LET HIM CARRY YOU.

 I have a friend who is presently homeless, jobless and seemingly hopeless – except for God that might be the whole story.  Not to belittle the severity of my friend’s situation with platitudes and a nice little Bible study, but there is a greater aspect of this than just the circumstances.  As I write this it is Passover, the season of deliverance, of redemption, of new beginnings.  Israel too was homeless when they left Egypt. All they had were promises of a land somewhere they had to journey to.  It wasn’t as if they just left Egypt and after a rather long hike, Tada!  - they were there and just entered in.  It should only have taken eleven days to walk that distance, but it took forty years – all because of unbelief.  It wasn’t until the older generation, the ones who didn’t know how to think, expect, or act in faith, were gone that they had the faith and took action to make the land their own, just as God had promised. 

Israel’s forty year journey is a picture of our own journey in the Lord. Just as He led them through what must have seemed like an endless trek through the sand, so He carries each of us through the deserts in our own lives. Like Israel's with older generation, we must allow our old man, our old unbelieving natural self, to die off so that we are no longer ruled by unbelief and fear, and instead, we learn to think, expect and act according to the word and the promises of God.  We learn through our experiences that God has been right there with us – all the time, in every circumstance, even when things don’t go as we prefer or expect.  We come to understand that “God works all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes” (Romans 8:28).  If you’re His, you are a part of His purposes in the earth. You are “called” by Him to affect the world around you.  We can all be as He is to others around us, spreading hope and His love, making people aware that God is with them too.  We can all be what we would not likely be on our own without Him.

I had a chance to experience this at a new level this week.  I was recognized for having what was a good idea that turned out to bless many people.  It was a nice feeling to be appreciated like that.  Once alone with the Lord though I quickly told Him, “Kol haKavode, Adonai Yeshua” – All of the Glory goes to You, Lord Yeshua!   The whole thing had to be from Him, from start to finish.  This isn’t false modesty, this is the truth. What have we that we have not received?  Billy Graham, I understand, has a plaque on his desk that says, “TOUCH NOT THE GLORY.”   I’ve tried to always remember that.   

The next morning I awoke with a huge sense of how much God has taught me, of how much my life is affected by what I know of His word and His ways, of the way He has crafted my character over the years through one experience, one trial, and one blessing after another.  Patience, kindness, mercy, hope and faith are the works of God; they are not ours naturally.  Even good ideas are from God.  I once had someone prophesy over me in front of a room full of 500 people (embarrassing), “Lonnie, you have a lot of good ideas; some of them are even from the Lord.”  So I put them out there as they occur to me and see which ones take root and bear fruit. Those are the ones that are from God. I couldn’t possibly have the stuff to make them come to pass on my own.  Like the one that just happened.  About the other ones, sometimes I have to smile a bit embarrassed again and say, “Oh well.” 

 This all seems quite petty compared to being homeless, I realize. One of the pains of my friend is that she feels purposeless. She is a faithful servant of the Lord, always ready to be of help to others and a giver – of her time, of her love, of her finances – not to mention great pot luck dinners.  She has a lot of good ideas that bear fruit for the kingdom and bring blessings to others.  But now with no job and no home, among other things, she feels she is without purpose.   My experience, such as it has been, is that God never wastes anything but uses all of our situations, mistakes, bad judgments or abuses whether from something we’ve done or was done to us, whether in word or act, He will use it all to bring us to greater fellowship with Himself, and to form us into people He can trust with purpose for His Kingdom.  He gives purpose even to our worst pains and losses. This isn’t about theology, this is about relationship with the greatest Lover of all times – God!  

He’s never asked us to go through anything Yeshua hasn’t experienced.  “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).  Ever think about that?  What in your life have you suffered that somehow, in some way, Yeshua didn’t suffer too.  Really, give that some thought. It will bring you closer to Him as you share in “the fellowship of His suffering” (Phil. 3:10) and to realize it's always too soon to give up or to stop trusting in HIm.

