Weird: Day 3

God Gold of the Day

‘Then the word of the Lord came to him, “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” ‘

1 Kings 17:8-9 

I know you’re probably looking at this Scripture and thinking, “what Gold could possibly be brought out of this?” Well, strap on your miner helmet and make sure you have batteries in your flashlight because we are taking a trip into the mine to find the Gold!

We’ve been talking about how WEIRD it is to follow God. Not the kind of weird that you may refer to usually but the kind of weird that stands out, is so different compared to the normal of this world. The normal is the path that the masses follow, but they are a few that take a path more narrow, standing out and being considered WEIRD for living a life submitted to God. We’re talking about the God kind of weird and we’ve seen the last few days that the way God goes about His business and works in our lives, it’s as weird as it gets.

What I noticed in this verse, this is the third time in 9 verses that God has given His Word to the prophet Elijah. The first time, God predicted there would be a drought in the land, He had Elijah speak on His behalf to the people and BOOM! We got a drought! The next time, God tells Elijah to go hide in the wilderness and He would send food by way of ravens. What’d ya know?!? God does it again and comes through on His Word to Elijah.

Here we are in verse 8 and we have God giving His Word to Elijah yet again!!! His Word once again sounds CRAZY! What God is saying here sounds ridiculous in the way we see things in our human vision. What sounds weird and impossible to us, is actually super normal when compared to who God is and when you look at His track record throughout the Bible and human history where His Word always remains faithful and true.

It just hit me this morning that WOW! Having the Word of the Lord come to us is such a great blessing! I’m sure at this point Elijah, after watching God’s Word play out as perfectly as God spoke it, saving his life, protecting and providing for Him in the wildest of ways. I’m sure as Elijah saw the river dry up from the drought that he was jumping for joy to have the Word of God come to him again!

This week has been different for me with these God Gold messages. I’ll be honest, even sending out these messages, it has been a STRUGGLE to remain consistent in reading God’s Word. Some days I’m in it and the majority of the time I overlook it. I got to a place with the God Gold recently where I felt empty, like I had nothing more to share with you, then God sent His Word into my life. As I began having to study these passages for a class I sat here in awe thinking, how could I have overlooked His Word for this long??

Five days in and from Elijah’s view too, it’s so obvious that when the Word of the Lord comes into our lives, that’s the biggest blessing we could ever receive!!! God’s Word has changed my days completely, instead of feeling empty, I feel fueled up with His promises, strengthened by knowing more about who He is and just how much He has everything in control. The normal thing to do is overlook God’s Word, maybe spend some time in it here and there but who needs it right?? How much could it really help? I got this!

That’s the normal view of it and I’m here to tell you that normal doesn’t work. Yeah, it’s been super WEIRD actually waking up a little earlier than I usually do to spend in God’s Word. It’s been weird spending time seeking God instead of seeking how to please myself. Staying consistent in God’s Word takes being really really WEIRD, I mean you can look around and see that the majority of people, the “normal” don’t worry about making that time a priority. It’s going to be weird and it may even feel weird but geez, I can’t even explain how awesome, rich and powerful His Word has been since things have gotten weird for me in that area!

Just as God’s Word has been to Elijah in this passage, God’s Word protects us, guides us, strengthens us and provides for us in ways that we could never do apart from it! There is NOTHING BETTER than having God’s Word come into your life!

So my challenge for you today, coming from someone who has taken His Word fore granted for so long, my challenge for you is to read God’s Word. Get out a pen, some paper, take some notes and really dig in! Even if it’s just one verse a day, any time in God’s Word is good time! I could have easily kept going in the normal routine and put God’s Word to the side but when I picked it up, now I can’t seem to stay away. I’ve found the more I’m in His Word, the more I see how much I desperately NEED His Word to live in this world. To live a weird life with a weird God and not be caught with the majority of the world being normal. To live an extraordinary and weird life for God, it’s going take doing the little weird things like putting self aside and getting into His Word. God has a Word for you today, actually a lot of Words for a lot of days!

Don’t push it to the side, don’t make excuses, open up His Word and at least find out what all this WEIRD talk is about! I PROMISE you won’t be disappointed that you did, if anything you’ll be changed from the inside out!!! And that’s what this world needs more of! People willing to stand out and make God known by first doing what seems weird by receiving the Word of God in their lives!

Weird: Day 2

God Gold of the Day

‘“Go to the east and hide by Kerith Brook, near where it enters the Jordan River. Drink from the brook and eat what the ravens bring you, for I have commanded them to bring you food.” So Elijah did as the Lord told him and camped beside Kerith Brook, east of the Jordan. The ravens brought him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he drank from the brook. But after a while the brook dried up, for there was no rainfall anywhere in the land.’

