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Crowning the Year with Goodness

You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance. Psalm 65:11

In 2017, we celebrated our 25th anniversary. I celebrated a milestone birthday. I released a couple of books. I went on a terrific retreat with my close friends. But I will admit, there were many things about 2017 that I am happy to leave behind me. We bought a car in January to replace the one my daughter rolled over the previous December. We replaced a sewer line. And an air conditioner. And tires. And an air conditioner on that car we bought. I have friends who can recite a much more challenging list of things they faced in the last year. Family tension. Job uncertainty. Profound loss. Maybe you can identify.

The psalmist is likely writing at harvest time, watching as the storehouses are filled with the bounty from the fields. Every year, the farmers plowed and planted, but the rain, the growth, the yield was out of their hands. But not out of God’s sovereign hands. And He capped off the year with provision, with abundance, with goodness.

For the psalmist, God’s goodness was as tangible as the bundles of wheat in the barn. But it’s not always that way. And when we focus only on those tangible things, we risk missing Him entirely. Sometimes the goodness of God is best discerned as His presence, His comfort, and His sustaining grace during those hard times.

Through the valley, through the fire, through the flood.

Valleys, fires, and floods are evidence of a broken world, one in which annoyances, heartbreak, and even tragedy happen to good, innocent people. In the midst of it all, though, is His goodness. His compassions do not fail. They are new every morning.

May you be vividly aware of His crowning goodness in this coming year and may Your paths drip with His abundance.

The Rest of the Story

By Paula

So he said, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life.” 1 Kings 19:10

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah has reached the end of his rope. He was under a death threat from Jezebel. He lived in a culture with total disregard for God and wanton disrespect for His messengers. He felt utterly isolated and exhausted. God tenderly provided for Elijah’s physical needs of food and rest. Then God asked Elijah to stand before him. A great wind, an earthquake, and a fire passed by, but God was not in any of those. Instead, He manifested Himself in a still, small voice. God told Elijah the rest of the story. There were seven thousand in Israel, whose knees have not bowed to Baal. He was not alone. Not only that God was ready to take action.

It is not unusual to turn on the television and come away discouraged. It is easy to read the statistics about Millennials or Generation Y or Z, about trends in morality or thoughts on faith and walk away shaken and dismayed. The kingdom of God seems to be losing ground on every measurable front. Church attendance is down. Religious identification is slipping. Influence is bottoming out. Social scientists regularly discuss the post-Christian West.

Persecution, violence, hatred, conflict, oppression, and despair fill our news feeds to the point where sometimes a “fast” is in order just to prevent a complete overload. And if you don’t happen to be serving in a vibrant, growing community of faith, there is a tendency to weariness and frustration.

But sometimes in the face of all those situations, God shows you the rest of the story.

This past weekend, we took my son on a college visit to a small Bible college. Three hundred other prospective students were there, all of them anxious to embrace the call of God on their lives and eager to gain the necessary knowledge and experience to fulfill that call. They would join a student body of four times that many. And there are colleges like this across the country, full of faithful, energetic young men and women, all dedicated to advancing the kingdom of God. The battle is hardly lost.

When we focus on the wind and the earthquake and the fire … we can miss what God has been quietly doing all along. We can miss the rest of the story.

When Listening to God Is Hard

By Paula

So Moses told the people of Israel what the LORD had said, but they refused to listen anymore. They had become too discouraged by the brutality of their slavery. Exodus 6:9 NLT

I’m sure you’re familiar with the story of Israel’s bondage and deliverance. Moses has made his first appearance because Pharaoh and the response was an intensification of the burden placed on the people. In Exodus 5:22-23, Moses returns to God with questions, nearly accusations. In summary, Moses said, “I did what you said, and things are worse, not better.” God responds with seven amazing promises He had committed Himself to:

“I will bring you out.”
“I will rescue you from bondage.”
“I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.”
“I will take you as My people.”
“I will be your God.”
“I will bring you into the land which I swore to give.”
“I will give it to you as a heritage.”

