by Elizabeth | Jan 15, 2011 | Learning Story
’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to take Him at His Word;
Just to rest upon His promise,
And to know, “Thus saith the Lord!”
Refrain:
Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!
How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er;
Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!
Oh, for grace to trust Him more!
Oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to trust His cleansing blood;
And in simple faith to plunge me
’Neath the healing, cleansing flood!
Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just from sin and self to cease;
Just from Jesus simply taking
Life and rest, and joy and peace.
I’m so glad I learned to trust Thee,
Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend;
And I know that Thou art with me,
Wilt be with me to the end.
Apologies to those who don’t like country, but this is the song I want stuck in my head today and everyday. I own the version by Trinity Worship, which I love, but can’t find a link to it. Savor the sweetness of Jesus’ love today.
by Elizabeth | Jan 14, 2011 | Learning Story
“I have heard their cries for deliverance.” Exodus 3
Back to our theme of this week — what does it mean that God knows? How does God know? One way is by “hearing. A father may, from behind his newspaper, vaguely ‘hear’ his young son moaning after he has returned from a hot tennis practice on a humid summer day, and he may utter some comfort such as “Yep, sure is hot today.”
But the Hebrew word, shama’, conveys far more than such a hearing. Here is the idea of “active listening” taken to its final conclusion. We hear “God ‘heard’” many times in the Bible. In Genesis 16, God heard Hagar’s affliction, and He intervened (perhaps not in ways we might consider helpful, “Return to your mistress and submit to her…”, but nevertheless, in His sovereign love, He acted on her behalf.) Later in the same story, He heard Ishmael’s voice when Hagar had thrown him in a bush so that she would not have to hear it, for to hear meant to feel the pain. For God to hear means God will become actively involved.
What do you think about God’s hearing? Think about stories that caused you to question whether God was hearing you. Think about stories that showed you how God became actively involved because he heard.
by Elizabeth | Jan 12, 2011 | Learning Story
What does it mean for God to know? It means that God is actively engaged in your story and mine. Continuing the thought from Monday, check out Exodus 3:7-10. Here we see how God responds to the misery and suffering of his people:
7 The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
Too often, I think people associate God knowing with a sense of shame, a desire to hide. (Think Genesis 3!). But consistently, God’s knowing, whether it is the knowing of sin or the knowing of suffering or the knowing of glory, leads God to respond. Look at God’s response in Exodus 3:7-10. Amazing grace, how can it be?
“I have seen…”
“I have heard…”
“I am concerned…” (the only non-verb response)
“I have come down…to rescue…to bring them up..”
“I am sending”
In the next few days, we’ll look at some of the verbs, and what they tell us about God and what they mean for us. For now, spend some time thinking about a story. How might “God knows…” make a difference in this situation? Write a prayer centered around these four verbs.
by Elizabeth | Jan 10, 2011 | Learning Story
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
Exodus 2:23-25
Yesterday, our pastor preached on God. J.I. Packer wrote an excellent book called Knowing God, but this sermon began with the essential reality that God knows …us, our hearts, our stories, the plans he has for us, the struggles and the triumphs.
It took me back to a paper I wrote in seminary on redemption. I’ll spare you a lot of the academic writing, but an explanation from a Jewish scholar about all of the ramifications of the Hebrew verb “to know” help me know what it means to know that “God knows…”
In the biblical conception, knowledge is not essentially or even primarily rooted in the intellect and mental activity. Rather, it is more experiential and is embedded in the emotions, so that it may encompass such qualities as contact, intimacy, concern, relatedness and mutuality. Conversely, not to know is synonymous with dissociation, indifference, alienation, and estrangement; it culminates in callous disregard for another’s humanity. Nahum Sarna, JPS Torah Commentary
What is ahead in your day, your week, your month, your life? Exam week, PT stretching, a wedding, a new business venture? What does it mean to you to know that God is intimately involved, that he knows, that he cares, and that he is engaged in whatever the days hold?
[i] Sarna, 5.
by Elizabeth | Jan 8, 2011 | Learning Story
Every day is a day to sing this grand redemption song. Today seems particularly right. Thank you, Matthew Smith for this gorgeous reminder:
Through the love of God our Savior, all will be well
Free and changeless is His favor, all is well
Precious is the blood that healed us
Perfect is the grace that sealed us
Strong the hand stretched forth to shield us
All must be well
Though we pass through tribulation, all will be well
Ours is such a full salvation, all is well
Happy still in God confiding
Fruitful if in Christ abiding
Steadfast through the Spirit’s guiding
All must be well
We expect a bright tomorrow; all will be well
Faith can sing through days of sorrow, all is well
On our Father’s love relying
Jesus every need supplying
Yes in living or in dying
All must be well
by Elizabeth | Jan 7, 2011 | Learning Story
Understanding God’s Story changes our prayer; prayer changes our understanding of God’s Story.
I wrote this sentence two days ago as part of a lesson on Praying Story. I wish I had more time to take you through this, but I am thinking the brief outline I sketched and the exercise that follows might be helpful. Read through this, and if you have time, do the exercise and tell me what would make it better.
1. It tells us there is a bigger story. If life is only about the here and now, our little story, if there’s nothing more beyond what I can touch and see or you can touch and see, why would anyone pray? It would be instead, what someone told me they did after Hurricane Opal – “I stayed inside and thought happy thoughts.”
It’s odd to me – why would anyone pray if they didn’t think there was a bigger story? But the fact is, people do, all the time.
2. It shows us how to pray by revealing the contours of the bigger story: What should we pray for?
Relationships (Lord, help that woman! Genesis). Confess sin [Gen. 3). Yell complaints [Psalms, Job] Pray for redemption (New Testament). Jesus to come back. (Revelation).
3. It gives us a basis for praying. Pray for restoration of broken things. Not broadly. Right here, right now. Lord, restore my dog because you are a restorer of broken things.
4. It gives us specific stories that inform our stories and show us how to pray – “Lord, don’t let me be like Sarah and be a cynic when I’m believing you won’t show up in this situation!”
Exercise 1
Let’s try it out.
Take 5 minutes. Write down a situation in your life or the life of someone you know, perhaps something you’ve been praying for.
Connect it to the Big Story of Scripture. Here are some sample questions you can ask to do this:
Where do you see the image of God? Is there any shalom?
What brokenness exists?
Is there a movement toward another god to make life work?
What redemption has taken place? What redemption are you praying for?
Are there prayers based on the ‘one-day’ of the new heavens, new earth life?
What prayer forms as you think of this?
Here’s what I came up with:
My shoulder to heal. God is a god of restoration. God did not remove Paul’s thorn in the flesh. God uses all to redeem hearts.
Lord, I want my shoulder to be pain-free and move well. I ask you to do that for me because you are a merciful God. If you don’t choose to answer the prayer that way, help me to hang in there, to believe. “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.”
