TO TRUST OR NOT TO TRUST, THAT IS THE QUESTION

Recently the Lord spoke to me and told me to guard my peace as my greatest treasure.  This is a peace that is not circumstantial but is the peace of God which can only be had through a relationship with Yeshua (Jesus), as many of you reading this already know. And with this peace comes a kind of freedom that can be had in no other way.  If you don't know the peace or freedom I'm speaking of, please keep reading. I have hope to share with you at the end of this article.  

Well, having said that about peace, I have had quite a challenge to my own peace recently. I am sharing this rather personal story with the hope that it will be an incentive to some of you reading this as I feel the issue is an important one. And besides, I believe it's the Lord who wants me to share it for the same reason and after all, it's really His story anyway. So here goes.  

I had to make a financial decision. I felt the Lord was telling me to sell an automobile that was of fairly substantial financial value as well as having emotional value to me because of the way I had obtained the car. But at this point, because of an accident I had which upped the insurance rate on the car it was putting a monthly burden on me. I have had no debt at all for over eleven years but lately I had a few expenses that meant I now had some debt.  Selling the car and purchasing a less expensive one would enable me to get out of debt plus reduce my monthly costs. 

But every voice in my life, family and friends, whomever I spoke with told me wisdom dictated that I keep the car and just pay off my debts over time like everyone else.

What to do?  Was I really hearing from God?  Isn’t there wisdom in the advice of many counselors, as the bible says?  Could the unity in the advice of EVERYONE in my immediate set of close friends and family really be God speaking to me rather than what I thought He was saying to me?  I spent  much time wrestling with this issue and the more I wrestled, the more my stomach hurt. That peace I was talking about – gone!  Or at least seriously misplaced. What a struggle. 

A few days ago I was told by yet one more of my “advisors” that I needed some counseling to deal with my emotions because I wasn’t seeing things clearly having a fear of being in debt and that debt was what everyone deals with. Well, I had once also been in debt and I know the difference between debt and no debt. Being in debt feels like a loss of freedom to me.  As I held this before the Lord, what came to me is that God doesn’t owe anyone anything. The Bible tells us that, “The heart of the borrower is in the hand of the lender.”  That’s how it felt, as if my heart was not entirely my own. Someone else had a hold of it. Though it wasn't what might be considered by some to be a great deal of money, I was surely not at peace about owing it. The Bible also says to “Owe no man anything but to love him.”  That's the only kind of owing I prefer.  

That sounds ridiculous in this day and age, but the debt of this nation and the debt of this culture we live in today is not normal or safe. I’ve heard more than a few prophetic preachers saying “Get out of debt as soon as you can.”  Some have stated that they see a financial crises coming – even this year.  Well, I’ve heard that before but I must admit I have the same inkling. Some concern has been linked perhaps to Passover (4/3-11) or Sukkot (9/27-10/4).  I was recently called “Chicken Little” and accused of fearing that the sky would fall, when I told someone my thoughts in this regard. I'm not fearful, but I guess time will tell whether it happens or not.

After being in this conflict much too long, I came to the Lord this week and made a decision.  I would rather put my trust in Him and what I believe He was saying to me than disregard what I felt was what He was telling me to do and choose everyone else’s advice instead. After all, everyone else was in debt themselves in some way.  Perhaps my wanting so badly to be free of debt made them uncomfortable with their own debt, though if the truth be told, I bet everyone who is in debt feels the stress of it in some way.  But the reason I made that decision is that I opted to obey God. I chose to trust in God. I would go with what I believed He had been telling me even though it meant going against what people thought.  Part of the struggle, I admit, was having to disregard what people I’m close to thought of me. I decided I cared more what God thought than what they did.

Still, was it an emotionally weighted decision?  You bet. But the minute I made the choice to go with God my peace began to return.  I have the sense that my life would go differently if I chose to go the way of what now seemed worldly advice as I doubt any of them had prayed about what they were telling me, rather than go with what I felt the Lord had been telling me. Trust the Lord and He’ll give you more to trust Him with. Doubt He is trustworthy and you’ll miss the opportunities of increased blessings. The whole bible reads like that from Abraham forward: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Those are the words of King Solomon and he was supposed to be wise, right?  To this to I might add: ...and lean not on the understanding of others, even those who love you.  By not leaning on your own understanding it means not to make decisions only based on how you see things without input from or reliance upon God, but acting independently instead.  I made the decision that I would put my trust in God regardless of what the voices around me were saying.

