We have been journeying through The Story and here is one theme in God’s Upper Story that continues to reappear again and again.  God chooses to do the most amazing things using the most unlikeliest of people and situations.  From a slave named Joseph, to an elderly couple, to a man named Moses who could not speak,  to Rebecca, and Ruth a foreigner, and Boaz the son of a prostitute.  It seems that every time the Lower Story which is our story is caught up in drama, and seems stuck in sin God redeems his people using the least likely people to do his work and today’s story about David and Goliath is no different.

Here is the question to ponder as you read chapter 11, or as you read 1 Samuel chapters 16 and 17.

How big is your God?

Another way to think of this is to think about how big your God box is?

How does your understanding of what God can do in your life limit or expand your ability to see the possibilities that exist in the people around you?

Sunday we will see how size matters in the Upper Story but not in the Lower Story.

 

 

I want to welcome you back for this the tenth chapter of The Story, the Bible in a narrative or story format.   We have been journeying through the period of the Judges now for several chapters and if anything is to be said about Israel – God’s chosen people its this “they just don’t seem to get it”.   Six times they are sent a judge to rescue them from oppression and six times they slip back into their sinful ways.  Sadly, we are really no different than Israel, even when we have a leader we often don’t get it. Like Israel we believe that its ok to “bend the rules” to slide in life, as long as no one gets hurt.  Like the Israelites then with their worshiping of Baal, the fertility goddess, we pursue what pleases us and makes us happy harder than we pursue God.

This week we once again find Israel in turmoil their judge Eli has lost his will to guide his family according to God’s law, God then raises up a young boy named Samuel to lead his people and he does that well and yet as he enters retirement Israel  decides that it no longer needs a judge to lead it rather things would be better if they had a king.  After all the nations all around them have kings and they seem to be prospering.  There is some irony in this Israel has God not only that but God communicates with them in person, does miracles on their behalf, speaks to their judges,  and they want to replace Him with a human king.

Sadly, Israel “still doesn’t get it”, and 2000+ years later I wonder if we “get it”. How easy is it for us to replace God in our lives with idols, hobbies, work, kids, stuff,……  How easy is it for us to, like Israel look out over the neighborhood and begin to think “if only I had a ____________ then I’d be happy.”  How easy is it to become distracted and take our eyes off of Jesus and begin to focus on other things in life.

Israel wanted to be in control of their destiny and they thought that choosing a king would allow them to be like all their neighbors, strong and prosperous.   Saul looked good on the outside, and yet he failed miserably as a king because he chose not to follow God’s instructions.    Likewise when we choose to have someone or something other than God sit on the throne of our life we will like Saul will fall and fall hard in life and in relationships.  Key to life is making our relationship with God the focus of each day. As Saul found out this relationship with God is not one we can maintain on our own we need God and the body of Christ – the church to hold us accountable.  Like Israel and like Saul we often don’t want to listen and follow what God wants us to do.

When do you find it hard to obey and follow God’s call on your life?

This first question raises the next which is; ” Who sits in the drivers seat of your life?”

Lastly, do you ever like Israel find yourself making choices that pull you away from your relationship with God and with the church?

What is one way you can choose to place God squarely in the drivers seat of your life?

What is one way you can help the people of God – the church to stay focused on Jesus Christ and to live out his call on our lives to Love God and to Love our neighbor  so that the lost might be found?

 

We have been journeying with Moses in the wilderness, Joshua has just guided the nation of Israel into the Promise Land, and all in all it would seem like The Story is finally getting back on track after originally derailing in the garden of Eden.  Yet that is not the case, it seems that the Israelites just cannot win at life.  Just as with the golden calf they no sooner get on the God given pathway than they think they see a better way and take wrong path.  The Lower Story is that the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence, the Canaanites lives look so much better and the Israelites stop following God and fall into sin, and yet isn’t that a statement about our lives as well.  We want to do what is right in God’s eyes, but we struggle to do so.

Chapter 8 in The Story is all about the time of judges in the Bible.  A time when Israel would sin, fall into bondage, repent and cry out to God, and God would hear their cries and deliver them through the guidance of eleven judges.   Judges that ironically came not to put them into jail but to instead release them from jail.  This was their story and yet it is still our story.  The Lower story is one of human rebellion  against God’s provision in our lives, and the Upper story is God’s willingness to always save us when we are willing to cry out and confess our sins.

