Author: Sarah Stewart

Daughter of The King. Lifelong learner. Pursuing God’s best dreams for me, my family, and His Church.
Conversations

I Don’t Know What to Do

Sarah Stewart2 Comments

“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever,
to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons;
He removes kings and sets up kings;
He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the understanding;
He reveals deep and hidden things;
He knows what is in the darkness, and the light dwells with Him.
– Daniel 2:20-22

 

Knock. Knock.

“Daddy? It’s me, Sarah. You know, the prideful one? I know you saw me trying to figure these things out by myself. I know I told you I thought I already knew your answer. But, Daddy… I need help.  It turns out, I don’t really know the answers, well not most of them anyway, and I’m still stuck. Can you help me? Again. Please?”

I hear my Father whisper from behind me (Is. 30:21) “I am so glad you asked. Of course I will help you. Lets start with remembering what I’ve told you.”

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There have been a couple of tough situations for me this past few weeks – one involving how in the world I’m going to help my kids grow in grace and in faith through difficult and challenging times as they age, and the other involving how I’m supposed to grow and get into new opportunities in my career and/or my calling. I don’t feel like I have the answers to either one of these challenges at this point, but I had thought many times that I knew the “right” answers.

There was an opportunity at work that came up that sounded like a perfect fit for me, and it basically just fell into my lap! I didn’t even know the opportunity existed, but someone had asked for me to participate by name. I don’t even know this person and at first I was so taken aback and really humbled as I thought “The only way this could be happening is God!” For me, this was an honorable thing to have happen to me and the fact I wasn’t seeking self-promotion seemed to me like it came about the “right” way – as “God ordained”. Unfortunately, the next day I heard the opposite and that I wasn’t top of mind for the person or people who were actually making the call. Talk about a crusher! And talk about confusing! Wasn’t this from God? Didn’t I already talk to God about this the prior day and ask if it was from Him and give Him the glory for setting it in my lap?

Hm…wait a minute. I didn’t really wait for God to respond. I “knew” the “right” answer. According to who?

Well…

According to me: whenever something happens that’s good, that I didn’t go seeking, that always means its from God…

Right?

As I reflected on this and worked on memorizing Daniel 2:20-22 (which I chose to memorize long before this situation came up) I saw some words leap out at me

“HE removes … and sets up kings…”

If God can (and does) set kings in place, how much more is He able to put me in the places I need to be? As I’m remembering this too, there is a story right around Daniel of a king who thought he was so great, that God had to humble him to the point of wandering around for years as a wild animal would (slobber and rabies and all!). God took him to the lowest human state possible in order to teach him that he still really had a pride-of-heart problem and it wasn’t until he could honestly say that God is the only one so great, that God then restored him to leadership and great things.  I definitely don’t want my pride to take me into that kind of situation!

I love the reminders in the Word of God. I need them. For situations like these, as I start to open up my ears and listen to the whisper of His Spirit, I am reminded of those who walked with God long before I did, and I’m still learning from them. A few days back I asked of God “What are you teaching me in this situation?”

It wasn’t until this morning when I was working again on memorizing these verses that I heard Him stop me at “He removes kings and sets up kings”.

“Do you see, my daughter? Do you see that you don’t have to strive or struggle to be recognized or to push through to what I’ve called you into? Do you see why this is true? Because every single person ever in leadership has been put there by my hand. You can’t mess that up. And every person who I’ve allowed in those positions has been removed by me when it was my time. I know you don’t understand everything I’m thinking about – that burden would be too much for you anyway. I want you to understand that you can trust me. I want you to remember that I will always make the best and right decision and as long as you stay focused on me and my wisdom and my strength, you’ll be standing in exactly the right places at exactly the right times.”

Thank you, Father God for this reminder.

“And Daddy? What about what I’m supposed to do with leading my kids well? I feel so overwhelmed at all the things I’ve already done wrong as a mom, and there are still so many years to come and…”

“Peace, Little One. Let’s look again.”