When Moses relayed God’s message, the people of Israel wouldn’t listen. You can almost hear them- No Moses, we dared to hope things would change and look what happened. It’s worse now. I don’t have the emotional energy to believe anymore. It takes everything I have just to get through each day.

Perhaps we hear them so vividly because we echo them. We sometimes reach the place where, because of the challenges and struggles we face, we no longer hear the promises of God. We bring jaded cynicism with us to worship. We respond to Scripture with doubt and distrust. So how do we get from the place of discouragement to a place of peace and trust?

Remember that Pharaoh determined to set himself in opposition to God’s plan and the freedom of God’s people. We, too, have an enemy who constantly works to frustrate the revealed intentions of God, and who tirelessly works to keep us enslaved, at least emotionally and mentally through discouragement, frustration, and despair.

Remember that God was doing something much bigger than Israel understood. Yes, He was bringing them out of slavery, but He was demonstrating His power over Egypt and their false gods. He was acting out in type, breaking the power of sin over mankind and the finale deliverance Christ would bring. He was revealing to His people truth about His character and His ways. He was teaching them patience and dependence, which is far, far easier said than done. God works in our lives in ways we don’t understand, doing things we haven’t imagined, laying foundations for the future, revealing Himself, teaching us.

Yes, sometimes listening to God is hard, especially when our circumstances fly in the face of His promises. Waiting for Him to act is hard. Not knowing what He’s doing or when He intends to do it is hard. God never denied or minimized the suffering of His people as His plan moved forward. And the time DID come. When the waiting was over, Israel experienced the manifest presence of God and displays of His power in ways that defy description. His words to us are just as certain.

Fire

By Paula

Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire. Its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly. Exodus 19:18

Fire is unlike anything else.

It warms.
Enlightens.
Reveals.
Refines.
Signals.
Shapes.
Purifies.

But fire also destroys.
It devours and it consumes.

Many times in Scripture, God chose to reveal Himself in fire.

He is not through revealing Himself in fire.

What kind of fire will He be?

Shiphrah and Puah

By Paula

Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah: Exodus 1:15

Pharaoh was the most powerful man on earth.
He led the greatest civilization the world had seen.
He ruled an empire.
He conquered his enemies.
His people worshiped him as a god.

But we don’t know his name.
We have some guesses. Some deductions.
But we don’t know.

Shiphrah and Puah were peasants at best.
Slaves more accurately.
They delivered babies.
Pharaoh commanded them to kill the male Hebrew children.
But Pharaoh wasn’t their god.

We know their names.
We know the risk they took.
We know their fear of God.

You see, it is not our position, nor our wealth.
It is not our education or our accomplishments.
What matters, what sets us apart is our fear of God.

New Owner

By Paula

A while back, the house across the street sold, and the new owner spent several evenings and a couple of Saturdays moving stuff in, pitching other stuff to the curb, and redoing the landscaping. I expect he’s painting and reworking some of the insides as well. That’s only right. He bought the house. It’s his to inhabit, rearrange, and redecorate however he chooses. It’s the right of ownership.

Imagine what would happen if the previous owner showed up and started moving stuff back in, or started repainting the kitchen to match what it had been. “I know it’s your house now, but I like it better this way.” That’s crazy, isn’t it?

Now consider this…

Paul says, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

We are not our own. We are bought with a price. And the new owner has some definite ideas about how He wants things arranged in us. The Holy Spirit is constantly at work reshaping, remaking us so that we are more and more like Christ.

It’s our job not to be like a crazy previous owner who tries to move our junk back in, or fights to restore everything to the way it was before He bought us. Trust the new owner. He knows what He’s doing.

Crowning the Year with Goodness

The Rest of the Story

When Listening to God Is Hard

Fire

Shiphrah and Puah

New Owner

Encounters Series

Covenant of Trust Series

Foundations Series