God can do it…

 

Planning this big event, our family reunion, has been a learning experience. In the past few months God has shown me that even though my faith moves from strong to weak and back again, He hasn’t changed at all. A life-long lesson for me and one that took forty years of wandering, and the death of an entire generation, for His people to learn.

They came to the land God promised but failed to enter. While they were weak and saw themselves as “grasshoppers” compared to the “giants” that lived there, it was not their weakness nor their enemies’ strength that kept them from going in, but their unbelief. The Lord was able but it took a long time for them to realize it. I can relate to that slowness to learn.

After their wandering, when most of them died, they trusted the Lord and took the land, but what is interesting is that they knew after leaving Egypt that God was capable. They sang an amazing song of praise (see Exodus 15:3ff) yet when they saw the giants, they forgot or neglected to act on what they knew and turned back.

How many times have I done the same. The reunion task is too big for me. In discouragement and feeling great fatigue just thinking about it, I often want to quit. Then God reminds me, sometime subtly and sometimes with a 2x4 at the side of my head, that this was His idea and it will happen. Curves come. Some who said they would help back out, the to-do list has too many items, well-meaning friends say “you can do it” without realizing that “no I cannot” is theologically correct. I cannot do it. But God can!

Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? … You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode… You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. The Lord will reign forever and ever.” (Exodus 15:15–18)

 Two days ago, I had no problem with the curves, the too-many to-do items, or believing God was at work. This morning I work up feeling like a grasshopper and wanting to run and hide. Nothing has changed except the way I’m thinking — in fear instead of faith. The task is the same and so is the God who entrusted me with it. Like the children of Israel, do I really want to wander in the wilderness or go at this with confidence?

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. (1 Chronicles 29:11)

I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2)

Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)

For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20–21)

This last passage is revealing. It reminds me to watch out for a “little fox” that tends to mess me up — whenever God does amazing things, it is for His glory. If I get even the tiniest notion “that it will be glory for me” then He stops working on the ‘amazing things’ and puts His focus on my self-centered attitude with determination to change it to what it should be.

PRAY: Jesus, this task was Your idea and You are making it happen. I need to back off and have no thoughts of any sort of personal gain or fame from it, not even the glory that “oh, she trusts God” or anything else that puts the focus on me. Again, I’m my own worst enemy, foolishly trying to make a giant out of a grasshopper instead of looking to You — the One greater than any adversity or bad attitude.