Michael Kelley's Blog, page 44

Why “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” is the Best Advice During Difficulty

Helen Howarth Lemmel wrote the lyrics to “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” in 1922. She loved music her entire life and even studies vocal music in Germany for a time. But by the time she was 55, she had become blind, been abandoned by her wealthy husband, and suffered various other tribulations. And that’s when she came across a little tract that deeply impressed her. The pamphlet read:

“So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”

And Helen Lemmel responded with a song:

O soul are you weary and troubled
No light in the darkness you see
There’s light for a look at the Savior
And life more abundant and freeTurn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace

It’s a wonderful song, but it’s even better counsel. It is, in fact, very counsel we could receive during times of difficulty. During those days – during dark days – we will find that our feelings are spiraling out of control. And it’s during days like that which we must remember that even when we can’t make ourselves feel better, we can always control where our focus is. We can’t control how we feel but we can always control where we’re looking. And where we’re looking is actually more important than what we are feeling. Here’s why:

We cannot trust our feelings to tell us the truth:

The heart is more deceitful than anything else,
and incurable—who can understand it? (Jer. 17:9). 

This is indeed an uncomfortable truth. It’s a decidedly different truth than the version of truth we find anywhere else in the world. While movies, Hollywood, and self-help gurus will tell us to follow our own hearts, the Bible says we should follow Jesus. While the world tells us that the source of truth is within us, the Bible tells us that our hearts are liars. While the world says that we can’t go wrong if we trust in ourselves, the Bible tells us that a sure way to go off track is to trust our own feelings.

Think about it personally. What do you feel right now? Do you feel hopeful? Sad? Happy? Excited? And now ask yourself whether you decided to feel that way. Probably not. Instead, you just feel what you feel at a given moment. Sometimes it’s motivated by the circumstances around you. Sometimes there is no valid reason for those feelings at all. But in the end, you feel what you feel. We all do.

You can’t control what you feel. But you can control what you look at.

The psalmist was one who recognized this:

I will set no worthless thing before my eyes… (Ps. 101:3, NASB).

Now while we might typically think about this verse in terms of something like pornography (which we should), there are all kinds of worthless things we might set before our eyes. But why the resolution not to put anything before his eyes? I mean, it’s only looking, right? Except for the fact that the psalmist knew that where we look determines where we focus. And where we focus often will determine what we value.

By that logic, then, if we are resigned to the fact that we are going to feel what we feel, and that those feelings might not be right, then the most proactive thing we can do is to make sure we are looking at the right thing. To make sure, even in the midst of feeling what we know we should not, that at least our gaze is on the right place.

And so then we turn to the New Testament, where we find that which ought to be ever before us. That which, if our focus is right, will determine the way we should go and what we should value:

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb. 12:1-2).

Christian, you may or may not be feeling rightly today. Regardless, make sure you are “looking” rightly. No matter what you’re feeling, turn your eyes upon Jesus. And find that those things of earth which might be making you feel this way or that will slowly but surely grow strangely dim.

This post originally appeared at Think Eternity.

Lord, Forgive Us for Making Life so Complicated

The story goes that Charles Spurgeon, on his deathbed, said to some of his final visitors, “As time has passed on, my theology has grown more and more simple. It is simply this, ‘Jesus loves me!”’

I love that. I love it not only because it’s true, but because it is so blissfully simple.

Thomas Kelly, the Quaker educator, once said that God “never guides us into an intolerable of panting feverishness.” Regardless of what we might think of the rest of his writing, I think he was onto something here. To reinterpret Kelly’s words, life with God and through Jesus is not meant to be complex. There is a blessed kind of simplicity for the Christian who is convinced of the providential love of God in Christ. You find glimpses of this kind of simplicity expressed in Scriptures like Psalm 27:4:

I have asked one thing from the Lord;
it is what I desire:
to dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
gazing on the beauty of the Lord
and seeking him in his temple.

Don’t you long for that? In an age of seemingly endless complexity, to live simply in mind and heart? To not wake up with a thousand different things running through your mind? To be able to sleep soundly knowing that your heavenly Father never does? To know that God is for you in Christ, and because He is, you do not make it your business to, as Kelly said, pant feverishly through life.

