Long Enough

 [The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my own rough layover: a very special four-hour-two-toddler-post-bedtime-Detroit-airport night of magic. At one point, I caught sight of another passenger at our gate reading magazines, checking her phone, and enjoying an un-shared snack. Her calm, nonchalant attitude was the perfect foil for my frazzled frustration. To see how well someone else was handling a situation I was finding to be increasingly unmanageable gave me...feelings. Feelings of inferiority. Feelings of jealousy. Feeling incompetent to manage the way she was.  

Through the story of the Exodus, we see the people of Israel struggling with the wilderness, with their own layover, while Moses maintains a deep faith and close walk with God, trusting and seeking Him. If I had been an Israelite, I imagine I may have felt my belief was inferior or incompetent compared to Moses’ titanic faith through the wilderness time.

Photo Credit: Flickr user Vanessa Vortex

Many of the stories that we are comfortable and familiar with from the Israelites time leaving Egypt and in the wilderness leave Moses looking like he has super faith: patient in the waiting, taking his complaints to God, leading the people to Him. Did God give Moses an extra dose of faith - like everyone gets one nugget of faith, but Moses got a wheelbarrow full? Or is there more here? Why does his time in the wilderness look so different from everyone else’s? When I was younger, it seems (whether I heard my teachers correctly or not) that people like Moses were held up as examples for us to emulate because they were so impressive. The only problem is...I’m so not Moses. I feel pretty regular, not very super.

In my own life, in seasons of wilderness, I’ve run into people whose faith I admire, but it seems somehow on a completely different level from my own. Sometimes when I’m struggling my way through a layover season (complaining, demanding things from God I just know I need, squirming under discipline instead of learning), I talk with or hear about someone who is just Moses-ing it up in their similar wilderness: joyful and hopeful while I’m angry and frustrated, seeking God while I’m complaining, having peace while I battle. I admire their faith, that deeper, closer walk with God and I wish I were the same. But, as with Moses, I seem to ascribe their closeness to just a “better” faith, leaving me attempting to pull myself up by my bootstraps and “do better.” The cynic inside me has doubted that I would ever have a heart that seeks God the way theirs does.

Pastor Dirk reminded us this week that Moses didn’t just show up with this faith. Moses had already been in the wilderness, long before the forty years he would spend there with the Israelites. He had already met God and listened to Him in a period of life that wasn’t what he had intended or planned: his own layover. I tend to only think of Moses as an uber-faith-person; I forget that he was a murderer on the run, hiding and fearful, who needed to be restored and matured. Yet God grew Moses in the same ways He would grow Israel and that He grows us: in the layover, in the wilderness, in the waiting.

Over the last few weeks, we've heard encouragement about these biblical seasons of layover; but it's still hard to fight the feeling of just wanting to move on! This week we talked about moving on - in God’s time.

When I'm in a literal layover, I just want to get out; any plane to anywhere will do. Right? When God has me in a life layover, I tend to feel the same: praying that God would just end it, move me on, bring me to out of the wilderness and into new things - any new thing will do. But instead of a quick exit, perhaps it’s better to ask, “What is God showing me in this layover? How is He changing me? Where do I need to grow? How can I seek God in this layover instead of trying to hurry out of it?”

It’s in the wilderness that God trains and raises us up; it’s where the Spirit matures us. Instead of growing cynical about my own slow and immature heart when I encounter people who seem as faithful as Moses, I should ask those very people the stories of where they have come from, and find comfort in hearing how God grows us in the hard times.

When God invites me into the times of learning and waiting, I want to find peace in waiting for Him to work in me. Am I learning, growing, letting God shape and mold my heart?

God works in our hearts in the layover, moving us from immaturity to maturity, from slavery to freedom. There’s growth in the layover! When His purposes are accomplished, He will tell us we have stayed long enough, and it’s time to move on.

(Enjoy reflecting with the song Great Things by Elevation Worship!)

[Robin Bupp is married to Caleb, and they are from many places east of the Mississippi (but are calling Michigan home for the foreseeable future). A former high school science teacher, Robin is slowly turning the two Bupp kiddos into tiny nerds while they teach her lots of things, especially humility and patience.]

