The Challenge 18
February, 2004
What wonders a few days
at home will do! No traveling this week
and it is wonderful. Getting back in
the routine of things, having my own bed to sleep in and my own desk to study
at makes all the difference in the world. I also have to brag for a moment about my Valentines day... my
wife had gone to New York city to do a few shows with her sister and do the
"sister" thing and my son had gone to spend the night with a friend...
so it was just me and my daughter on Saturday night. I was supposed to go to Church and then to my couples small group
but at the last moment I decided that my daughter and I would spend the evening
together and go on a date. Of course I
did not have a reservation anywhere and so we had to wait. We went to Olive Garden (she wanted to go
there) and we just talked and laughed and spent the time together. There were no great revelations or major
discussions about life just a dad and his daughter together... it was awesome.
Today
One of the major problems I have (and many other men
I know) is that I am always living for something that is to come or sometimes
even living in the past. I mean we are
always planning for something in the future, or working for something that is
going to happen, or maybe we are talking and focusing on something that has
already happened in the past. I won't
speak for everyone but I do know for a fact that many of you are with me on
this... we rarely live in the here and now.
Just focusing on right now, today, this very moment is very hard for
me. There is always something else to
think about, somewhere to go, somewhere to drive the kids, some due date that
is looming at work, some test to take, someone to make happy, some meeting to
make or some presentation to prepare for.
Today slips away in the focusing on tomorrow or yesterday.
This is true of myself spiritually as well. I mean I am always looking at where I've
been with God in the past and where I'd like to be in the future. Neither of those things is inherently bad
but they are usually coming at the expense experiencing God today, right now
this very minute. We focus on repenting
for sins of the past. Sometimes we
dwell on sins of the past and think about how bad we've been and why we just
can't overcome those problem areas of life. So, then as good men, we look to
how to solve the problem. We come up
with reading programs that go into the future; we start praying and devise a
strategy/plan to pray for the next several days/weeks/months etc on a certain
issue. We go to Church and discover 4
ways to do this, 10 ways to do that, 40 days to determining our purpose in
life, some retreat to go on and the lsit goes on and on. We are planning our next lesson for Sunday
school, planning what we are going to talk about in bible study, and on and on
it goes. In all this we kind of lose
the actual moment we are in. I say
"we" quite a bit here and maybe it is just me, so you'll have to
forgive me if this is not where you are or what you do sometimes. However, I think this is where I've been
lately spiritually.
I've been saying to myself things like, "I wish
someday I'd grow up spiritually" or "I wish I could conquer this sin
or that habit forever". How about,
"Tomorrow I'll start that devotional" or "I'll read that
book"; "Monday, I'll wake up and start praying every morning" or
"I know doing X is wrong but tomorrow I'll quit doing that". Lately, for me I've been stuck in the past,
dwelling on my failures and saying to myself that someday God will fix me right
up and I won't have to worry about that anymore. Thinking this way is defeating in itself sometimes because
conquering some of our bad habits for the rest of our lives seems extremely
daunting. It seems like an unreachable
goal to stop doing this or that, or change a habit for the rest of our lives,
or to endure a certain pain or conflict for the duration of the event. In thinking of the larger problem over the
long period of time, we lose the today's and are always looking for tomorrow or
wondering where today actually went.
So, there I was yesterday, reading last weeks daily
devotionals (the ones that I promised myself that I would read every day but
didn't) and I ran across this verse...
"Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says:
"Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the
rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness," Hebrews 3:7-8
God is pointing out, through the apostle Paul, that
we are not supposed to rebel against God like the Israelites did while in the
desert after leaving Egypt. Then I read
on in Hebrews, covering a few more of the devotions I had missed and finally
read until the end of the 3rd chapter just because I was on a
roll. While reading I found this in
verse 15...
"while it is said: "Today, if you will hear
His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebelliona" Hebrews 3:15
Okay, so that was twice in less than 2 minutes that I
had read that same sentence and this time it had a little superscript
"a" next to it indicating a textual note. So, I looked down and found out that this was quoted from Psalm
95:7-8. So, without
hesitation, I wanted to see the reference and I turned to the Psalm and read
the whole thing in context, which looks like this.
A Call to Worship and Obedience
1 Oh come, let us sing to the LORD!
Let us shout joyfully to the
Rock of our salvation.
2Let us come before
His presence with thanksgiving;
Let us shout joyfully to Him
with psalms.
3For the LORD is the
great God,
And the great King above all
gods.
4In His hand are the
deep places of the earth;
The heights of the hills are His
also.
5The sea is His, for
He made it;
And His hands formed the dry
land.
6Oh come, let us
worship and bow down;
Let us kneel before the LORD our
Maker.
7For He is our God,
And we are the people of His
pasture,
And the sheep of His hand.
Today, if you will hear His
voice:
8"Do not harden
your hearts, as in the rebellion,[1]
As in the day of trial[2] in
the wilderness,
9When your fathers
tested Me;
They tried Me, though they saw
My work.
10For forty years I
was grieved with that generation,
And said, "It is a people
who go astray in their hearts,
And they do not know My ways.'
11So I swore in My
wrath,
"They shall not enter My
rest.'|"
As you noticed, the Psalm focuses us on worship of
our LORD through the middle of verse 7 and then the Psalmist shifts gears and
starts with his comments on Today... and then he goes on to say what happens if
you do not hear His voice and you end up hardening your hearts..."you
shall not enter my rest"
Is your heart restless? Are you often focused on the future or the past. Are you wondering how you are going to
conquer something in your life over the long haul? How you're going to get by your latest crisis, how you are going
to move on, grow, or get over your next hurdle?
God says, "Today, if you will hear His
voice..." TODAY. Right now this very instant.
Just today. Not yesterday, not
tomorrow, just TODAY.
You do not have to conquer that mountain in your life forever... you
just have to hear Him Today! You do not
have to figure out how you're going to study for the next 40 days... you just
have to concentrate on doing it today!
God does not want you to worry about tomorrow or the next day...
"Therefore do not worry
about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for
the day is its own trouble." Matthew
6:34
He wants you to spend time with him today and today
alone. What a burden lifter. I just need to focus on one thing with my
God and that is TODAY! Right
now. I'm not going to focus on how I
hardened my heart yesterday, or all the things I am planning for tomorrow. I just need to do one thing and that is
Today if I will hear His voice...
Yesterday, as I was reading Hebrews and Psalms, God
spoke to me three times and asked me to do one thing - What are you doing TODAY?
Until next week ~ Dave
To
make comments, to suggest topics you'd like me to tackle, to get past
devotionals, or to be added to this weekly "devotional email" please
write to: Dave
Hansen at philip419@earthlink.net