The truth is we need God all the time not just when we are  in desperate need and God wants to walk with us each and every day.  The challenge is setting aside all of our wants, all of the cultural expectations that we face each day and trying to live each day God’s way.

In what ways are you living your life according to your plans and your desires?

Drawing closer to God and God’s plan for your life means spending time with God.

What is the possibility that in the coming week you would began and ended each day with God, both in prayer, simply listening for God, and reading God’s Word?

 

WEEK 6 – The Story

WANDERING:   The place between where we are and where we want to be.  This “In Between” place.  This place between jobs, this place between wanting kids and having that first child, this place between wanting to get married and getting married, this place between wanting to buy a house and having a house, these are all places of uncertaintly, of waiting and waiting can be uncomfortable.  In a world that tends to be all about becoming or going someone or someplace.  We don’t like to be “in between”, we don’t like wandering.  Yet God does some of His most amazing work in this place.    

       This is exactly what the Israelites where doing when they left Egypt  with Moses they were focusing on what they didn’t have, how great life had been, what they wished they had.  Simply put they were WHINING.   They had also lost their ability to see what God was doing in their midst and so they were also WANDERING. 

Instead of giving thanks to God for freeing them from Egypt, from 400 years of bondage, for parting the Red Sea, giving thanks for saving them from pharoah’s army, giving thanks for daily bread(manna), for water.  They find themselves complaining.  They find themsleves wandering in the desert for 40 years until they learn to stop whining , until they learn to place God first in their lives, until they learn to worship God with everything they do and say each day. 

Question:  In what way are your or have your been wandering? 

Do you find yourself whining and complaining and if so what about? Is it about the lack of possessions, work, place of residence, other people, circumstances, expectations, broken dreams?   How did God react to the Israelites complaints? (read chapter 6 or Numbers 11-14)

When you are /were wandering – in that “in between” place did you lose sight of  God’s provision in your life? 

Take Home Thought:  Here is one way to refocus and remain faithful to God worshiping him each and every day.  Begin and end each day by giving thanks to God for something, the food you eat, the roof over your head, the sun, the rain, the everyday ordinary things in life that when we are wandering in the wilderness we take foregranted.

Blessing on your day,  Pastor Steve

The idea of building a nation is truly beyond understanding and to think that God was going to begin with one couple.  On a basic level I can grasp what it takes to building a basketball team, or a football team, players who are willing to commit to the idea of team first, to working hard, to taking care of each other, integrity, character, and a willingness to make sacrifices for the sake and success of the team.  Yet these thoughts are just a small part of what it takes to simply build a successful tea, and God was building a nation. 

God begins with two players, Abraham and Sarah.  Lets face it these two are not exactly who I’d pick to be the lead couple in the next blockbuster movie.  Nor would we pick them to be the next President and first lady, they have a little too much gray hair, and no kids, so hardly the “perfect American family”. 

Why? Why does God choose the unlikeliest of candidates.  We as a nation long for the Kennedy like first couple, and God picks something off of the retread pile, the trash heap and says you will be the beginning of a great nation, your offspring will number more than the stars in the sky.   Why?  Because this incredible story that we are blessed to read, The Bible, is all about God, and what God can do.  If Abram and Sarai had been gifted, athletic, brilliant, picture perfect in every way then this part of the story would have been about them. 

Instead Abraham and Sarah’s story is a story of broken dreams, lost hopes, mistakes, doubt all the things that we to wrestle with.  We doubt whether we are capable of doing things, we come with our brokeness, and we beleive that someone is better suited than us.  God reminds us that we all have a part to play, that he will do the heavy lifting we just need to trust, to be willing to do the work to which we are called. 

Questions to journal in preparation for Sunday:

1. Abraham was called to do the unexpected to go to an unknown place.  What has God asked you to do recently?  What would it cost you to obey? 

2. What factor does age play in God’s calling?  What about the number of gifts and talents that you possess?   Consider whether you feel too old or too young.   What would it take for you to put away your personal feelings of inadequacy and simply follow, simply trust like Abraham? 

Lord I pray that Iwould not myself and those around meas to old or too young, underqualified, or overqualified instead may we together say yes Lord, here I am Lord and go strusting in your provision for the journey.  In Jesus name, Amen.