Rachel Miller's Blog, page 6

Moses and the Identity Crisis

This week, I have finally been able to add a little extra treat to my morning quiet times. I’ve been able to get back to work on “Where the Myrrh Grows”. As I’ve been working on it I have been struck by something I had never noticed before.

Moses has been one of my favorite Bible characters for a very long time. His desire to know God has always inspired me to seek to do the same. God honored him as a man of meekness, but He wasn’t always that way.

As I began looking at his days in the wilderness, I had to start at the logical place – the event that led him there. One impulsive act, which to him appeared to be the right thing at the moment, changed his life forever. But as I read over the story, I saw a heart conflict in him that I had never seen before.

Was Moses having an identity crisis?

Many years after Moses lived, Mordecai told his cousin Esther that God had brought her into the kingdom “for such a time as this.”* I can’t help but think that the same sentiment had probably surrounded Moses for most of his life. Rescued from the river by Pharaoh’s daughter, raised by his Hebrew mother, given a place of honor in the Pharaoh’s palace – he was positioned perfectly to relieve the persecution and affliction of his people. But how was he to go about it?

In a sense, he was what missionaries sometimes refer to as a “third culture kid”. He was Hebrew, but brought up in an Egyptian world. The result was that he didn’t quite fit in either world. His was a culture all its own. He had been raised among the judges and rulers of the land, but sought to identify with his own people who were little better than slaves. He wanted to fulfill the purpose for which God has rescued Him from the Nile. He seemed to know what that purpose was, but he failed in its application. Instead of bringing the Egyptian who was beating the Hebrew before Pharaoh and seeking justice, Moses killed him – and thus began his wilderness experience.

Many of us understand our purpose, but don’t know how to apply it. Fortunately, no matter how badly we mess up it doesn’t usually end in murder. But finding the application of our purpose – the way we’re supposed to work out whatever God has called us to – can be difficult, frustrating and even damaging to ourselves and others when we miss the mark. It can easily be the beginning of a wilderness.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Seeing how trying to reach the standards, guidelines, expectations, and methods for life and ministry set by others – though they be very godly men and women – can actually derail and hinder what God had planned. Not because there is anything wrong with any of those requirements and expectations. Not because they are unworthy goals, but because seeking to meet those expectations was a box into which my purpose and calling didn’t fit.

When Moses ran into the wilderness and finally had a moment’s rest, he must have looked back at the event that had gotten him there and thought, “Man, I really messed up. I completely failed at what God wanted me to do.” And he was probably right. But God took him into that wilderness to teach him what he would later need in order to fulfill that purpose. When he learned how to properly live out what God wanted him to do, God was glorified and the people of Israel were delivered.

The same is true in our lives. It is easy to look at what we feel is expected of us and assume that it is part of God’s will for our lives, but the expectations of others are not the guide God has established for our lives. He wants to lead us by His Word and the Holy Spirit. Though it is not always the case, sometimes when we add those expectations to the mix, what we are really doing is adding an unnecessary weight of stress.  God has laid out his guidelines for our lives in Scripture; that should be our first standard for living. Living a life guided by the expectations of others, no matter how good those expectations, can cause us to completely miss what God actually wanted us to be doing – trying to do both has the potential to destroy us physically, mentally, and spiritually.

How about you? Has God shown you His purpose for your life? Are you carrying it out in His way, your own way, or the way you feel others are expecting you to carry it out? Only one of the three options is the right way.

“In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.” Proverbs 3:6

*Esther 4:14

Devotional Journaling Tips – Part I

Next up, “What Does Today’s Passage Teach Me About God’s Ways?”

To Infomercial or Not To Infomercial

Launching a new book and then disappearing from the internet for a week is not generally considered a good idea, but that is what I have done. It was a timing thing and couldn’t be helped. It was also very important. Now I’m back, and I’d like to tell you a little about my new devotional journal In All Thy Ways.

The other day I was joking with a friend about whether or not I should “go all infomercial” with the journal. The question came out of the process of writing the book description. Writing a book description can sometimes seem harder than writing the book itself. How do you tell what the book is about without giving too much, or too little, away? And how do you do it in a 100 words or less? In the process of trying to write the description, I decided I would do a little investigating. I wanted to know how other authors describe their devotional journals. So, I did the most logical thing I could do—a web search.