So here’s what happened.  I put the car on Criaglist.com for a certain price. No calls. The second day I felt to reduce the price and continued to pray that God would send just the right buyer.  That evening I got a call from a gentleman asking about it.  It was pouring rain and about 9:30 at night. He wanted to come then to see it. Now?  Now.  Okay.  He liked it, but he’d have to talk to his wife about it. They both came back the next day and decided they would purchase it. 

We wound up spending a good bit of the day together and after he finally had to go off to work, the wife and I went and had lunch together. We had become immediate friends.  As it turned out, they had given – that is GIVEN – away a car of almost exactly like this one for the same amount of money to someone when God had told them to. Obviously they had been in a position to do it but still, it was quite an act of obedience. The woman to whom they had given it to said that she was feeling suicidal as she didn’t believe God even knew who she was anymore or cared what she was going through. This made such a difference in her life. It had given her hope. 

Now, here, sometime later, God had not only somewhat supernaturally provided the cash to purchase this car without financing it but here I was selling it for the same amount that they had paid for the car they had given away in obedience to the Lord. 

Add to this that the Lord had told this couple to get entirely out of debt by this winter. They had purposed to do so. They had obediently sold an even more expensive automobile. The tenant of a rental property they owned called and said he wanted to buy the house without their having advertised it. They sold their high end large home by the time winter had come, officially December 21st of this year, and had moved south to another city, to where they felt God was leading them, which happened to be my city. They had downsized to where they owed nothing including no mortgages and were now renting a nice home. The car they had purchased from me was not a frivolity but a necessity and they were able to pay cash for it. We were clear confirmation to one another that God had said the same thing to both of us - get out of debt to the best of your ability - now!

[Note: Everyone of us is in a different situation and we each need to know what God is saying specifically to us in regard to debt, or mortgages, or possibly downsizing.]

As the wife and I had lunch together, she turned out to have an interest in the Jewish roots of Christianity and the Feasts of Israel, all those kinds of things that my life is all about. So we felt that God had put us together as kindred souls. Plus they had prayed that the Lord would lead them to the right car to purchase just as I had prayed He would bring whom He wanted to have it.  This was more than a transaction for a car, the whole thing had the Lord all over it. There were so many confirmations that not only was I to have sold it but that it was this very couple who was to purchase it. The Lord had arranged the whole thing. I love when those kinds of things happen that prove how involved God is with our individual lives. My peace was entirely restored and so was my amazement once again at how “God works all things together for those who love Him.” If ever I had a set of lessons on always trusting the Lord, this was it.

So I leave you with these thoughts:  The Lord is worthy of your trust, even when logic and even your own emotions may say otherwise if that’s how you feel He’s leading you, or what you’ve heard Him say to you either directly or through His word.  Protect your God-given peace.  Value it beyond anything else, for in it is the wisdom from above – where God is, that He can see the down the road and knows what’s best for each of us.

Secondly, I share with you what I have heard from Him, to be careful what you put great value on, because many things that are considered of value today may cease to have the same value. That which is of the greatest value is peace with God.  He will take care of you and provide for you. That means put what you own in proper perspective. Let your treasure be in heaven, that is to say, value your relationship with Yeshua (Jesus) beyond whatever is in the here and now and over what people may think of you. What we have today will last only for a time, but what we have with Him lasts forever.  This life on earth will be ours for just so long but peace with God carries with it an eternal weight of glory!   

To anyone to whom the peace of God is alien to you, or if you’ve never put your trust in the Lord before, or you find that you’re not sure about where the real value is in your life – talk to Him.  He will listen.  He will hear you. And He will let you know He does.  He cares not only about you, but for you – with a loving heart beyond what you can imagine.  Tell Him the things that are on your heart.  Those things you’re afraid of anyone knowing? He already knows them. He’s just waiting for you to open up your own heart and unburden yourself to Him so He can release you from the weightiness of misplaced values and trusting in your own understanding that turned out not to be wise after all. He is the God of forgiveness and of comfort.  Put your life and all you own in His hands. So is your forever! He can take better care of both much more than you can.