1 Kings 17:3-7

Today is day two of WEIRD; as we dig into the life of the prophet Elijah, we’re also seeing a theme develop of how weird following God in obedience is compared to the popular opinion of the world. We’re also going to see even more so today that the way God works in our lives, it’s so WEIRD!!! Not weird in a bad way, just weird in a God way, the kind of weird that is so different from the dose of normal we see and live in daily in this world. We’re striving to live more in this weird way because normal in this world is everywhere and if you take a second to look around…..normal isn’t exactly working!!!!

Like I mentioned in day 1, I wanted to share with you the BIG, crazy awesome miracles that God brought through Elijah but I would be doing you an injustice if I gave you the delicious fresh baked cake without giving you the process of baking that was necessary for the awesome result.

Immediately after this big news Elijah shared from God about there being a drought in the land, God sends Elijah into hiding. For one, it shows that the people of the land, led by King Ahab, weren’t too happy for Elijah to share this so God is protecting him from harm. Secondly, God sends Elijah into the wilderness, a place where many great names and leaders in the Bible went such as Moses, David, and even Jesus!

Like any story, the BIG amazing things that take place just one chapter over in chapter 18 of 1 Kings, those things aren’t possible without the events that took place in  chapter 17. It’s easy to see Elijah as this big name Bible hero but all Bible heroes are just as human as me and you. And all of these men and women have one BIG thing in common, the God they serve!!! It just so happens that same God is the God we have by our side in every moment of our lives too!

We see Elijah gets sent into the wilderness, why would God do that? Why would God allow us to go into places and positions of such harsh conditions? Isn’t it weird that such a good God that loves us so much would allow us to experience things like this???

Yeah, by every human eye that sees it, it’s super weird, but it’s God. What seems like on the surface a situation that looks crazy and impossible, God is doing something much bigger than we can even grasp.

The main quality we see from Elijah here is his obedience, he immediately follows God at His Word to tell the people of the incoming drought and then into the wilderness into hiding. This is the truth, sometimes God calls us into messy and crazy situations but through each moment His promise to protect us and provide for is always faithfully kept. There is so many things each day that God calls us to do that is far from normal in this world. Big things such as what Elijah is doing but also little small things that don’t seem like a big deal if we are disobedient, but at the end of the day there is no excuse for disobeying God. That’s easier said than done because so many days I put aside so many opportunities that God places in front of me to simply love somebody, reach out and care for someone, or just being there for someone.

What clutters our vision to do these things is how we get so wrapped up in the mindset of what everyone else is doing. Seeing people following God’s Word in obedience is far and few between these days, but with that becoming our “normal” surroundings, sometimes that makes it tough to live a weird life for God. We can easily get trapped in making decisions to be “normal” and just go with the crowd because that’s the easy thing to do. Fitting in is what it boils down to but in this life with the Lord, fitting in with the masses doesn’t really fit well into our relationship with Him. The weird thing to do is follow God, put everyone else’s opinions to the side and just step into this crazy awesome obedience. When they think we have lost our minds, we’ll never make it, we are not being smart or all the other things the world would have to chime in and tell us. God says otherwise.

God tells Elijah here that He has commanded the ravens to bring him food. WHAT??? How is that even possible? You see, there God goes again being weird. In  our eyes along with the world around us, that’s impossible and crazy. But then we see what God has to say about the popular opinion. As Elijah steps obediently into what God has promised, God does what only God can do. God literally sends ravens day by day with food for Elijah!!!!

As we see God “commanding” the ravens we see a BIG view of who God is and what He’s capable of. God is in full control of every single thing on this earth. God gives us a promise, and always stays true to His Word, protecting us and providing for us in every moment. What this lesson boils down to in our lives is this. To be obedient to God’s Word and His Will, it takes a WHOLE LOT of TRUST!!! I’ve noticed for me personally, whether big things or little, my main problem with obedience is placing trust in myself and what I think is right. Or I place my trust in the popular opinion of the world around me, and fall to a normal life along with the rest of the world. Is it that crazy to think of what would happen if we trusted God, if we put our selves and what’s normal aside and just take a step into weird for a moment?!?

