Just before being betrayed by Judas and arrested, Jesus sought some solitude in the garden of Gethsemane, where “he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’” (Mark 14:35-36). Jesus knew He was soon to die.
Donald McKim notes that “In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, Abba is the word for ‘Father.’ It is a term that expresses the closest and deepest intimacy of the relationship of parent and child.”[1] Jesus knew this intimacy even on the way to the cross.
McKim also quotes Philip Melanchthon, who said: “’Abba, Father’. By this he taught us that these two things are required in prayer, namely, the ardent affection of the mind and the faithful trust of children toward God: these two words testify that both of these aspects were present in Christ.”
The Father loves us always, even on our most difficult days. Trust Him in prayer today.
[1] McKim, Donald K. Everyday Prayer with the Reformers (2020). P. 73.
In Mark’s Gospel, he tells a story of Jesus taking a nap, causing His disciples to panic. Does it ever seem like God is asleep, leaving you feeling adrift the world’s circumstances? When Jesus walked the earth, there were times when God literally was asleep.
One story comes from Mark 4:35-41.
On that day, when evening had come, [Jesus] said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
At the beginning of the story, Jesus told His disciples they were going to cross the Sea of Galilee, then knowing what was coming, “He who keeps Israel”[1] took a nap. Had the disciples understood Jesus, His napping should have reassured them that they were safe, since He was not concerned about the storm. Instead, they thought He didn’t care, which showed that fear of the storm had overcome whatever faith they had. Jesus said they were going across, but they doubted.
Which brings up a very important question.
When did the wind and the sea obey Jesus? At the beginning of the story, at the end, or both? Or at all times? Before Jesus calmed the storm, was the sea being disobedient to God’s laws and will?
I believe Jesus calmed this storm so that next time He wouldn’t have to. He was teaching them that He always cares, regardless of what the circumstances seem to say. He was teaching them that even when it seems like He’s asleep, He is still in control of our circumstances no matter how chaotic they look and feel to us. During the next storm, He wanted them not to panic, but to trust Him because He showed them no circumstance escapes His notice. The storm does not control us; He controls the storm.
When Jesus calmed the storm, He did not create a hedge (See Job 1:10) around His disciples, He just demonstrated that it existed all along. God was not going to let His Son drown before His mission was complete and neither will He let His other children drown before their work is done!
Sometimes when God seems distant and we feel we are sinking, in reality we are being given a divinely designed opportunity to learn to trust that:
The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore[2]
He knows sometimes we have to learn the hard way, and He knows best. Even when He is sleeping.“Let us go across to the other side.”
The Gospel of Mark records two miraculous feedings of multitudes. The first was mainly a Jewish crowd of about 5,000 in Mark 6:30-44; the second was a mainly Gentile group of about 4,000 in Mark 8:1-9. These two stories are very well known, but if you read on Mark adds this about Jesus’ disciples in 8:14 – “Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.”
On this verse Warren Wiersbe remarks: “It must have grieved Jesus that His hand-picked helpers were so spiritually obtuse. The fact that He had multiplied bread on two occasions and fed over ten thousand people had apparently made little impression on them! Why worry and argue over one loaf of bread when you have Jesus in the boat with you?”[1]
When well-known Bible stories have little impact on us, remember that these disciples knew the story even better than we do – they were there! Jesus did not give up on them and will not give up on us.
Have you forgotten to trust Jesus with something today? He desires to be “in the boat with you” in constant fellowship. Ask Him to take your anxiety and to supply your daily bread. He never forgets.
[1] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Diligent (Mark) (1987). P. 97.
Yesterday’s post was about Jeremiah’s comparison of false religion to a broken cistern, with God alternatively being “the fountain of living waters.”[1] Jeremiah lived when most of God’s people – including most of the priests and prophets – had turned from Him to follow other gods. As Jeremiah remained faithful, correctly predicting that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon, he was persecuted, including this instance in Jeremiah 38:6, where King Zedekiah’s officials “took Jeremiah and cast him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. And there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.”
Since God is “the fountain of living waters,” the only path to eternal blessing, it’s incredibly ironic that Jeremiah, one of the few remaining faithful prophets and therefore a rare source of God’s “living waters,” should be cast into a cistern with no water. Perhaps it was broken. King Zedekiah thought he could silence the “living waters” Jeremiah represented by casting them into a cistern, trading truth for falsehood.
Later, Jeremiah seems to recall the cistern experience in Lamentations 3:52-57, where he said:
“I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without cause; they flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me; water closed over my head; I said, ‘I am lost.’ ‘I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’”
Returning to the book of Jeremiah, we read that Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch, heard of Jeremiah’s situation and pleaded his case: “My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they did to Jeremiah the prophet by casting him into the cistern, and he will die there of hunger, for there is no bread left in the city.”[2] This unlikely source – a foreigner – was Jeremiah’s deliverance from God to rescue Jeremiah from the well. Ebed-melech gathered 30 men, “Then they drew Jeremiah up with ropes and lifted him out of the cistern. And Jeremiah remained in the court of the guard.”
Jeremiah was not the only Old Testament figure to suffer for his faithfulness. Many years earlier, King David also referred to “sinking in the mire” in the Messianic Psalm 69, verses 14-15:
“Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters. Let not the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the pit close its mouth over me.”
David knew this feeling of sinking came not because of his sin, but when he was faithfully serving his Lord. David’s “sinking in the mire” happened under these circumstances from verse 9 of the same Psalm:
“For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.”