Pain at Just the Right Time

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

I have only been grounded once in my life, and it is one of the most vivid memories from my teenage years. As a fifteen-year-old girl, I thought I was in love with an eighteen-year-old boy and would do anything to see him, even though my parents had set strict boundaries around our time spent together. We were supposed to be in a large group of people in a public place or at a friend’s house—never alone and never in private.

I decided it would be a good idea to tell my parents that I was going for a run [I am not a runner… the fact that I thought this would work is still comical]. So, I left my house and went for a jog until I was far enough away from home that my “boyfriend” could meet me alongside the road. After a few minutes of talking, I saw my parents’ very distinct black SUV pulling up behind us and my dad rolled down the window… and the rest is history. At the time, it didn’t seem like my dad had my best interest in mind—after all, I just wanted to spend time alone with the boy I “loved.” Looking back now, I can appreciate my father’s perspective; he knew that this older boy was going to hurt me and he was simply trying to save me from unnecessary pain. Being grounded was the right discipline given at the right time.

In a similar way, God kept the Israelites in a “layover” period in order to protect them from their own sinful ways. While the Israelites simply wanted a change in geography and diet, God saw the root of their problem—rejecting the Lord who was among them (Numbers 11:20). He decided to give them what they wanted, food other than manna, just not in the way that the Israelites had expected. The Lord brought an overabundance of quail from the sea and let them fall around the camp. Even those who gathered the least collected approximately 4,000 pounds of quail!

However, because the Israelites had rejected the Lord, they were subject to God’s discipline—the kind of discipline that had their best interest in mind. Numbers 11:33 says, “While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck down the people with a very great plague.”



Photo Credit: Tristan Colangelo

God struck down the Israelites with a great plague in order to rescue them, and in the same way He also reaches into our lives in order to save us from our sinful behaviors. In an attempt to rescue us from the stronghold that sin has on our lives, our Heavenly Father can use pain as a way to share His grace and provide for His children. Rather than fighting the pain or ignoring the promptings of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we need to learn from the pain. It might be just the right amount of pain at just the right time, sent from a God who desperately wants to rescue us and bring us back to Him.

[Megan Stephenson is a recent graduate of Grand Valley State University and works for a private education group in Grand Rapids as an Assistant Registrar. She loves spending time with her husband, Ben, trying out new breweries, restaurants, and local attractions. She also self-identifies as a crazy cat lady, despite owning no cats of her own, thanks to her loving and allergic husband.]

When What You Want Isn't What You Need

[The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

There’s a worship song we sing pretty regularly at Encounter that I struggle with at times. Called “Always,” it includes these words:

Oh, my God, He will not delay  

My refuge and strength always 

I will not fear, His promise is true 

My God will come through always, always

One Sunday after singing it, I remarked to a friend that I wasn’t sure I bought it. At that point in my life, it seemed as though God was either moving really, really slowly, or perhaps not at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe God was there, but it was difficult to see how and where he was working. When we’re in a layover season in life, a time of uncertainty, disappointment, loss, heartbreak, change, or any number of other things that seem to keep us from moving from one place to the next, it can feel like “He will not delay” is a bit of a lie.

Photo Credit: Flickr User netcfrance, Creative Commons

In Numbers 11, we find the Israelites at the very beginning of a forty-year layover. When the people start complaining about the lack of a diverse diet within the first few weeks, Moses knows he’s in for a long, difficult time as their leader. Instead of sending fruit baskets and pizza and ice cream to alleviate the grumbling though, God gives Moses...a committee. It was likely not the answer Moses had been hoping for. Our natural reaction to a layover is to ask God to get us out of it, and that seems to have been Moses’ hope as well.  Yet, God’s reason for sending a committee is an important one. In verse 17 he tells Moses:

I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so that you will not have to carry it alone.