And so my Abba leads me again back to His Word and quiets my anxious thoughts with the reminder that He is the one who knows all the answers and He already knows all that can and will happen and if I will simply remain in the light as He is in the light, He will hold back the darkness in our lives.

He will reveal deep things to my children as He knows they are ready for them.

I need to listen for His wisdom and keep myself in the light. My kids will learn how to live in the light with Him if I will walk in the light daily instead of moving into the dark places where I’m the one in control (or rather, under the illusion of being in control).

“Remember?” my Daddy God says. “You picked your own daughter’s name as a reminder to yourself that: I already know. I have always known. And I will always know all things even after this time has passed.”

Once again, My Father God has ever so gently, like a loving Daddy does, turned my face back to His own and re-connected my heart with His. He has fixed my eyesight to see that He’s got this.

He’s always had this.

“Peace, be still.” He reminds me.

“I’ve got all the wisdom and ability you need and I give it all to you because I, your Heavenly Good Father, love you.”

Scripture Diving

Isaiah 30:19

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“For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more.
He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry.
As soon as he hears it, he answers you.”
Isaiah 30:19

Observation about who God is

God is gracious. God hears me. God answers – and He answers right away.

Observation about context and/or how this fits with other parts of scripture

The verse right before this says that God waits to be gracious to His kids. Wow. He is such a good Father. He knows we want to ask, He knows we have needs, and He is waiting for us to come to Him. And when we do, this verse says, we will weep no more (God our Loving Father will wipe away our tears Rev. 21:4), He will be gracious to us, our cries/tears move the heart of our Father, and He immediately answers.

Life application lesson(s)

This verse reminds me and comforts me to know that when I’m weeping, when I’m weakest, God is still with me. It reminds me to send my cries to Him because He hears me. It reminds me that I am not alone, not without help, not without hope because He sees me. It reminds me to listen for the sound of His voice because He answers me. It reminds me that He is a good good Father, waiting to answer me, and He will answer me right away “as soon as He hears” me. I may not like the answer, but He doesn’t make me wait for it, He doesn’t tell me to “hold on a sec”, He isn’t silent as if He were absent. He sees me (Jehovah Roi). He hears me (Jehovah Shamma). He answers me (Yahweh). He holds me (Immanuel). He wipes away my tears (Jehovah Shalom, Jehovah Rapha).

Prayer

Ah Sovereign and Beautiful Father, you are Yahweh – “I AM”. Everything I need is wrapped up in you. You hear my cries and are gracious to me at all times. You care about even the smallest thing that causes me to shed a tear and you answer me. You are always right here, ready, waiting for me to turn my face, into your chest and speak my cares to you. Thank you, Abba, for your tender mercies anew each day and your grace to meet my every need. Please help me to remember these things, to hide your word in my heart, so that when I am in trouble or in need of your grace, I will seek your face and I will stop and listen for your voice and hear and receive your gracious and comforting answer back to me, your child. Amen.

Conversations

I Forgive You

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“…Mercy triumphs over judgment.” – James 2:13b

“Then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.’ ” – Matthew 18:21-22

“For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” – Hosea 6:6

Three tiny words. They are easy to speak with our tongue – often hard to live with our heart, but its at the heart-level that it is vital. Forgiving those who’ve sinned against us is vital for our very lives. Each and every one of us are not without some sin, but God who is fully, completely, and perfectly without sin has forgiven us. James 2 reminds us that if we break only one law (it doesn’t matter which one!) we become “lawbreakers”. And so since we have all broken at least one of God’s laws, we’re all lawbreakers. And if we’re honest, we’ve all broken more than just one and each of the laws we’ve broken, we’ve broken more than once. I certainly have.

