Doorposts of Your House

I was reading The Jesus Storybook Bible to my little Ruby the other day and in between several readings of the “one about the sick girl” we also managed to read one about Jesus feeding the five thousand. Jesus instructed the disciples to feed the crowd of people who had been listening to Him talk. When they started discussing what they could offer such a crowd, one boy produced his lunch of five loaves and two fish:

“I have some,” he said.

Jesus’ friends laughed when they saw his little lunch. “That’s not nearly enough!” they said.

But they were wrong. Jesus knew it didn’t matter how much the little boy had. God would make it enough, more than enough.

Jesus said, “Bring me what you have.” And so the little boy gave Jesus his lunch. Jesus winked at the little boy and whispered in his ear, “Watch!”

“How in the world will Jesus feed everyone with just that?” Jesus’ friends said, because they thought it was impossible.

But Jesus knew the One who made all the fish in the oceans. And Jesus knew the One who in the very beginning had made everything out of nothing at all. How hard would something like this be for Someone like that?

“…It’s what God had been doing from the beginning, of course. Taking the nothing and making it everything. Taking the emptiness and filling it up. Taking the darkness and making it light.”

What a well-timed reminder that story was!  I have so little to offer to God. In fact, I have nothing to offer Him. He’s infinite and I’m finite. He’s holy and I’m a sinner. He’s strong and I’m weak. Anything and everything that I am or do or have is only by His grace to start with!

But it doesn’t matter how how weak or stupid or inadequate I feel. God has called me to serve Him. He could have made me a super-woman if He wanted to, but He didn’t. So I just need to offer myself to Him and trust Him with the results. He takes my five loaves and two fish (all courtesy of His grace) and then He makes it enough — more than enough.

That way He gets the glory.

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(Illustration taken from The Jesus Bible Storybook, by Sally Lloyd-Jones, illustrated by Jago.)

The Jesus Bible Storybook is a charming Bible story book that continually points to Christ, God’s grace, and the story of redemption, while refraining from the moralizing that is often present in children’s Bible storybooks. It does, however, take some liberties (such as portraying Jesus winking to the boy who gave him his loaves and fishes, which Jesus certainly could have done, but the inspired account does not include this detail).

The author does an excellent job of making the biblical accounts exciting and accessible to young children. My granddaughters love it. But, like most Bible storybooks written to reach little ones, it does need some qualifying along the way. When you read any Bible storybook with your children, remember that it is not inspired Scripture. Don’t let storybooks displace the reading of actual Scripture with your children. Instead, let it lead you back to Scripture. Weigh its accounts against God’s Word as you read and discuss its content with your little ones.

We hope to offer a review on this and other Bible storybooks in the future.

Try this quote on and see if it fits.

I know it sounds fantastic; but think it over. It seems to me that we often, almost sulkily, reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we expected some other good . . . On every level of our life . . . we are always harking back to some occasion which seemed to us to reach perfection, setting that up as a norm, and depreciating all other occasions by comparison. But these occasions, I now suspect, are often full of their own new blessing, if only we would lay ourselves open to it. God shows us a new facet of the glory, and we refuse to look at it because we’re still looking for the old one. And of course we don’t get that . . .

. . . And the joke, or tragedy, of it all is that these golden moments in the past, which are so tormenting if we erect them into a norm, are entirely nourishing, wholesome, and enchanting if we are content to accept them for what they are, for memories. Properly bedded down in a past which we do not miserably try to conjure back, they will send up exquisite growths. Leave the bulbs alone, and the new flowers will come up. Grub them up and hope, by fondling and sniffing, to get last year’s blooms, and you will get nothing.”

from Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, by C. S. Lewis.

Good words for all of us to remember as we travel through the many seasons of life . . .

(Photo by Susannah Forster)

I don’t remember where I had been, but I came rolling up the driveway just as Daniel, our oldest son who runs Doorposts was getting in his car to go get his wife and children to join us for lunch and the afternoon.

“Hey, I just remembered, today is the day Kevin Swanson is interviewing you for his program!” he said as he opened his car door.

“Gasp! When? ”

“At 1 o’clock our time.”

“Uh, that’s in an hour!”

“Yeah, bye!” (Actually, he wasn’t quite that heartless, but he did leave!)

Well, I went into panic mode. First of all, I am not a speaker. That’s why I write. My mind tends to go blank when I have to speak. Second, when Daniel talked me into saying yes to this interview, we agreed that I would need to know what the questions were going to be before the interview. We had seen no questions.

The girls and I raced around trying to put lunch together while I also tried to gather my wits and calm my spirit. I wasn’t succeeding.

Daniel and his family arrived and he announced that the email with the questions had come – thirty minutes before the interview. This is when I really started to fail my trust-in-God-or-trust-in-myself test. The questions were scary! I needed notes! I didn’t have time to make notes! “God, I don’t do this sort of thing!”

Katelyn (bless her heart) hurried to print out some recent blog posts. Daniel highlighted major points. I looked at the pages and didn’t comprehend anything. It’s embarrassing to admit how much whining I was doing. “I can’t do this!”

Duh.

It was about time I realized that! Of course I couldn’t do it. But God could, and it was time (actually past time) to remember that and put my trust in Him. He had sovereignly brought this task into my life, and He was ready and willing to equip me for it. We prayed, the phone rang, Daniel passed it off to me, and God kept me from passing out.

How many years will it take before I remember that it is always God working through me? I can’t do anything in my own strength. I can’t mother in my own strength. I can’t write in my own strength. I can’t even breathe without God enabling me to do so.

I take so much for granted. I so easily forget that I am totally dependent on God. Thankfully, God knows this, so He graciously steers me into situations where it is obvious that I’m in trouble on my own, where I know I can’t do it without Him. It’s funny how it works – the more aware I am of my helplessness, the greater my reliance on Him. The more I rely on Him, the more I learn to trust Him. The more I step out and trust Him, the more I witness His faithfulness over and over. And the more I see His faithfulness, the more I grow to love Him.

My weakness doesn’t matter, because He is strong. My weakness is actually a blessing because it drives me to Him.

“. . . for when I am weak, then am I strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

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So — if you have thirty minutes to spare, and want living proof that God sustains us in our weakness, you can listen to the results of my humbling day at Generations Radio!