It’s here in these type of moments in our lives, when we follow God into the weird wilderness, the crazy and impossible circumstances that trust is built as we see God for who He truly is, our protector, provider and our God. Obedience stems from trusting that God is enough and taking those steps into what is far from normal in the world’s view, steps into weird. Doing what everybody says can’t be done, trusting God above all else, and just watching Him do what only He can do. These moments are crucial for Elijah here and for us to live this weird life God has for us, it’s in these moments where we realize that we are not enough and don’t have what it takes to get through, only God does. Gaining more and more knowledge and understanding in who God is and what He’s capable of, trust comes easier and in trust obedience follows. It may lead to living a weird life, but hey!!! That’s a good thing because normal sure ain’t cutting it!!!

FAITH FIRE #5

God Gold of the Day

Hey everybody! I wanted to share with you for the next few days some “old gold” that I had sent out awhile back! It’s on a story in 1 Kings about Elijah that I had studied and really found a lot of fire in my faith during that time so as you read through these I pray they will light your faith on fire as well!!!

“At the usual time for offering the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet walked up to the altar and prayed, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, prove today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant. Prove that I have done all this at your command. O Lord, answer me! Answer me so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to yourself.” Immediately the fire of the Lord flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The Lord —he is God! Yes, the Lord is God!””

1 Kings 18:36-39

 

You can look at this story and say well it’s just one of those crazy Bible stories, God won’t send fire down like that today, in my life. The truth is that the same God we follow is the same God that brought down fire in this moment, and the same God that will bring fire in our lives. It may not be literal fire from Heaven but it will be fire that ignites us, our relationships, our struggles we go through, He will bring fire to every area of your life because He is God and He loves you and He’s more than powerful enough to do it. It’s that simple!  I often try to complicate my relationship with God by thinking I have to do enough or be enough but the great thing is we just have to believe and walk in His fire. It may not be immediately brought down like we would want it but we can be content in knowing that in Gods timing, fire will come. Just spend some time talking to Him, laying your life before Him and all the addictions, problems, weaknesses you may have and ask God to bring fire into your life. He’ll make it known what needs to be sacrificed, what we need to move from to walk closer to Him and just like we believe that He’ll bring the fire, we can believe He’ll give us more than enough to stay strong, patient, content in the hard moments. The cool part about Elijah’s prayer is that He wasn’t asking for Himself, He was asking so everyone around could see God at work and look at Verse 39!!! People were praising God!! That’s the beauty of Gods fire, once it’s personalized in your relationship with Him, and it starts to change our world, He’ll change the world!!! And that’s why we fight! Not so we can show a scorecard of how good of a Christian we are but to help those around us witness Christ working in and through us! There are so many people hurting and needing that relationship with Jesus and it hurts knowing because of my plans, my desires, my wants that I may be getting in the way of Christ transforming lives. So you really want the fire? Count the cost, the pain and sacrifice of things you’ll have to give up but remember Who God is and who you’re fighting for!

FAITH FIRE #4

God Gold of the Day

Hey everybody! I wanted to share with you for the next few days some “old gold” that I had sent out awhile back! It’s on a story in 1 Kings about Elijah that I had studied and really found a lot of fire in my faith during that time so as you read through these I pray they will light your faith on fire as well!!!

“Then Elijah called to the people, “Come over here!” They all crowded around him as he repaired the altar of the Lord that had been torn down. He took twelve stones, one to represent each of the tribes of Israel, and he used the stones to rebuild the altar in the name of the Lord. Then he dug a trench around the altar large enough to hold about three gallons. He piled wood on the altar, cut the bull into pieces, and laid the pieces on the wood. Then he said, “Fill four large jars with water, and pour the water over the offering and the wood.” After they had done this, he said, “Do the same thing again!” And when they were finished, he said, “Now do it a third time!” So they did as he said, and the water ran around the altar and even filled the trench.”

1 Kings 18:30-35

 

