those around me.

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Abundant Living in an Arid Land

Deserts are largely uninhabited for a reason.  Why live in the dry heat of a barren, inhospitable land when the world is full of breathtaking mountains, lush valleys, and calming seas?  Yet, spiritually, we sometimes choose to remain with our feet planted in the sand, our parched throat drawing in the dusty air, and our skin shriveling up in the relentless rays of the sun.  We may not have arrived in the desert by our own desire (whether as a result of sin or of difficult circumstances outside our control), but that doesn’t mean we are hopelessly trapped there.  So, why do we still act paralyzed? 

For most of the summer, I have been in the book of Numbers.  The wilderness was always part of God’s plan to take Israel into the promised land.  Their journey was never going to be an easy one, but they made it much harder on themselves by the choices they made.  As I read, I tried to choose one or two main ideas from each passage to write down in my journal.  Looking back over my notes, three themes emerged that I think are key to thriving through our spiritual wildernesses and moving on from them.

1.  Don’t Complain

Israel complained repeatedly through their whole wilderness experience.  Their loud discontent did little to benefit them.  Instead, it roused God’s anger and frustrated their leader (Moses) to the point that he wanted God to end his life.  Further, it caused them to forget what God had already done for them, fed their ungratefulness, and led to more heartache and headache than any temporary satisfaction they received.  Similarly, our complaints make us ungrateful for what God has already done, they make us intolerable to those around us, and they blind us from the ways God is working on our behalf.  The Scriptures are also clear that while Jesus did indeed take the punishment for our sin, God still disciplines His children.  He loves us too much to let us grow up to be spoiled brats, and a complaining attitude is not something He allows to go unchecked.  No one leaves their desert on the wheels of complaint without crashing and burning along the way.      

  

2.  Believe

In spite of all the miraculous ways the people of Israel had seen God work in rescuing them out of Egypt, they constantly doubted His character, His promises, and His ways in the wilderness.  God continued to be faithful even when they were faithless, but they tested His boundaries more zealously than a three-year-old.  Their unbelief, coupled with fear, ultimately led to their stay in the wilderness being extended by another forty years.  We get stuck when we don’t believe God, and who knows how often we have delayed or missed out on His blessings because of our stubborn unbelief.       

3.  Obey       

When we stop believing God, disobedience is inevitable.  We were all created to believe in something, and when the rightful object of that belief is displaced, we start pursuing all sorts of other avenues to fill that void.  Israel was constantly wandering away from the one true God by worshipping Him in ways that He did not ask or by worshipping other gods entirely.  Their disobedience resulted in so much destruction, pain, and death.  Our hearts are easily led away from God, even when we have seen the truth of His goodness and His righteousness.  Obedience is a choice we must make in every single moment as we continue to believe God in the face of our driest deserts. 

A common response to reading about the Israelites is baffled self-righteousness.  How could they turn away so many times from the God who set them free?  How could they even dream of being unfaithful to Him?  Of course, we would have made the right choices if we were in their shoes.  But, don’t we make those same choices today?  Our descent into the sins of complaint, disbelief, and disobedience might look different, but it is just as real and baffling, if not more so. 

We have known the love of our Savior in a way that the Israelites were not yet privileged to see.  Israel saw God’s deliverance from Egypt, but we have seen our deliverance from the eternal punishment and present power of sin in our lives through Jesus’s death and resurrection.  The Source of living water resides inside of us (Jn. 7:37-39).  In the bleakest wastelands, we have no reason to wilt because we already have been given everything we need to flourish and thrive.  We need only to choose to listen to Him.  If we stop complaining long enough to turn our eyes away from our own misery and self-pity, believe that God will fulfill His promises on the basis of His good character, and obey Him as His Spirit and Word guide us in the way that He made this world to work, we can be the oases in a cracked, broken world.  Once we realize that He is all we need, we can live abundantly regardless of whether we find ourselves in the desert or the promised land.