I went to Amazon.com and entered the search term “devotional journal”. It brought up 1,254 results. Obviously, I didn’t read the descriptions for all of them, especially since it was midnight, but I did read through 251 of them. As I went through the results, something became very clear to me: I was about to publish something that was just about as close to being “one of a kind” as you can get. The journals I was seeing were all topical: The leadership journal, the gratefulness journal, the insecurity journal, a journal about faith, a journal about hope, a journal about God’s promises, a journal for teens, for children, for men, for women, for pregnancies; the list goes on. There is nothing wrong with a topical journal. In fact, I would have bought a couple of them on the spot if I could have. But I saw a disturbing trend. Fewer than five of the 251 journals that I looked at were designed to take you through the process of personally gleaning something from your own Bible reading. The others all offered up a pre-cooked meal.

This was my infomercial moment. I could just see it: A heavy set, balding guy with a beard and a big grin steps out and says, “We’ve compared 251 journals and none of them offer what this journal offers!” I hate infomercials, so I quickly switched that guy off in my head. The instant I did, another picture came to mind: A gaunt, hollow-eyed Christian in blue-grey prison garb, standing alone in the rain in the middle of a muddy, Siberian prison camp. With that image came two questions: What if he had always been spiritually spoon-fed? How would he survive? My heart ached. What emptiness that would bring!

We live in a frozen dinner and microwave society: Push a button—get dinner. It’s convenient, but it isn’t the healthiest lifestyle. Sometimes we tend to approach our spiritual lives in the same way: Read a devotional, pray the prayer at the end and go on with our day. It’s satisfying for the moment, but doesn’t always stick with us.

The other problem with microwavable devotions—we don’t learn how to cook for ourselves.

Here’s a question: What if you suddenly found yourself all alone in a new place with no microwave and no frozen dinners, only fresh products, and you didn’t know how to cook? The first few days, or even weeks, could be a little stressful…And you could get a little hungry.

Now ask yourself this: What if you found yourself in a place with no spiritual fellowship, no teachers, no preachers, no devotional journals—just you and your Bible—and you didn’t know how to study on your own? What a sad day that would be.

You may be saying, “That could never happen. I have nothing to worry about.” But I wonder how many of the men and women who have been imprisoned for their faith over the centuries, or have moved to a place where there was no church, never thought it would happen. We have no guarantee that we will always have access to a spiritual buffet. God wants us to grow, to move from milk to meat. We won’t do that if we’re always depending on others to feed us. It’s important to learn to study God’s Word for ourselves, to meditate on it, and to apply it to our lives.

In All Thy Ways gives you that chance. It offers eight weeks of devotional pages, which are designed to assist you in your personal study. By the time you’ve gone through the process that many times, you should be well on your way to doing it on your own.

I first designed this journal in 2003, by that point I had been in Russia for nearly eight years. Over those years, I had led Bible studies, taught Bible lessons, had my own quiet times morning and evening, in which I had faithfully spent time digging into God’s Word as deeply as I could. I knew how to study the Bible. But I was also at a point of exhaustion. I needed something new, and I needed something relatively simple that would bring focus to my quiet times. This is what God sent my way. I look forward to sharing more about it with you in the days to come. It was an enormous blessing to me, and I hope it will be to you as well.

Wondering how that book description turned out? You can check it out here!

The Best Cracker EVER!

I want to share something very special with you, my friends. I want to tell you about a cracker. Yes, that’s right, a cracker.

But I have to tell you a bit of background story first. Five years ago, I was able to spend a month and a half at a children’s home in a former soviet country in Central Asia. Most of the children there are Russian speaking, so, since I speak Russian, we had an almost instant bond. For five long years, I have wanted to go back. Twice, one of the missionaries called me up and asked if I could come on short notice, but then they called back a couple days later and said issues had resolved themselves; we didn’t need to plan the trip. A couple of times, I have looked into going for summer camp, but it has never worked. This year was different. This year it looked like it might just happen…

$6000. That’s what the “direct” flight costs from my hometown. I put “direct” in quotes because there’s nothing direct about it (How many layovers was that again?). And then comes the indirect route, $4000—(Oh, and did we mention they’re rioting in the streets of the city where you’ll be changing planes?) Last is the, well, we’ll just call it what it is – the redneck route. Two, maybe three, separate itineraries that don’t quite meet up, all neatly pieced together with duct tape…Still nearly $4000, and it doesn’t quite work, even if you kick it.

