What We Reach For in Life - Matters

 

There are two woman who reach for something.  Life happened, choices were made and the results were two completely different outcomes.

The first woman is Eve.  Eve, perfect, never knowing evil, only good and perfect good, was given a new thought, about the fruit on a tree that God had told them not eat.

I am going to give a bit of my introspection... how could Eve really grasp the reality of what Satan was offering her when he encouraged her to eat?  After all she was perfect, had no wrong desires, did not know evil.  She had nothing to compare with what she was about to do.  To her, after the enticing words of the serpent, the fruit looked good to eat and she reached.

She chose to reach.  She reached for what Satan told her God was holding back from her.  She reached for the fruit that looked good to eat.  She reached for something she thought she was lacking.

The other woman, and we don't even know her name, was one who lived with a blood issue for twelve years.  Having this blood hemorrhage would mean she is unclean, continually, all the time.  Which meant she had to stay away from certain places, certain people; she lived life, alone.  She very likely stayed at home and went for water when there would have been no other people besides those who also were unclean.  She stayed home except to search for healing, spending all she had.

As the days slip by, she starts to hear about a man named, Jesus.  She hears about His healings, she hears and somewhere deep inside, she wonders.  She wonders if she has a chance??  We don't have much of where her faith develops, but it does and one day, one day she takes a quiet risk - she goes into the crowd and reaches.

She reaches for Jesus.  She reaches for only the hem of His garment (as some translations say) or His outer garment, thinking if only I can but touch Him I will be healed.  She reaches from behind Him, thinking to then quietly slip away.

Immediately she felt the healing course through her body and also, immediately, Jesus knew.

He turns around and asks, "Who touched Me?"

Now in a crowd, people pushing and shoving, would not Jesus have been touched before?  Yes.  But this time He knew the power within Him, went out. 

The woman, in fear and trembling, came forward.  She took a greater risk and exposed herself.  People knew her story and now she tells Jesus all of it.

And His words to her, "Your faith has made you well", changed her life in deeper ways than even the physical healing she received that day.

Faith.  Faith is believing, reaching for Jesus in our darkness, in the hard of our stories; and believing He is the One who heals.

For her, her issue was healed; but she received a full and complete healing because of her faith.

We can come to Jesus for our physical healing and He often heals.  But the deeper healing comes through our faith.  Our faith in Him, whether the physical piece looks like we want it to or not.

Faith heals us deeply.  Faith heals us where it matters most, within our heart and mind.

These two options are still our today... 

When we're sad and darkness overwhelms us,  we can reach for anything to numb our pain.

When temptation knocks on our door, we can open it; hoping to satisfy the restless and longings we may have.

We can reach for the fruit that looks good, wondering what we're missing out on.  We can reach, controlling what we think looks right.  

This reach was a reach that brought death to Adam and Eve.  This reach opened their world to now know the world of good and evil.  This reach still brings death, death to our souls in ways that destroys, steals, and kills God's life within us; His abundant life.

Or.

We can reach for Jesus, believing in faith that He holds the answers we need.  We can reach for Him for the healing we need in the areas that need it the most, our hearts.  

We can reach for grace to say no to temptation and look to the One who gives us His satisfying truth.

We can claim His words of truth as the darkness, fears and sadness threatens to take us down.

This reach brings life.

And so, just like these two women, we too, have a choice to make in our story and the happenings we walk through.  We can reach for what we think looks good and satisfying in the moment or reach out to the One who is Life and Truth and wants to heal us in deep, deep places where only faith can reach.

When The Outcomes Differ and Become Entangled With My View of God

The prayer I've prayed again and again because the one I care about and love matters to me, seems to go unheeded, leaves me wrestling to believe God cares.

The desires that go unfulfilled or are thwarted and I'm left wondering, 'do I matter'?!?

The rejections you and I encounter at times and the once-again pass over we get, leave our hands open and empty and I find I want to clench mine tight.

The disappointments in our circumstances, relationships; leave our hearts in tangled threads as we reach for giving-up and turning away.

When outcomes differs from what I want or even what I thought would happen, what do I do?  Where does this leave me?  What do you do?

When outcomes, even in the good things, the right things, the good desires of my heart, happen differently or nothing happens as it appears to my eyesight; my thoughts become entangled with who God is.  The outcome collides with what I thought would be and the entangling begins.  The questions form... "Where is God? Do I matter? Am I still loved?  Is God still good? Does He care?"

I reckon you experience the same.