But even though we have continually sinned against God, His mercy has been shown to us and it is His mercy that has won us and won the victory for us. God has not won our hearts nor the battle against sin by condemning us to what we deserve for sinning. Our Savior won our hearts because of His great love for us. He won our hearts because of His mercy. And also, in reverse, it is not a sacrifice that we made, nor anything we’ve done to triumph over our own sin or justify ourselves (remember – the first law we broke, we were done for) – it is the mercy and forgiveness of God that has saved, rescued, triumphed, redeemed, and is restoring us.

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So, if God has shown mercy and given us forgiveness that we didn’t earn and certainly don’t deserve (we have given more grief to God than we ever get from one another), then we have no business withholding mercy and forgiveness from someone who has mistreated, hurt, or in any way sinned against us. Jesus makes this very clear in Matthew 18 when He explains that if we fail to forgive and show mercy to one another, we will no longer be recipients of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Yikes. Does that motivate your heart? It does mine.

One of the things I astronomically appreciate about God and my relationship with Him is that He has shown me great, completely unmerited mercy! There is no way I want to give that up, especially not because of some human being that was unkind to me and holds nothing on my eternal life with The Father. I don’t want to throw away the mercy and forgiveness of God for me because of someone who is not my Heavenly Father, is not the Creator of the Universe, and has no ability to adopt me as the daughter of an Eternal King.

When I hold the light of God’s mercy for me on the things that have happened and the ways that I’ve been hurt, my heart is softened so much more. I was ready to forgive before, but now, considering my great need for His mercy, I’m so much more ready! In fact, my heart is heavier and more saddened as I think about the difficulty their sin has caused for their own lives and I’m thankful on their behalf that God has the same mercy and forgiveness for them as He has had for me.

To the one who left: I wholeheartedly forgive you for being driven toward your own agenda instead of listening to wise counsel around you. And I am sorry that you are having to learn the hard way that comes from pride and your own self-determination to get things done the way you think they should be done instead of in the greater blessing that comes from humbly waiting on God to develop that leadership and influence in you. I forgive you for driving yourself away from all of us by acting like Jacob when he stole Esau’s birthright due to a prophecy and then had to run away to save his skin. I am sorry that you are having to walk through more waiting and uncertainty as you learn the lessons God is walking you through. I forgive you for making the leadership mistake Solomon’s son made in not accepting the counsel of wiser and older people around you over the opinions of younger and more inexperienced people and I pray that instead of great demise like what happened to Rehoboam, that you will understand the benefit of humility and learning from the ones God has placed with wisdom around you. I pray that you would have a greater leadership impact like Jesus who did not consider equality with God to be His for the taking yet had the biggest, most lasting impact on the world of any man who had come before or has been since.

To the one who has struggled with depression and self-image: I wholeheartedly forgive you for being so consumed with what has happened to you that you have succumbed to your own weaknesses and done wrong to those who’ve held you in high regard. I forgive you for running away in the face of conflict and I pray that you will grow stronger as the people around you who love you help you to stand firm. I forgive you for taking credit for all those years for the things that others did behind the scenes that made you look good in the spotlight. I forgive you for taking your queues from poor, prideful, and controlling leadership that came before you instead of investing your strength and efforts into bettering yourself and your leadership potential to pour back into the people you have led. I pray that you will surround yourself with people who you will allow to be honest with you, even if it feels uncomfortable and confrontational. I pray that you will have great courage to listen to their loving wisdom and do the things that they suggest weighed against the wisdom of God. And I pray that you will give more credit to those that God has blessed with gifts different from those he has blessed you with. That as you stand in the spotlight, you will increasingly, more and more pull out your mirror to reflect that light back on the glory of God and His hand at work in the people around you.