The pursuit of simplicity starts, and ends, with the gospel. Unless we truly know there is nothing left to prove before God, because of the sacrifice of Jesus, then we will spend our lives in an endless pursuit of self-justification. Unless we know that God has fully loved us in Jesus, then we will spend our lives endlessly seeking to create our own opportunities for safety and advancement.

Unless we know that God is reigning over the affairs of the universe, no matter what our senses might tell us, then we will wring our hands in anxiety and worry.In the gospel, then, God guides us into simplicity. But we don’t only have the doorway to simplicity through the gospel; we have the example of true simplicity from Jesus Himself. Jesus, I think, made it His practice to simplify many things for His followers.

He simplified prayer for the disciples in Luke 11 when they observed His habit, again, of praying to the Father. So they asked Him to teach them. Perhaps they might have thought that Jesus would launch into a complex system of ritualistic rites, or at least that He would begin “session 1” of a 4-part lecture series on the mode and method of prayer. Instead, He gave them a very simple pattern to follow.

Or another moment when Jesus was confronted with the overly complex system of the law that had been added to and amended for hundreds of years. When asked about the greatest commandment of the multitude that ran through the minds of every devout Jew, He responded not only with the greatest command, but also simply summed up the entire law in a few sentences:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands” (Matt. 22:37-39).

Or the time when Jesus summed up the many complexities that add anxiety to our days. We worry about our future, our money, our clothes, our retirement, and Jesus nut-shelled the issues together again:

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you” (Matt. 6:33).

This is all part of the good news of Jesus’ kingdom. It’s that we don’t have to be crushed by the complexities of the day. Indeed, part of following Jesus is actually returning again and again to the simple. Thank the Lord for that. Thank the Lord that life does not actually have to be as complicated as we seem to make it. That in reality, there are only a few things that we must know. There are just a few things that guide everything else. There are only a few things that we should – and even that we can – return to over and over again, chief among them is this:

This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them (1 Tim. 1:15).

If you are feeling pressed in on by the complexity of the world today, come back again to what you know is true.

And breathe.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. Fatherhood for Imperfect Dads

Loved and identified with this article, as fatherhood is simultaneously so gratifying and humbling.

2. Disagreeing Without Tearing Each Other Down

Some good rules of thumb here, especially for the current moment when disagreement seems to be synonymous with hatred.

3. Freedom from the Tyranny of “Success”

A great reminder that true “success” is faithfulness – embracing and obediently using what you’ve been given.

4. The Raiders of the Lost Ark Boulder Chase

It was more real than you think.

Time Doesn’t Have to Be Your Opponent

Time waits for no man. No matter what you do, it keeps on ticking away. In fact, you and I both are closer to death than we were whenever you started reading this post. And now you are closer than you were then. Our lives are stamped with an unknown expiration date, and though we don’t know when that date it, we can be sure that it is looming ever closer.

For centuries, this reality has been the enemy of the Christian and the non-Christian alike. Just take a look around and you’ll see the war being waged against time everywhere from the office of the plastic surgeon to the parents who silently weep over the childhood pictures of their kids who seem to be growing up far too fast to the office worker who daily turns around and wonders where the day went and how they can possibly complete the list of tasks on their to-do list.

Tick tock; tick tock. Time keeps on slipping away, and it will continue to do so no matter how hard we fight.

But for the Christian, time doesn’t have to be the opponent; in fact, time is actually a powerful ally. This realignment of thinking happens when we begin to consider the long road of discipleship. And it is indeed a long road.

For anyone who has seriously looked deep into the recesses of their heart, they will know that some disturbing things lie there. Deceit, greed, doubt, fear – all of these things still lurk inside those who are following Jesus. And because they do, we might be tempted to despair. Why, we might ask ourselves, do we still struggle with temptation? Why are we still so selfish? Why do we still feel the need to justify ourselves day in and day out to those around us? Why, especially if we have been made alive with Christ? It might seem, in these moments, that we should be passed these things by now.

But we are not. And because we are not, we recognize that though we might have come a mighty long way with Jesus, there is still far to go. Much sin to be uprooted; many false beliefs to be confronted. This is the point when we can cease to see time as our opponent and start to see it as our powerful ally.

We can do so because God is not in a hurry.