Lessons From Rehab

Having To Put Life Together Again

The Lord sure does have His unique ways of getting His points across. Several weeks ago I fell, tripping over the wire for the doggie run and landed on the concrete on my patio at 11:30 one night while letting my dog out before going to bed.  Oh the pain. Surely I didn’t break my hip…… did I?  The answer came soon enough. 

Somehow I skootched myself back inside to the front door of my apartment and began calling for help. I had been reduced to being a television commercial, hollering, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”  Fortunately, after a while, one of my neighbors heard me and came bearing a cell phone so I called my daughter Ellen first who lives around the corner, then realizing there was nothing she could do, I called 911. And thus my adventure began. 

Weeks before the Lord had been telling me I needed to rest. Not just rest in Him, but rest from all the activities I was involved with. I was admittedly exhausted, but how do you stop? So much to do, so many people to be with. I loved what I was doing, and presumed that I was doing it all for God and it all was His will; evidently such was not the case.  My thought was that what I was doing, despite the fact that I was always pushing past fatigue, was all part of serving Him. I then heard Him clearly say, “If you had something wrong with you, you would rest. So rest so you don’t have to have something wrong with you.”  Oh dear. Well, that got my attention.

I knew it was time to obey. I knew I had to take time off, a sabbatical. I talked it over with my pastor who said that when God asks you to rest like that, He often has something else He wants you to do. I cancelled my classes and Shabbat Service. I finished speaking engagements including in NC and settled into the intended rest. Only I didn’t know how to rest. Phone calls came, emails, lunches, dinners, people who wanted to talk and I wanted to talk with. A possible home fellowship start-up came to an abrupt halt as if God had pulled the plug before it even got started. But most of all, I didn’t know how to turn off my brain. I had been going and doing for so long, I couldn’t seem to turn it off.  

One day I said to the Lord, “I need you to show me what you mean by rest. I don’t seem to know how.  My internal motor is still running. What is Your idea of rest, Lord, and how do I get there?”  That night I fell.  I’m inclined to say the Lord stuck out His foot and tripped me in answer to my prayer that afternoon.  You don’t think God does things like that? Didn’t He discipline Israel when they needed it? Didn’t He impose years of not working the Land while in exile when they didn’t keep the Shabbats for 70 years? This wasn’t quite of that magnitude but I was getting the point.  

I later recalled a conversation I had years ago with a woman named Sandy Dodson (now with the Lord) who ministered in the power of the Holy Spirit in a conference for three entire days. I myself was healed of something that had been with me since my teens. I met her in the ladies room on the last day and said to her,, “ You must be exhausted after putting out all that energy for people.” But her response was this:  “God doesn’t use up His people. If you’re exhausted, then you’re ministering in the flesh and not the Spirit and you better find out where.”  Wish I’d remembered that earlier. 

And so began my saga of hip surgery and then rehab. I never knew this kind of pain and incapacitation. I’ve had to learn to walk all over again. But more importantly, the Lord has been teaching me how to walk with Him as I have not before. A restoration of a broken hip begins with realizing you have no ability whatsoever to move or lift that leg even an inch off the bed. It’s as good a dead, only any attempts at moving it is horribly painful so you know it’s not dead, it’s just incapable of doing anything.  It clearly brought to mind, “Without Me you can do nothing.”  

Oh I could do things with my hands, I could talk, I could do anything but what involved my hip. My understanding of what it is to “walk with God” took on new meaning. It starts with utter dependence upon Him, with nothing of ourselves alone that can facilitate truly walking with God. “Enoch walked with God and He was not for God took him”. What was it about Enoch’s walk with God that God ‘raptured’ him away to be with Him?  Many of us are awaiting such an event as “the rapture.”  Since ‘first mentions’ in the bible set the tone of things to come along those same lines, it would seem that for anyone to be “not for God took him” they would need to “walk with God” in a way that significantly sets them apart from those who do not.  