To the one who lied: I wholeheartedly forgive you for the deep wounds you have caused so many who put such great, deep trust in you. I am sorry that you allowed yourself to be separated from true accountability and that the Enemy dragged you off by yourself for so long that you began to believe all the lies were actually truth and that you continued in them as a result. I forgive you for betraying our trust that was almost child-like as one has for their parent. I forgive you for starting so many good things that we now loose because of the consequences of your sin. I am thankful on your behalf that the truth finally came to light because I can’t imagine what more mire and muck you were headed for in that dark blackness of lies all alone. I am sorry that so many have been hurt so deeply, in life altering ways because of your dishonesty and I pray that each one is able to come to forgive you from their heart as well. I pray that as God already had blessing, healing, and freedom planned ever since the garden and all the way through the Old Testament, that God would speak also directly to you His specific mercy, freedom, healing, and blessing waiting for you. I am sorry that you have to live with the weight of all of this but I am thankful that you do and pray that it will bring you truthfully deeper and closer to God and that the next time we hear from you, it will be nothing but truth and all to the glory of God, humbly accepting nothing other than our love and forgiveness for you.

Conversations

Sweet, Sweeter, Sweetest

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How sweet are your words to my taste,
    sweeter than honey to my mouth!
–Psalm 119: 103

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Many Christians (myself included) often begin January with a kind of “reset” – a specific re-focusing on our individual relationship with God through renewed or increased prayer accompanied by fasting of some kind. Some go all out and do a “Daniel’s Fast” or further still some fast solid foods for a couple of weeks (so far the Holy Spirit hasn’t led me to do that one!). Usually I look forward to the beginning of the year reset and fast time. Usually I have a fresh excitement about giving the first-fruits of my entire year to God. Usually I ask the Lord a couple of weeks prior to the start of our “21 days” about what I should be praying about and focusing on and sacrificing as a constant reminder to talk to Him. This year however had a very different start. I don’t really know why (I haven’t given my very analytical brain the space to dive deep into that question), but I ended up not sacrificing anything and really justifying not fasting anything at all for the first 10 days of our 21 day fast. I had my quiet time with the Lord every morning and almost every morning would question what I should fast and if I even should fast. I wound up having full discussions with myself going back and forth: “To fast or not to fast? That is the question.” … My justification not to fast was that the only thing I seemed to be able to come up with doing was to fast sugar and I thought that was “too easy” and it felt more like a diet than a reminder to stop and talk to God. So I didn’t do anything.

But God, with the grace and perfect love for me that He has, continued speaking to my heart and one Sunday morning His voice was a little louder. Our pastor was talking about fasting just for a couple of minutes and mentioned something along the lines of “…if its so easy, why not just do it?” It was so brief and that wasn’t even the topic of his message. It was one of those God-voice things and I immediately latched on to it.

The next morning during my quiet time the Holy Spirit reminded me again “If its so easy, what is holding you back from doing this fast? What will it hurt to fast sugar in favor of extra time listening to The Father? Do you think He cares whether or not you started on the ‘right’ day?” (another of my justifications for not doing the fast) “He cares for your attention. Just start.”

So I did. I gave up sugar for the remainder of the 21 days. It didn’t all the sudden become hard, nor did I have huge, earth-shattering moments and even the temptation for sugar wasn’t that bad. But I did experience something different – a different sweetness.

The week that I gave up sugar, I was reflecting on the choice to fast sugar and again feeling like “Why am I doing this specific fast? Does it even mean anything?”

God is so good. His love is so tender. … and sweet.

As I was reflecting and reading, the Holy Spirit whispered to me that God Himself is the sweetness that I long for.

The name of Jesus is the sweetest name. His Word is sweet, “sweeter than the honeycomb”.

I gave up sugar, a physical sweetness, and then I saw even more all around me the sweetness of God. And He took me further and showed me that He wants me to be sweeter, just like He (my heavenly “Daddy”) is. He wants me to be sweeter towards others – to use kinder, more gentle words, to consider others before myself, to have more patience with my children and co-workers and family, to brighten someone’s day with a sweet smile, to speak life and hope and love – those sweet things that we all need to hear.

Throughout the rest of my sugar fast I was reminded again and again of the sweetest Name, the sweetest One, the sweetest Word, the sweetest Gift. And each time I reflected on my fast, I was warmed by the sweetest Love of God for me and also challenged to be the sweetness of Christ to the people around me.