The process of discipleship is a long one; it’s slow and methodical rather than instantaneous. It’s a lifetime’s worth of taking a step forward only to realize that step was made purely by the grace of God and thank God it was, for there are many, many steps to go.

It’s in this moment when you look at that clock, that old opponent, and realize that on this road, it’s your friend. Time is a tool in the hand of God to bring us, slowly, step by step, to the people He wants us to be.

2 Ways We Fail to Keep in Step with the Spirit

When the Bible talks about how we are to live in relationship with God, it consistently uses one word:

Walk.

Consider, for example, Micah 6:8:

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Or consider the book of Ephesians, where Paul uses the word 6 times to describe how a Christ-follower is supposed to live with Jesus: “Walk worthy. Walk in love. Walk in good works.”

Or the very intriguing usage of the word comes in Genesis 5:21 about a curious character we know very little about:

“When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. And after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived 365 years. Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.”

And then there is Galatians 5 which has quite a bit to say about walking, particularly walking in and with the Spirit of God. In this section of the letter, Paul is contrasting life in the Spirit with life lived in slavery to the flesh. It’s here that we get the well known verses regarding the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And it’s here in which Paul says that we should “walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal. 5:16).

Simple enough, right? We live our lives in motion, and as such, we should make sure we are walking in the way of truth and light – that of the Spirit of God. In walking forward on that path and with that constant companion, we will indeed not divert our path into the byways of the flesh.

And then he goes on with another walking reference:

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25).

It’s that particular wording that is interesting to me. Not only are we to walk by the Spirit, but we are to keep in step with the Spirit. Keeping in step with the Spirit assumes that we are living by the Spirit. It would stand to reason, then, that when we are living by the Spirit there might be times when we are not necessarily “in step” with the Spirit. In other words, and in using the metaphor of walking, it might be that our pace might vary from the Spirit’s pace in one of two ways:

1. We might walk too slowly and fall behind in laziness.

This is an easy mistake to make. We start falling behind when we assume that a life of faith is a life of passivity. That faith looks like just waiting around for God to bring the opportunities for His glory right into our path. If we adopt that posture, we might well fall behind the Spirit, for the life of faith is not stationary; rather, it’s a bold march forward assuming that as we walk with Jesus in His will and Word we will come across gospel-laiden opportunities as we are in motion.

In other words, we are meant to walk in God’s revealed will rather than be paralyzed in inactivity because of fear, doubt, or something else. We know more than enough of what life with Jesus looks like to keep going.

2. We might walk too quickly and run ahead in presumption.

But we might not only get out of step by walking too slowly; we might also get out of step by charging ahead. We do this when we assume we know what is best, what way is right, and what must be done. We can easily get out of step when we take matters into our own hands because, seeing a situation in front of us, we determine what action ought to be taken. Here, too, we are out of step, and here, too, we are on dangerous ground.

Keeping in step means avoiding the twin, but opposite pitfalls of laziness and presumption, and the answer to both is walking in faith. It’s faith that we are not walking aimlessly, nor are we walking alone. Instead, we are walking in step with the One who knows and will show us the way in the right time.

Why “When is Jesus Coming Back?” is the Wrong Question to Ask

Christians believe that Jesus has already come. But we also believe that Jesus is coming back. And for as long as people have named the name of Jesus, the question of when Jesus is coming back has been debated and speculated on.

And though it might be interesting to speculate on the answer, perhaps the question of the specific time of his return is actually the wrong question to ask. Here’s a little illustration to help understand why:

The best $7.99 I’ve spent in the last three years was adding a pretty extensive (and expensive, as far as apps go) weather app to my phone. It’s very cool. And just so you know I’m serious, I’ll say it again: It’s very cool (pay no attention to what my wife says regarding this issue).

While you can use it to get all kinds of maps and track all kinds of storms, the thing I love most about it is the way it alerts me if severe weather is coming. You can set static locations, like home and work, and any time a storm is moving toward those locations, I get an alert. But it also has a “follow me” feature on it which, when you enable it, will alert you to severe weather when it is moving toward your current location no matter where you are. I could be in Colorado and get an alert about weather moving toward our home in Tennessee. Or I could be driving through south Texas and get an alert about a storm that’s currently in my path.

