Our lawn care team discovered a cavernous sink hole in our backyard two days after Christmas. When they first communicated it to us, my husband assumed it was a spot near the back gate that he’s been watching for the past year. He stepped into a hole while carrying a boat battery across the yard and wrenched his ankle. He marked it with a stake and poured a fifty pound bag of sand into it, leveling it up with the surrounding sod. Over the intervening weeks, the sand has all but disappeared and the hole returned so when he got the message about the sink hole, of course this was his first thought. In fact, this is a much larger hole on the opposite side of the yard.
I’ve watched my grandkids run headlong over that ground hundreds of times. In fact, I’ve chased after them many times, unaware of the peril just inches below the surface. I stood at the kitchen window as my husband and son chased one of our younger grands nearly across that very spot just one day earlier as he was learning to control his new ride on toy. Our Great Danes frolicked there in their playful years and I even walked thousands of laps over the weak spot during and after my cancer treatments in an effort to prevent blood clots in my legs. You cannot convince me that God is not watchful in the care and keeping of His children.
How many near misses have you experienced in your lifetime? How often have you said in hindsight, “That could have been me?” When was the last time you thanked God for His hand of mercy upon you? I guarantee if you thanked Him every morning and every evening of your lifetime, you would hardly touch the number of times He has ordered your steps in such as way as to preserve your life, your reputation, your dignity, or your peace. Jesus said, “Acknowledge Me before men,” but how many opportunities do we forego by saying, “I was thinking,” or, “This just popped into my mind,” or still yet, “I have an idea.” Our modern vernacular does not accommodate acknowledging God in our daily lives.
A handwritten notation in a journal from twenty or so years ago reminded me of a book I planned to write. God Speak was my intended title. I had scribbled enough words to get the gist of my thoughts from that moment but not nearly enough to remember the set of circumstances surrounding my entry. Moses being sent to speak to Pharaoh was central to my understanding but I had included other examples. Thinking back, my own children would have been in their tweens and early teens and I feel sure I assumed a day would come sooner than later when I would have more time to flesh out an outline.
Fast forward two decades before rediscovering one of the few journals not destroyed by water damage from a roof leak in a house we rented while we were building and you will find me here, trying to reconstruct what God was teaching me shortly after the turn of the last century which should have caused a technological crash bigger than wall street. What I’ve determined thus far is that I plan to focus on normalizing giving God His due over the coming year and not just here in this virtual space but in real time during everyday conversations. What better place to begin than communicating to everyone aware of or involved in the process of repairing the sink hole in my yard how very grateful I am to God that no one was injured before it was discovered, including our yard guys, and how they are helping us to be obedient to God’s command to steward our little patch of earth well.
Wind and water are incredibly powerful forces of nature as we have seen in recent years. The typical temperature fluctuations in our southern states have varied wildly since Christmas. We have temperatures in the high seventies one day and lows in the twenties and highs in the forties the next. High winds precipitate each temperature change. We constantly underestimate what the forces of nature are capable of individually but combined, they can bring large scale destruction in an instant. Still they are no match for their Creator. They are not autonomous. They are merely evidence of an unearthly Force, answerable to One who is their Commander in chief.
The Lord spoke to Job out of the storm.
“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, ‘This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt’?”
Job 38:8-11 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/job.38.11.NIV
“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail, which I reserve for times of trouble, for days of war and battle?
What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth?
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass?
Does the rain have a father?
Who fathers the drops of dew?
From whose womb comes the ice?
Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, when the surface of the deep is frozen?
Can you raise your voice to the clouds and cover yourself with a flood of water?
Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?
Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’?
Who has the wisdom to count the clouds?
Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together?”
Job 38:22-30, 34-35, 37-38 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/job.38.22-38.NIV
Jesus proved that He was God incarnate as He walked on water and commanded the wind and waves of the storm tossed sea to cease and they immediately obeyed.
“When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.
Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him.
Suddenly a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat.
But Jesus was sleeping.
The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!”
He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?”
Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.
The men were amazed and asked, “What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!””
Matthew 8:18, 23-27 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/mat.8.18-27.NIV
While talking with Nicodemus, Jesus compared God’s spirit to wind and speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well He points to Himself as the source of Living Water. (John 3:8, John 4:13-14)
“Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.
Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”
John 7:38-39 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.7.38-39.NIV
Christ followers since Pentecost receive the gift of God’s indwelling Holy Spirit at the moment of belief. We do not control God’s Spirit. By His grace and mercy, we become vessels capable of bearing the Living Water that is Christ. We are able to safely carry the flame which lights the darkness without being consumed.
“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
2 Corinthians 4:6-7 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/2co.4.7.NIV
When I meet someone and realize we already have a friend in common, I’m quick to praise the person to my new acquaintance. Within the body of Christ, the Church, this is common. The Spirit by which we cry Abba, Father testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. (Romans 8:15-16) We feel an instant kinship in Christ with one another, that unity for which Jesus prayed as we abide in Him. In this world, we should be just as quick to praise Him as our Sovereign, our Provider, our Savior, and Friend to anyone we meet. We need a new vocabulary for this, one that is readily available in God’s Word.
“Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story— those he redeemed from the hand of the foe,”
Psalms 107:2 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/psa.107.2.NIV
Plagues God sent on Egypt were meant to remind God’s people Who alone controls the elements. It was not the various deities invented to honor the sun, moon, and stars or Pharaoh himself. One day even the elements will melt in the heat of God’s all-consuming fire. “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.”
2 Peter 3:10 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/2pe.3.10.NIV
God’s children need not fear that day. “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.”
2 Peter 3:13 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/2pe.3.13.NIV
“Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?
You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed it’s coming.
So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position.
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.”
2 Peter 3:11-12, 14, 17-18 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/2pe.3.11-18.NIV
Acknowledge God at every opportunity. His name is so often profaned in my hearing. My words may not be able to neutralize the curses. God will do that in His way and in His time. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ given to John on the isle of Patmos, those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the Word of their testimony. John, under inspiration of the Spirit of God, called Jesus the Word of God.
Jesus taught, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.”
John 15:7-8, 16 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.15.7-16.NIV
To that end, Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.
(Sanctify them to live in accordance with the truth.)
My prayer is not for them alone.
I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
John 17:17, 20-21 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/jhn.17.17-21.NIV
“Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.
They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”
Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.”
Revelation 12:10-12, 17 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/rev.12.11-17.NIV
“Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed.
They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven.
Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.
The upright see and rejoice, but all the wicked shut their mouths.
Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord.”
Psalms 107:23-31, 42-43 NIV
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