Jana Spicka and Women Getting Real Ministries
Posts tagged trust
He is Able, But Is He Willing?
Feb 23rd
Ever have those days that you don’t dare say, “What else can go wrong?” because you are so afraid that it WILL?
Yes? Welcome to my world.
When it gets frantic, I notice that I want to “do” a lot of things to make myself feel better. Clean. Get angry. Fix it. Yell at it. Run away. And my personal favorite, blame, blame, blame.
So I go to my bathroom to vent, and I find I am mostly mad at God. What on earth has He done, you ask? Well that is why I am mad. To me, it looks like He is not doing anything, because my circumstances are getting worse, not better. And you know as well as I do that He has the power to help me. So when He does not, or at least does not on my time table, I accuse Him of not caring about me.
Then I hear my friend Kristen talking about “striving with my Maker.” When I am fighting God, I am fighting for control, or afraid that He will kill me with His driving. So I reach over and grab the wheel. Not smart. I hear the words of a song, “when fears are stilled and strivings cease…”
And His Spirit reminds me of the verse from the weekend that He made come alive. “For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ” Matthew 6:32
Why do I flip out about bills, and trip expenses, and groceries, and all the other things? Why do I run after them as if I am all alone and it is all on me to make this happen?
My Heavenly Father knows I need them. He doesn’t just know. He knows I need. And He really does care.
I don’t have to run after those things, I just have to run to Him, with faith, believing He knows and He is willing.
A Little More Elijah: The Showdown
Feb 8th
I have a couple of more thoughts about Elijah. Hopefully they will hit you like they hit me. There are four parts to his story that sound a lot like yours and mine. I call them: The Showdown, Running on Empty, The Cave, The Helper. We’ll be looking at these over the next few days.
Last week we talked about God teaching Elijah (and us) to focus on His daily care and provision. And we noted that the private encounters with God prepare, equip, and deposit truth BEFORE the public encounters. We often get that out of order. We go out into the world and ask questions: How am I doing? Does anyone like me? Am I succeeding?
But those questions for Elijah were answered before he went out. At the brook it was just Elijah and God. Then it was Elijah at the widow’s home. Then it was the showdown of taking on the 400 prophets serving Baal. Elijah may have been scared, but he moved in the power of the Spirit – in the faith that God had poured in, refined and tested in much quieter settings.
I know that God is up to something big when He hems me in for sitting, resting, hearing. I know that He wants me to “get” something about Him. He wants me to discover a facet of Him I didn’t know before. But as we go to new places, He always reviews core issues. He alone is God, He alone is truth. I can do nothing apart from Him. And my heart must be connected to His heart before I DO one thing. They don’t call him a “jealous God” for nothing.
God knows how to keep the main thing, the main thing. And it ain’t working for Him. It is loving Him and being loved by Him.
Have you got a showdown coming? Then get quiet. Allow God to speak His truth over you and in you. Let Him remind you that whomever, whatever you’re facing, that Thing has to face You and God as a team. Wow. Talk about offense.
Here is another thing about Elijah’s Showdown. The prophets and Elijah were to both build an altar and sacrifice a bull. They were to call on their respective god, Baal or Jehovah. And the god that answered by fire was the one true living God.
The prophets of Baal shouted and danced around for hours. Then they began to slash their bodies so that blood flowed. To no avail. Don’t miss this picture. You can shed your own blood before a deaf and mute god (read: addiction, habit, fear, false god) but nothing will change. Nothing will burn up that offering.
Or you can follow Elijah. Elijah poured water, and more water on the altar. Twelve jars of water. One for each tribe. Elijah stacked the deck and made it so clear that God and only God could receive any glory for the fire. But I also love the picture of “washing.” The way we enter into the power of God is not by our own fleshly expressions of sacrifice. We enter by letting God wash us.
Our false gods (addictions, past, fears, etc.) will demand more and more of our very lives, our blood, but they have no power. We need the water and fire to be in the presence of the living God. And why did Elijah ask God to show up in this crazy way? ”Answer me, O Lord answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again.” Not your effort, but His effort to restore, heal and renew.
May the Lord speak truth in your secret places today. May He wash you. And may He pour down fire from heaven for His glory and your faith.
Yes! And Amen!
Feb 5th
“For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”
2 Corinthians 1:20 New King James Version
Been thinking all day about God being a dreamer. And there is an old saying, “Are you a dreamer or a doer?” And when I think about God, the answer is “Yes.”
He is both. Why would He do that? Because He is both love and power. Truth IN action. Here is another sage comment: Lovers do what dreamers only dream about. Is God a lover or a dreamer? Again, He is “yes and amen.”
If you think for one minute that God is unable, that means He is weak.
If you think He is unwilling, that means He is mean, harsh or not good.
If you think He is not loving, well, then you have a false god. In Christ, we have all of God. All of Him. He has NOT given us a spirit of fear, but He HAS given us a spirit of power, love and self control. Not we go buy it. We have it.
Just because you don’t get your way, when you want it, how you want it, doesn’t reflect on God’s character. It does however, reflect on yours.
Reflect. Odd choice of word there. Reflect means:
To manifest or bring back;
To chew over: reflect deeply on a subject
To be bright by reflecting or casting light
To show an image of
To give evidence of a certain behavior
I don’t say this to create false guilt or condemnation, but to prompt us to look at what we’re reflecting. Lack of confidence in God only “reflects” the enemy, but there is a power released in us when we focus on the face of God. What we look at, we reflect. Attention amplifies everything. If you focus on the past, your weaknesses, then that is all your will see in your present and future. If you focus on the sin of others, that is what you will surely see.