What is the alert? Glad you asked. It’s a truly obnoxious sound that’s impossible to ignore – just the way I like it. That means my days of staying up all night watching for any approaching tornadoes are over. I know that my phone is going to scare me half to death at 3 am if indeed I need to know something dangerous is coming our way. I don’t have to constantly be thinking about the weather because the app will alert me when I need to pay attention.

In other words, I don’t have to BE alert, because I know that something will ALERT me.

But while this is great when it comes to weather, it’s actually sort of the opposite kind of posture we are to have as it pertains to Jesus coming back. Because while we believe Jesus will return, we do not know when that will happen. In fact, Jesus Himself doesn’t know when it will happen:

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matt. 24:36).

It could be today. Like now. Or now. Or now. Or maybe tomorrow. Because we don’t know, we can’t wait to be alerted; we have to live alertly. That’s kind of the point.

After a series of parables, all centering on the return of Jesus and the proper and improper ways to prepare, Jesus summarized it like this in Matthew 24:42:

“Therefore be alert, since you don’t know what day[s] your Lord is coming.”

This constant state of awareness of Jesus’ return is why the wrong question to ask is, “When is Jesus coming back?”

When we focus on that exact time, that exact moment, we rob ourselves of the kind of vigilance that God desires we live with.

Think about it in terms of other areas of life. When we have a fixed deadline, there is something inside of us that tends to procrastinate. To put off work that must be done until that deadline gets closer. To breathe easily because we know we have time to spare.

Seen through that lens, it makes sense why the wrong question for us is, “When is Jesus coming back?” It’s wrong because there is work to be done today. Good to be done today. The gospel to be shared today. A Christian ought to live with a sense of urgency precisely because we don’t know when Jesus is coming back.

No, the exact moment of Jesus’ return isn’t the question we should be asking. The question we should be asking instead is something like this:

“How does the eminent return of Jesus change my priorities right now?”

That’s the question of vigilance. It’s a question of alertness that doesn’t wait to be alerted.

—

This article was originally posted at Think Eternity.

Wednesday Links

Four links to some things you might have missed, or at least ones that caught my attention this past week:

1. When God Interrupts Our Productivity

Such a great reminder to all of us who live by to-do lists. God is not bound by them.

2. Help! I’m Afraid I Made the Wrong Decision!

We can trust God to work good through our past decisions, whether we determine them to be right or wrong.

3. Two Reasons Why Listening is Important

It’s not just for the sake of the person we are listening to; it’s actually for our own sanctification.

4. How Big was the Tonga Eruption?

I know this was several weeks ago, but the images here are staggering.

2 Steps to Take When God is Not Bound by Your To-Do List

I like to get things done. You probably do, too.

Perhaps, if you’re like me, you like to get things done so much that you approach every day of the week with a list of tasks you want to accomplish. And, if in the midst of working through that list you happen to do something that wasn’t on there, you add that item to the bottom for the feeling of accomplishment that comes with marking it off.

Nothing wrong with that. Or at least I don’t think there is. Nothing wrong with organizing your day, working methodically through it, and wanting to have a record at the end of what you were able to get done. In fact, doing so is really an act of stewardship – of trying to make sure you are making the most of the time you have been given. So done in the right spirit, it is actually a very spiritual thing to operate according to agenda items and to-do lists.

Problem is, God is not bound by my to-do list. And following Jesus on a daily basis means holding that to-do list very, very loosely.

Take a single chapter of Scripture from the gospels like Mark chapter 5 as an example. Jesus and His followers travel across the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Gerasenes. No sooner do they get out of the boat, when they are interrupted by a crazy, unkempt, dangerous, social outcast of a man who lived among the dead.

Jesus has mercy on the man and cast the demons out of him into a nearby herd of pigs, restoring this man to his right mind. Then he’s interrupted again by a crowd of people, begging him to leave their region, so back in the boat they go.

Jesus and His disciples make their landing on the other side of the sea and they are interrupted again by a large crowd of people, presumably seeking His teaching and healing. But before He can begin to minister among them, He’s interrupted again by a synagogue ruler named Jairus who fell at His feet begging that He come with him and heal his daughter.

Jesus agrees and begins to follow the man, when He’s again interrupted by the crowd pressing in on Him, clawing and grabbing, all seeking something from Him. This interruption is interrupted by a single woman who crept up silently behind Jesus and touched the hem of His garment, and she is healed from an affliction that had lasted over a decade. Jesus pauses at this interruption to clarify what had happened, when He’s interrupted again by some from Jairus’ house, giving the terrible news that the little girl had died during all the interruptions.