That was the reality I faced Wednesday morning. My travel agent and I emailed back and forth several times until finally I had to say, “Well, we tried.” I knew nothing else could be done. We had checked every possible route and none of them were feasible. I hit the send button and stared at the computer. I picked up my phone and texted my sisters. I told my dad/pastor that the trip wasn’t going to happen. I messaged one of the missionaries (who is currently in the States), and then I found myself alone with reality slowly sinking over me. I wasn’t going. I wasn’t going to see the children, to find out how they have grown, to hear about what God has been teaching them or to share what He has been teaching me. I wasn’t going to be meeting the new children who have come since I was there last. I wouldn’t get to see the caregivers who made me feel so welcomed and for whom I have prayed so many times. How would I ever write that email…

I decided I needed to give it a bit of time. It was well past noon, so lunch would most definitely put me in better shape to take on the task. But as soon as I headed out to fix a sandwich, I realized I was in no state of mind to face people. My heart was broken, and no matter how hard I tried I wasn’t going to be able to hold back its weeping. I bowed to thank the Lord for my food, but I found that I couldn’t talk to Him without tears. I wiped my eyes with the napkin that had been under my sandwich and muttered something about needing a plate instead.

In a few minutes, the activity around me had quieted. I sat at the table with my tuna fish and my Cheez-its, struggling not to let the situation get the best of me, and failing miserably. Was it me? Had I done something wrong, or missed something that I should have done? This was the second time in two months that I’d had to cancel a trip. That’s close to 250 children I had just let down. I felt like such a failure. I wanted nothing more than to go hide in a park with my Bible, where I could figure things out, but it was about to rain. I also had emails to write, the kind I didn’t want to write. Like the showers that came later, tears were already splashing intermittently down my shirt and onto my plate. I kept wiping them away, hoping no one would notice.

I picked up a cracker and was about to eat it when something caught my eye. I looked again. The hole in the center of the cracker was misshapen – in the perfect shape of a heart. I knew it was a gift from my Lord. The tears won.

I can think of few moments in my life when I have felt loved as strongly as I felt it in that moment. How undeserving of His love I am, and yet He loves me. I fail, I stumble, I plan trips that fall through, and yet He loves me… He loves you.

Don’t miss His love by staring into your failures, I almost did.

This is the first post on this site, but it is not the post I had intended to share first. That post was going to touch on the primary topic of the book I recently started writing: The purposes of the wilderness. But this illustrates it so much more beautifully. You see, one of the purposes of the wilderness is that we might come to know our God. And that little patch of wilderness, complete with its dry, ol’ cracker did just that – it reminded me of the depth of His love.

It brings Song of Solomon 3:6 to mind: “Who is that that cometh out of the wilderness like pillars of smoke, perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, with all powders of the merchant?”

If you’ve read my first book then you probably already have an idea of why Wednesday’s events would remind me of this passage. In The King’s Daughter we saw the beauty of myrrh, in Where The Myrrh Grows we’ll see the beauty of the harsh climate in which it flourishes. SOS 3:6 connects the two.

I’ve always had a strange mental picture associated with this passage. Way off in the distance, just beyond the heat waves rising from the desert floor, comes a chariot with clouds of dust billowing up behind it. The driver is the Knight in Shining Armor, the Prince Charming to beat all princes charming – It is the King. He comes valiantly, ready to declare His victory and retell of His triumphant exploits.

I’ve always seen Him as being on the return from some great conquest, but Wednesday I saw Him coming to the rescue. I had just wandered into the wilderness of deep disappointment, and He, with that beautiful fragrance that marks Him as my King, came to wrap His strong arms about me and to strengthen me…there is no stronger embrace.