This is exactly the place the enemy of our souls wants us to camp in.  He wants us to believe God is selling out on us, that He isn't good.  He delights in nothing more than when we choose to leave, to turn away from the One who loves us deeply.  He wants us to link the outcome of our situation to who God is and declare He isn't good.  Satan is out to destroy God's breath of life within our souls, to kill the belief we have in God.

Habakkuk was at this very place where his outcome wasn't favourable.  And yet.

And that little three-word phrase catches me... "Yet I will."

And yet, he declared God's goodness, disentangling it from the outcome, to still believe in the One who gives us our salvation and the power to live in high places.

Habakkuk 3:17-19 gives us a window into his choice... Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the field produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the field and there be no cattle in the stalls, YET I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.  The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds' feet, and makes me walk on my high places.

Recently I once again found myself needing to disentangle the outcome of my situation from who God is.  I was disappointed with the silent response of my prayer and the thoughts slipped in.  I trusted God.  I knew the angst in my prayer matters to God.  But.  But nothing was changing.  Yes, the outcome different than what I desired.  

Then.  Then, I remembered.  I remembered who I know God to be and realized I was once again linking the outcome with God's love for me.  I was letting the outcome speak to my heart that if my prayer is answered then I am cared for.

I 'saw' God was asking me to trust Him deeper still.  To go beyond the outcome to  believe in His goodness and love alone.  To believe that if the prayer's answer seems silent, I still matter.  If my desires in relationship and for relationship are good and right and yet unmet; I still am loved.

So, I rose up and declared war, leaning towards the One who loves me.  I remembered and chose to believe God's greater Truths, the ones that don't change and I said, "I still believe.  I will still exult the One who gave His life so I could live."  He set me on my high places.  The place above outcomes.  The place where we are loved and simply loved.

When we link the outcome to God we have a hard time staying with Him.  Oh friend, I don't know what leaves your heart with tangled threads and maybe more in a tangled mess; your outcome so very different than your prayer.  But to realize the enemy of our souls wants us to walk away from life and Life itself, we can choose to lean towards God, the One who loves us and still believe.  We will still stay.

If you are wanting to walk away or even have, may I come alongside and whisper, "Take courage, and stay.  Choose to believe God.  Turn around if you must and look up.  Come back."  Shift your focus from the outcome to the One who comes, to the One who came to show us the way, to be with us in the way, so we could find our way.

And so very often the way we think is good is not the way God chooses because we don't see the whole picture.  And so we learn to trust, again and deeper still, to know He is good and we declare it when the prayers go unanswered to the way we see it, when the 'stalls' are empty.  We declare it when the desire to better a relationship doesn't happen, we remain single, the healing doesn't happen like we want, etc.  We declare it when the dreams die or lie buried beneath the dark soil in life.

Yet.  Still.  we believe God.  I believe God.

Still we believe God cares and loves.  I believe He cares and loves.

We have an enemy of our souls but we also have a Keeper of our souls.   Psalm 121:5 says, "The Lord is your keeper" and in verse seven it says, "He will keep your soul".

We cling to God right in the middle of calamity, pain, and bareness.  We stay with God in the middle of empty-ness and questions because in the end He holds all the answers and isn't afraid of our pain. Actually, quite the opposite, He wants to redeem it all, to be with us, to keep us.  And when we walk away from Him, oh, I can only imagine the pain and grief He feels to not be able to give us the life that only He can give.  To take us to those high places.

As I take a moment and look at my own people that I love, my sons, the ones I birthed; when they walk away from me because they don't believe I am for them, it hurts.  When they were little and as they grow, stretching their own wings they so very often don't think I am for them, but I am.

And so I imagine that is only a piece of what God feels.  As our Father, as the One who sent Jesus, His Son to ransom our souls, as the Giver of Life; when we don't trust Him, stay with Him, believe Him still - He is grieved.  He weeps as He wept over Jerusalem, wanting to take them under His wings but they did not want it.

Learning to trust God is not for the faint of heart but for the warrior who rises up and declares that 'God is STILL good! For the one that declares the truths of God is the greatest of all realities and chooses to believe them.'

And we do it again.  Deeper.  Peeling back, disentangling another layer and sinking our roots deeper in the truths of  God.

So, friend, fight.  Fight to believe God.  Fight to stay when you'd rather walk away.  Fight to know God's goodness and the truths He gives us.  And the reality is, maybe your fight is only a shift of focus as you lie on the ground, battered, bleeding, and hurting; and that is courage and that is a warrior of faith and trust.  

Don't walk away from life and Life itself.  Your very breath of life depends on it.

And I too, declare, Yet I will exult God who is my salvation.  Still I will believe God to be good when the outcome is so very different from the way I thought it would be.