So back to the story of Elijah challenging the prophets of all these other gods at Mt. Carmel. The biggest lesson from this story is obviously faith and the first few times I read it I just thought, “man I wish I could have faith as strong as Elijah.” Wouldn’t that change some things right? The problem I had in looking at it that way was the fact that I don’t need to try and be like Elijah or try to have faith like Him, his faith was only so strong cause he served a God that was so big and so strong! Cool part is, we serve that same mighty and loving God!!! The more we try to be like someone else, the less we are the person God made us to be. Elijah is a great example to learn from for sure but the greatest lesson is the freedom you have when realizing the importance of that relationship with the Lord. The more you learn about who He is and what He’s capable of, keep your eyes set on Him, and receive the love that He constantly loves you with, that’s how faith is grown. Elijah is telling these guys to dump water on the wood? How’s God gonna light it on fire if it’s wet? And aren’t they in a drought why would he sacrifice all this water? Elijah is trying to prove a point about God to everyone watching and even Himself. That’s the beauty of having a relationship with Jesus Christ, usually the more things look impossible, His power works best in weakness. No matter what wild circumstances you have in your life, that’s all the more reason to press in to Christ! Elijah’s sacrifice here is a lesson in itself. He did it out of His relationship with God. I’m sure he knew that doing this would look crazy and not make sense but he also knew who God was, what God could do. And that’s where God makes all the difference. Christ gave us freedom with His sacrifice on the cross and the only way to embrace that freedom is sacrificing ourselves and our wild circumstances to Him. Think about it, what’s one thing in your life you wish you could do better at, one sin stronghold that eats you up and you wish you could get rid of? Usually the more you look to the problem like the drought, the worse it becomes and the smaller your view of God gets. When you just put your focus, time and energy into your relationship with the Lord and stop looking at all the bad or impossible around you, that’s when you can embrace the freedom Christ has given you cause the more you look to Him  the more you don’t just believe He’ll bring the fire, you can expect it. Looking Horizontal at the wild impossible only brings more doubt and worry. Sacrifice starts with lowering yourself and stop trying to fix everything on your own then lifting your eyes. Christ has already given us the victory and even tho it doesn’t look that way, look up and you’ll see real quick how God and impossible don’t mix. The freedom has already been given, all we can do is sacrifice our lives to Him and believe it, walk in that freedom! It’s crazy how all those Horizontal struggles start to fall into place and change when your eyes and hearts are constantly upward to God!

FAITH FIRE #3

God Gold of the day

Hey everybody! I wanted to share with you for the next few days some “old gold” that I had sent out awhile back! It’s on a story in 1 Kings about Elijah that I had studied and really found a lot of fire in my faith during that time so as you read through these I pray they will light your faith on fire as well!!!

“So they prepared one of the bulls and placed it on the altar. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning until noontime, shouting, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no reply of any kind. Then they danced, hobbling around the altar they had made. About noontime Elijah began mocking them. “You’ll have to shout louder,” he scoffed, “for surely he is a god! Perhaps he is daydreaming, or is relieving himself. Or maybe he is away on a trip, or is asleep and needs to be wakened!” So they shouted louder, and following their normal custom, they cut themselves with knives and swords until the blood gushed out. They raved all afternoon until the time of the evening sacrifice, but still there was no sound, no reply, no response.”

1 Kings 18:26-29

 

Just going deeper into this story with Elijah, we’ve learned about how all this relates to us. The past life and maybe current life of following our “gods” and the drought that we constantly find ourselves in because we go to the wrong place, looking for the wrong things, our personal gods instead of the one and only God! Once again I pray that we embrace people in our lives or situations that bring out that question, “how long will you waver between two opinions? If your gods are it then follow them but if God is your God then follow Him!” It’s crazy to me how much of my life I’ve wasted calling out to the gods in my life, addictions, sins, things I think I have to have to get through and I put them before the one true God of my life. At the end of the day I’m just like these prophets of Baal, I go to those obsessions or desires to the point of harming myself cause I’m so caught up in thinking those things are my ticket to a better life, and then I always find myself with no answer, no satisfaction or joy, just empty after I spent all day trying to get those things to fill me. It’s convicting looking back and even now still calling to the wrong things in the wrong place but that’s the beautiful thing about having a relationship with Jesus. Because of what He sacrificed to set us free and give us victory we don’t have to get stuck in that way. The decisions and sins of yesterday don’t have to affect or control the decisions we make today or tomorrow! How awesome is that!! And even if we don’t want to admit it we all have those gods in our life cause we’re all human, sinners before God. But the great part is Christ, what He did for us and the fact He lives with us everyday in this process of moving farther from those gods that have beaten us down and wasted our time, and closer to God and His purpose and plan for our lives! This may sound crazy but I feel like Elijah mocking them, telling them how stupid they are for calling out to nothing, useless worldly made up lies, it’s kind of like the Holy Spirit living within us reminding us, “Hey Jordan you know you don’t have to be the dummy you once were, those things are useless, just set your eyes on the one true God almighty and I’ll help ya keep moving forward.” That voice comes in so many ways, whether it’s people in our lives, situations or literally the Holy Spirit speaking through our conscious telling us what’s right, what pleases God and what will help us in this spiritual warfare we’re constantly in every day. The biggest thing these verses showed me was to take some inventory on what some of those “gods” may be in your life. Look to see what you put before God on your priority list and how it may be something holding you back from getting out of the drought you’re in and into the rain God brings down when He is #1 in your life. That’s where all change starts, in recognizing and admitting the problem then God will give you more than enough help to show you how to get past these gods if you stop calling on them and call on Him