But if you look at the heart of God, if you “See” with your spirit His goodness, His smart way of doing things—even when that causes you pain—you find that over time your character is changed into His image. You reflect Him because you are sitting in His light. The only way to bring your world into this Reality, is to Be with a Person.
Just think of the possibilities…If God is a lover and a dreamer, if He is all good and all powerful, who can stand against Him? Think of your biggest fear. Now lay it (him, her, them) down at the feet of this Beautiful, Grace Giving God. How does the fear stack up?
James 4 says, “You have not because because you ask not. And when you ask, you ask with wrong motives.” Wow, maybe that is the source of our messes. We want a magic genie, not a Holy, Transforming, Sovereign Lord.
When I surrender my control, my heart softens so that I can believe God is good and He is good for Me, regardless of the circumstances. Then, over time, I can ask with better motives. Instead of bless me, fix me, fix them, my prayers become “I trust You to take care of me, and I ask for Your best.”
“Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrew 4:16
All of His promises in Christ are Yes and Amen.
Dare to Dream
Feb 4th
If you think about it, God is the most creative, audacious, out there, fearless dreamer around.
Sound crazy? Then you need to get back in your Bible. You need to check out the headlines. You need to let yourself be awed by nature.
But wait, wait. The Bible is old and irrelevant. The headlines are full of mayhem and horror. And nature is on an auto pilot course to destruction.
Maybe. But maybe not.
A dream is a strongly desired goal or ambition. And the thing that most often keeps us from 1) acknowledging our dreams and 2) pursuing them is fear of failure. We have fallen flat one too many times, or had our hands smacked for asking. Somewhere in the living in this world of real life, we have lost connection with our True Life. We have lost permission to know who we really are and what we were really created to do— to achieve, accompish, enjoy, dream.
But if we, in our fallen state, have dreams, or wish we could, then where did we get that? I believe that every aspect of our make up is from God, is in His image. I believe that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit have dreams and desires that They are presently working on.
If God dreams, and I assert that He does, then this opens up a can of heavenly whoopla. This stupifies our frail imaginations because we dream with an excuse in each pocket. We need some card to pull out so we can justify why our dreams drizzled. Not so with God. There is no fear big enough to cause Him to stumble. In fact, His perfect loves drives out, casts out, mutes and silences fear. And since God does not fear and cannot fear, what can thwart His dreams?
You ready? Ask Him what He dreams for you. And then instead of clinging to your shabby little piece of paper with your weaknesses scribbled out and your history of past failures itemized, grab on to His résumé of mind boggling achievements. Past and Present, Now and Then. Was, Is, and Will Be.
I mean really. If nothing and no one can stop His Son from the cross and resurrection, what can stop Him in us doing what He calls forth?
Amen and Amen.
Elijah – Take 3
Feb 3rd
I heard a phrase a long time ago that God brings back to mind often: “When you don’t know what to do, you worship.”
This is the essence of Elijah’s next adventure with God. Elijah called for no rain which produces a draught. God provided for him in the middle of the draught through a remote brook and food from ravens every day. But the brook dried up. So God moved Elijah along on THEIR adventure together. He told Elijah to go to a widow’s home. But when he got there, the woman was preparing her last meal. She and her son only had enough food for one last meal then they would die from starvation because of the draught.
(Talk about economic distress? God has been rescuing people long before today’s health care mess….)
But Elijah called to the woman and told her to bake a cake for him first and to trust God because God was going to give her oil and flour every day until the draught ended.
Have you been there? Totally on empty and someone asks you for a ride? Or trying to scrape things out of the cabinet and someone says they are coming over for dinner? Maybe you are freaking out on how to pay one bill, and you get three more in the mail. Or maybe it’s not money related, but you are already dirt tired, and someone calls in crisis.
For me, God takes me to the very end of my resources, knowledge and strength and says, “Now Jana, let’s begin.” Begin? I feel more like the widow who is ready to lay down and die for lack of expectation that things will change. But oh the beauty of God! It is at the end of me, you, us, that He begins.
The widow had to believe that God was going to show up tomorrow when the cupboards were bare today. Don’t miss the day to day provision of the Lord in the story of Elijah. He depended and trusted and thanked God each day for the raven’s meals. Then he and the widow thanked God each day for the flour and oil. Belief in the little so you can learn to believe in the greater.
Jesus said in Luke 16 that “whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” This applies to money, faith, healing, the spirit, all of the God life. Are you trusting in the little for when you need to trust much?
After some time, the widow’s son died. More than daily bread now, they needed resurrection power. And Elijah and the widow saw God’s power poured out as God raised the son back to life. They went from little to much. Belief in the little, trusted with little so they could learn to believe in the greater, trusted with much.
My last thought for today is this: Are you more like the widow? Or Elijah? Where are you starting from — ready to quit or steadfast expectation?
The good news is, they both grew to believe God in all His goodness. They both learned to worship first before they received. They praised God regardless of the circumstances and saw Him move in their midst.
“Oh, worship the King, all glorious above.
Oh, gratefully sing His power and His love;
Our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,
Pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.”