As I began physical therapy, tiny movements at a time, I had to start with learning how to sit up even a little (try eating lying down or on an incline), or how to move my leg just a little (try getting comfortable when you’ve been in the same position for hours). I could give you a list of what I had to learn to accomplish but my goal is to point out how absolutely dependent I was upon the nurses or the PT people for everything. The nurses, bless them, saw to my needs, and the P.T. folks taught me how to sit, walk, stand and move again. These were people who continually cared for those who could give nothing back to them (see photo at left).  I have become so very grateful for even little kindnesses and appreciative of how little it takes to bless or help someone else who may or may not be in need. 

In the meantime, between the pain and the fatigue, I was relegated to where I could do very little for myself. It didn’t take me long to say, “OK, Lord, I get it. Walking with You means resting in you because any effort of my own unless and until I am ready for it, is counter-productive, painful and useless.”  If we look at this from a spiritual point of view, how much energy do we expend that does not produce the intended results.

I once did an extensive study of the cause of God’s favor and disfavor. I was trying to figure out how to stay in His good graces.  It distilled down to two words, the difference between dependence and independence.  Every since I have attempted to live in godly dependence upon Him.  

But it is possible to think you are depending upon Him while doing more than He has been asking you to do. That, my friends, was an autobiographical statement. But I do wonder how much the church is doing that is not what He’s been asking us to do.  How many in ministry are burned out but unable to stop. How many meetings have many of us been attending without quality time with Him alone, or for that matter, neglecting other parts of our lives or family because we’re ‘doing the stuff’.  We’re busy people, most of us. Too busy. Slaves to efficiency and technology, driven by a guilt that doesn’t allow us to just say no. Or am I alone here? 

It has taken me several weeks of rethinking how I’ve been living my life, even “in Him”  to see that many of my activities haven’t produced the Kingdom life either in me or those who have been in my classes. Have we together learned a lot of good Biblical information, and has some of it even been transformational?  Yes, I would say so. But are we the Bride without spot or wrinkle that Yeshua is returning for yet?  I would say not. 

Years ago I heard the Lord say, “The Bride I come for will have eyes for no one and nothing other than Me.” He has a right to that kind of complete adoration, wouldn’t you say?  How distracted are we, though?  Even distracted with what we’re supposedly “doing for Him” including at the expense of being with Him.

When I got here in Rehab and saw my state of dependence in the natural, and then realized it mirrored what my dependence in the spiritual should be upon the Lord, I knew I needed a significant boost in my faith.  Since “Faith comes by hearing” I started listening to Scriptures online, specifically the Psalms. The first thing that happened was that I realized my Bible time wasn’t just about the Lord and me, but others were in there too. If I found something meaningful or a revelation popped out to me, I couldn’t wait to go and share it with or teach it to others.  I saw that my relationship with Yeshua was like a marriage that had too many others in the intimate places.  Part of my coming to rest was giving up the ‘striving’ to share what He showed me with others, but to allow that same insight to be just between me and Him, to be about our relationship, to be what he wanted to share of Himself with me – just me.  Not me and everyone else.  My first and primary ‘call’ is not about what I share with others, but as daughter, as lover, as adoring disciple, even to resting my head on His chest at times as John did. That, of course, applies to each and every one of us. 

I’m sure by now you get the picture of what I’m trying to say.  I have heard stories recently of several people who have also been confronted with finding their efforts for the Lord frustrated or ineffective, or they too, as it happened, were to some degree incapacitated in some way causing them to rethink their own walks with the Lord. There seems to be a pattern here.  If it happens to you, I urge you to heed the call! God is likely to want more of you for Himself than He’s had.          

I am now able to walk, s-l-o-w-l-y, though I must use a cane or a four wheeled walker for now. It is a reminder that I am walking with God – in no hurry. I'm finding new ways to put life back together at His pace. For those of us who look forward to being with Him forever, I have this feeling that we are living in a time when Bridal clothes are being given out. We don’t want to be too busy so that we miss hearing His voice calling us to intimate times with Him, and a life that becomes one in which we have eyes for no one else and nothing else but Him.  It’s something He must do, but giving Him our attention should sure move that along, wouldn’t you think?  In other words, right priorities!  To be His bride is to walk with Him, beside Him, and at His pace.  I hope to see you on the journey.