It’s interruption after interruption after interruption. Interruptions by crowds, by outcasts, by diseases, by grief – always an interruption. And yet nowhere in this passage do we have any indication that Jesus was put off, annoyed, or otherwise inconvenienced by any o these infringements on His personal schedule.

Now you could argue that Jesus was not actually interrupted by these things; these incidents were the whole reason He was there to begin with. He knew they were coming, and these interruptions were actually His to-do list. But what if you were one of the disciples following Him? And what if you had your own to-do list of good, right things? I can imagine that it might be frustrating, just as it still is today.

We have things to do, and we are interrupted by someone in the office. Or an unexpected phone call. Or a request from someone in need. And to tend to all those things requires us to put aside the priorities we’ve already sketched out for ourselves on a daily basis. And in those moments we find that God is not bound by our to-do list; He has His own. And if we are following Jesus, we must die to ourselves which includes our plans of daily accomplishments.

So what do we do with this truth? Do we stop making lists? Do we stop trying to accomplish all that needs to be done every day?

Not at all.

Instead, we do these two things:

1. We remind ourselves that our worth is not in our accomplishments. 

This is, in truth, one of the reasons we are all so committed to our lists. It’s not because of what we get done; it’s because of how they make us feel. Smart. Responsible. Accomplished. Worthy. But the final expression of all those things is not in our ability to get our tasks done, but rather in the fact that Jesus has died for us.

2. We expect interruptions as we build the list.

One of the problems that we, the guild of list-makers, have is that we tend to put too much on our list every day. So what if we started expecting that there would be an unknown opportunity to follow Jesus in compassion, sacrifice, or generosity every day, and we left some room for it instead of jam-packing our schedules? Surely this is an act of faith – it’s proactively planning for good works that God has planned for us ahead of time. We know they will come; we just don’t know exactly what they will be.

So don’t be frustrated, list-makers. Instead, rejoice in the opportunities to follow Jesus in the cracks of your schedule. And plan ahead of time, expecting those opportunities to come.

How Jesus Gets Past a Locked Door

“In the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because of their fear of the Jews. Then Jesus came, stood among them, and said to them, ‘Peace to you!’ ” (John 20:19).

It had been an exhausting roller coaster of emotions. There was the night before it all happened – that night when Jesus’ words hung in the air in a cloud of mystery. “This is My body” He had said. “This is My blood” He had continued. And in that moment, the disciples had the luxury of treating the words of Jesus as pure metaphor as they had before. He had spoken of death and betrayal, but perhaps He was speaking as He had of farmers and seed and planks and weeds up to this point.

But this was no mere metaphor. Just hours later, it had begun. The false accusations and the mob like trial. The rush to crucifixion. The blood and the tears. And they had, to their shame, scattered from His presence just as He said they would. And what now? Not one of them could say for sure. There were the rumors of course – the ravings of from Mary Magdalene about a resurrection. Others, too, claiming that the miraculous had happened. But here they sat – together again. Together with their doubts. Together with their shame. Together with their fears. All but Thomas, having that awkward kind of hushed conversation you have when the tempest of life is waiting for you outside those doors.

Those tightly locked doors.

But then there He was. Jesus. Standing in their midst, proclaiming a message of peace. Peace, not fear. Peace, not anxiety. Peace, not guilt.

“Peace to you,” He had said.

In considering the scene, I have to wonder about the detail of the locked doors.

That’s not to say that a locked door is a problem for the resurrected Son of God – surely it’s not. Surely a latch or bolt is not going to keep out the One who beat down the doors of death. But how did He get past the doors?

Did He float through? Was He some kind of specter – living now in a semi-transparent state – floating around, this place and that? And because He wasn’t really solid, He was able to pass through the locked door without hanging up a stitch of His clothing? That’s a bit like how the greeting card companies would have us think of life after death, isn’t it? That it’s an existence where it’s all misty and hazy, everything is in slow motion, where you lazily drift from cloud to cloud, and everyone wears diapers? That it’s almost like a dream or an LSD-induced vision. That everything in that existence is ethereal; nothing is tangible.