In Jeremiah’s case, as well as David’s and that of Jesus, whom Psalm 69 foreshadowed[3], we know that cannot judge our faithfulness based on whether it improves our circumstances. When we do, we might stop being faithful because it seems we are “sinking in the mire.” Being reproached by the world and feeling down aren’t the circumstances we prefer, but “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”[4] Through these and all other circumstances, God develops in us deeper trust in Him.
Therefore, with David may we pray:
“But as for me, my prayer is to you, O LORD. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love answer me in your saving faithfulness.” – Psalm 69:13
And in His time, He will deliver us, perhaps in ways we don’t expect.
Coda
In 1995, Christian rock group Jars of Clay released their self-titled album, and the track “Flood” has similar themes to this post. The song was also a mainstream hit, charting as high as No. 12 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart,[5] amazing for a song that is essentially a prayer like David’s in Psalm 69.
The TV show Whose Line is it Anyway? is probably the most-widely-known form of improvisational comedy, and one of my favorites. Four performers act out short scenes based on a set of rules for each scene or game, spontaneously adding their own creativity and (if successful) humor. For example, in the “Props” game, pictured, the performers were given two “P” shaped props to make jokes about. The show wouldn’t be any good if they just showed us the props and explained the rules over and over again. The show is pointless without spontaneous creativity. But why am I writing about improv on a Christian blog? Today is the next post in the series on listening for our Master’s voice, and in God’s (and Gideon’s) victory over the Midianites, the Bible leaves a key point unsaid, leaving us to ask: Whose Plan is it Anyway?
Whose Pun is it Anyway?
In Judges 6-7, God delivers Israel from the Midianites using Gideon, who thought God couldn’t use him because “my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” At times, Gideon doubts God is speaking to him and that He really means what He says, but God patiently answers Gideon’s questions and performs miracles, encouraging Gideon to move forward.
Eventually, Gideon and his 300-man army attacked the enemy army, which was “like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number, as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance.”[1] After Gideon split his army into three groups, this was the plan of attack:
“So Gideon and the hundred men who were with him came to the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, when they had just set the watch. And they blew the trumpets and smashed the jars that were in their hands. Then the three companies blew the trumpets and broke the jars. They held in their left hands the torches, and in their right hands the trumpets to blow. And they cried out, ‘A sword for the LORD and for Gideon!’”[2]
Whose Plan is it Anyway? This is where improv comes in: the text does not tell us who came up with this wacky attack plan. Was it God’s idea or was it Gideons? Why leave it ambiguous? I think it is because, either way, it is not a decisive factor in the victory. The attack plan works because of God’s involvement, no matter whose idea it was. If it was Gideon’s idea, he was only using the abilities his Maker had given Him for the purpose of glorifying Him. If it was God’s, Gideon was also only using the abilities God gave him and dedicating them to God’s glory.
What’s amazing is that Gideon went from testing God with fleece to carrying out this attack. God had Gideon convinced it would work, and that it would work because God would make it work. Victory didn’t come from any advantage Gideon had or created, and all along God was determined to get the glory. The plan would have failed if God had not put fear into the camp, and let Gideon know about that fear by way of a dream a Midianite soldier had.
Like improv comedy, God’s rules only go so far before the performers need to take over. God gives us patterns, which are like the rules of an improv skit, not step-by-step instructions in every aspect of our lives. Adam and Eve were shown a pattern in the Garden of Eden, Moses was given a pattern for the tabernacle on the mountain, and Jesus lived a pattern of how love the Father and our neighbor. Beyond the patterns and rules there is so much to do and explore. His will is for His people to make the world like Eden, to worship Him as He should be worshiped, and to love the world the way Jesus loved.
The Little Things To hear and obey His voice, we must spend time with Him in prayer and study, diligently learning the patterns He has laid out for us, but He does not expect us to stop there. At some point, we must take the guidance we have and move forward with the wisdom and creativity He has endowed us each with. When we do we will be like the servant who successfully invested his Master’s resources, and in return “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’”[3]
However, if we either do not diligently seek Him, or if we say He has not given us enough, we may find ourselves cast out from the Master’s presence, hearing: “you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.”[4]
In Gideon’s story, we see God’s compassionate understanding toward His people who struggle to hear and obey His voice but keep trying. We, like Gideon, are not always faithful over the little things such as prayer, study, and regular worship. But Only He fully knows the depth of our doubts and struggles, and He provides what we need to trust Him and move forward in faith, knowing our doubt is never fully overcome until eternity.
In the story, we also see that we must often act on trust, even when we think we have incomplete information. Like Gideon, we should be imperfectly persistent, wrestling with God who knows our faith is imperfect. He can bridge the gap to us in His unlimited grace.
So, where does God’s guiding voice stop, and our God-given creativity begin? Like a good improv comedy scene, the parts can come together perfectly, glorify God, and encourage His people to come along in faith, as the men of Naphtali, Asher, Manasseh, and Ephraim joined the battle against the Midianites once it was clear God had delivered the victory[5]. When we seek Him and find Him, and in faith move forward to spread His character and creativity in the world, glorifying Him.
God is glorified when His people attempt things that sometimes don’t make sense, then succeed because He provided the way. It’s always His plan anyway.
Soli Deo Gloria
[1] Judges 7:12 [2] Judges 7:19-20 [3] Matthew 25:21 [4] Matthew 25:27 [5] Judges 7:23-25
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 