We know that God has told us that “faith without works is hopeless… is dead” (James  2:20 & 26 ).  So there is the doing in our faith. But sometimes we find ourselves on the receiving end, rather than the doing or giving end.  God ordained in His word to Israel in the Torah to make provision for those in need.   Remember Ruth?  She was gleaning based on the words in Torah to leave some of the gatherings for those in need.  “And you shall not glean your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather its fallen grapes; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger. I am the Lord your God,“ (Leviticus 19:10) and, “When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward; it shall be for the stranger and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow” (Deut. 24:21).  Jews tend to be benevolent based on this principal in Torah.  The generosity of the church is based on these same words to Israel. The early church, you recall, were Torah-observant Jews which is where it is derived. And so we take care of those in need.

A woman who was in the same church as my friend was in Walmart this week when she suddenly got the urge to call my friend.  They were not particularly close and my friend had even moved out of the area and so they hadn’t seen each other for months.  Suddenly she feels she must call her. So she did and that’s how I found out she is homeless.  As it happens this woman was going away for a while and asked my homeless friend if she would come and house sit for her – which gave her a place to be for a time while God weaves things together for her, and opens some doors to get her out of this situation.  So you see, God was at work already, putting things in place for her when he had the woman in Walmart feel to call her. He will not forget her or forsake her.  We often quote those words as coming from Yeshua, but they ring out clearly throughout all of Israel’s history:   

Moses said, “Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.” (Deut. 3:16).

Moses said it again years later having walked out his trust in God. “The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” (Deut. 31:8).  Dismayed, incidentally, means to be paralyzed by a real or imagined fear. 

God Himself said to Joshua:  “I will not fail you or forsake you” (Joshua 1:5).

“Then David said to his son Solomon, “Be strong and courageous, and act; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you until all the work for the service of the house of the Lord is finished”  (1 Chron. 28:20). David was speaking from his years of living with the Lord.

And from Yeshua, “…He Himself has said, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). 

There we have it in the mouths of four credible witnesses.  We have the choice before us all the time, in small things or great consequential things – to believe that  God is good and He is with us at all times to bring about good in our lives - no matter what it looks like at times.  Our choice is to believe God or not believe God.  Eve had the same choice when presented with an alternative to trusting God. She made the wrong choice, but we don’t have to. We’ve learned from her mistake. Each of us is faced with the same challenge she was: To believe God is good and that He has only our best interest at heart (His heart).

When we go through times of great stress upon our faith, and through it all we find we are still His, we come out the other end finding out He is above all faithful and trustworthy. He will keep His word.  King David had to learn this also through being homeless – for many years, while being hunted down by Saul.  Seminary would have been much easier if that’s how God prepared David for leadership, but it wouldn’t have created a man whose songs to God have sustained millions for thousands of years because of his faith in Him and the love of God he came to through his trials.

I have faith, even if my friend’s is weak right now, that God will bring much purpose out of this time in her life. She’s exhausted from the battle and doesn’t know where to turn next. But God does.  He told someone in Walmart to call her so He could get her to their house where she’d be safe and warm and could rest.  Perhaps some of you reading this are in your own trial.  Or know of others who are caught in a web of some debilitating circumstances. There are too many who are homeless or jobless or both today.  There are situations that cause people’s faith to become weak.  Others may have been trekking through their journey for so long that they feel like it’s been forty years in the desert.  But that’s never the end of the story. Our faithful Savior is carrying us, and there is a promised land to enter. There are promises yet to be realized. And there are ways to come to know our God at a greater level than any of us do today – there’s always more to know of Him.

Would you take a moment to pray for my friend, for God to rescue her and any others in similar situations who need Him to do a miracle on their behalf.  Let’s consider our prayers as our way of gleaning for the benefit  of those in need. There is much purpose in your prayers.    Bless you!