Perhaps.

But then again…

Perhaps it’s just the opposite. Perhaps the realm of heaven is more real, not less real, than the one we are in now. Perhaps the rocks in heaven might be harder than rocks on earth. Colors are more vivid than we see now. Water is more liquid-y than it is now. In that existence, stuff is more real than what we know to be real now.

If that’s true, then Jesus, in His post-resurrection state, had become the very definition of reality. He was more solid, more real, than any other human being. If that’s true, then it was not Jesus who was so hazy that He could pass through the door; it was the door that had become hazy. It was transparent. It was cloudy and without definition.

Peace indeed. Peace in knowing that the next world is more real than this one. Peace in knowing that the stuff of this life will fade to vapor in light of eternity. And peace in knowing that the resurrected Son of God lives still in that realm and is ready to welcome us there, too. To the life we have been prepared for. To the true life. To the realest of the real.

Beware Taking Matters Into Your Own Hands

There is a regular trap I fall into as a homeowner. Something will break, wear out, or become damaged and I will take a look and then nod my head in resolution. Under my breath, I’ll say something like, “I’ll take care of this myself.” It hardly ever works out the way I intend.

I have lumpy drywall repair jobs, badly swinging screen doors, and half-done leaf raking jobs as witnesses to what I am and am not capable of on my own. It’s actually not that big of a deal; I learn a little something with each attempt, and my family indulges these ventures into the unknown with good-natured humor. Mostly. So my disposition toward trying this stuff is likely not to change in the future.

When it comes to your home, or your car, or your whatever, it’s fine to take matters into your own hands. You roll the dice on your own ability and accept the coming result. But then there are other times when it’s very much not fine to do that. Saul, the first king of Israel, is a case study in this respect.

Despite having all the promise in the world – he looked like a king, sounded like a king, commanded like a king – the reign of Saul was marked with impatience. Time after time, when he should have exercised restraint he instead charged forward. When he should have exercised faith, he took matters into his own hands. And in 1 Samuel 13, the Lord had enough:

“You have done a foolish thing,” Samuel said. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command” (1 Sam. 13:13-14).

So what had he done? What action had Saul taken that would result in the stripping of the kingdom from him and his family? He took matters into his own hands instead of waiting on the Lord.

The Israelites were outnumbered at Gilgal by the Philistines, and panic was running through the camp. Rather than standing in faith, the soldiers were running and hiding in caves, among the rocks, and in pits and cisterns. It was chaos, and Saul was acutely aware of how out of control the situation was becoming.

Samuel the prophet had told Saul to wait there for seven days, which Saul did. Samuel said that he would be there to offer sacrifices at the end of that time, but when the seventh day came and went and Saul saw that the men were deserting, he decided it was foolish to wait any more. So he took matters into his own hands. He offered the sacrifice himself, assuming that doing so would bring a victory from the Lord.

And while the smoke was still rising from the fires, Samuel approached.

Now you could argue that Saul had done the prudent thing. After all, something had to be done, didn’t it? They couldn’t just continue to stand there. And Samuel did not actually come when he said he would. And the whole army was becoming anxious. And, and, and, and…

It could go on forever. The bottom line, though is this: Saul had a command from the Lord, and rather than obeying what he knew was true he decided to go another way. Rather than leaving things in the hands of the Lord he took them back himself.

Now surely we can relate to this, can’t we? Surely there have been times when it felt like your life was in chaos. That something had to be done. That you couldn’t just continue to wait on the Lord. That it was not only the right thing, but the responsible thing to take matters into your own hands. It’s that inner voice that tells you that action must be taken. But here is what we tend to forget during those times:

Waiting on the Lord is not passive. When we are waiting on the Lord, there is plenty to keep us busy. We have an entire book riddled with the will of God to be busy about. Just because we are waiting on the Lord for one thing does not mean that we have pushed pause on everything else he has told us to do. No, we keep going in what we know until God brings about what we don’t know.

Waiting on the Lord is not a posture of laziness or inactivity; it’s an exhortation to not overestimate what we are either capable of or even supposed to be doing. Friends, if it feels like things are spinning out of control today, beware of taking matters into your own hands. Instead, walk with Jesus in what you know to be his will and trust that God will bring about the unknown in his time.