Instead of making Moses bear the weight of an entire community’s layover experience on his own, God gave him people to share it with. The Bible doesn’t tell us what the leaders prophesied about a few verses later, but I doubt it was all the same message given in the exact same words. And while we don’t get filled in on what Moses was thinking and feeling as this happened, I hope he was able to appreciate what God was doing by surrounding him with people. During a layover it’s tempting to ask God to get us out of it, but what if instead our question was, What does God have for me in this layover? And what if sometimes his answer is a committee?

If God gives us a committee, it can be difficult to let other people into complicated, messy spaces with us. We might feel like they’ll judge or blame us for being where we are, or offer words meant to help but that instead bring hurt. Those are the unpleasant sides of dealing with other humans, because nothing will ever go completely smoothly in any relationship. But we shouldn’t let fear hold us back from reaching out to the people who have proven themselves trustworthy. God put them in our lives for a reason. Having a committee didn’t fix all of Moses’ problems--it didn’t remove them from the desert or immediately make meat appear--it was, though, a tangible reminder from God that Moses was not alone in his problem. When we are in a layover, or when we are sitting with other people in their layover, presence may be all the solution we will get or are able to offer.

At times though, we have the opportunity to see layover circumstances in a different way than the people who are in the midst of them. I don’t remember my friend’s exact response to my lament that God seemed to be delaying, but it revolved around the idea that maybe God’s definition of “will not delay” is different than my own. For a God who is bigger than my linear, human understanding of time, “not delaying” could be a week from now, two years from now, or not in my lifetime at all. It wasn’t the reminder I wanted at that time, but it was the one I needed. If we let it, good, healthy, Christ-like community can function for us this way--helping us see what we may not be able to on our own and reminding us that God is who he says he is and he will do what he says he will. What we want from a layover isn’t always the same as what we need.


[Brianna DeWitt believes in Jesus, surrounding yourself with good people, and that desserts are best when they involve chocolate and peanut butter. She writes about faith, growing up, and whatever else pops into her head on her own blog, and tweets (largely about food) at @bwitt722.]

Layovers

 [The Midweek Encounter is a ministry of Encounter Church in Kentwood, MI. These posts are reflections on Sunday's message, which can be heard here each week: http://myencounterchurch.org/#/messages-media]

Pastor Dirk spoke about layovers this Sunday – I’ve been through my share of unfortunate airport hang-ups, but I discovered the low point of layovers during a four hour wait in Detroit with two post-bedtime (but not sleeping) toddlers. Layovers are no-one’s favorite part of a journey.

In Numbers 11:4-15, we find the Israelites in a layover. They were stuck in the desert, waiting. They were God’s chosen people, on their way out of slavery and headed to the Promised Land; but in Numbers 11, they are parked in the wilderness for a season. A forty-year season. 

Photo Credit: Flickr user Mike Boening Photography

The Israelites began to grumble and complain, because they didn’t have the things they thought they deserved or wanted or felt they needed. In the desert, God sustained them with manna; the people wanted something more. (Meat; they were grumbling because everyone needs a chicken nugget to go with their bread from heaven.) The people weren’t complaining because of unmet needs – they were complaining because they were looking for something more, something different. They longed for their old way of life – slavery! – romanticizing how good they had it back in Egypt. Their complaining and desire to just get out of the wilderness revealed hearts that were not looking to trust God, or to see what He might have for them right there in the layover.

Every day, without fail, God was meeting their needs, sustaining them. They didn’t ever wake up wondering what they would eat to survive – God provided manna every day.

In the Numbers 11 story, the Israelites were too focused on their desires and their grumbling to be aware of the goodness of God in the wilderness. Does this happen to us as well?

In my own life, when God has invited me into a layover, it’s so easy to wallow in the sadness, emptiness, and loneliness of all that is missing. Whether I complain with my loud mouth, or just inside my head, it’s easy to get lost in what I think I’m missing.

When we moved to South Carolina, I felt like I was in the wilderness. We lived in the middle of nowhere, family life was complicated by a miscarriage, and even at our fantastic church we were extras - unneeded youth volunteers. I spent some months confused, complaining (sometimes to God (useful!), sometimes to Caleb (not useful…)), looking for ways out. But God had unexpected treasures for me in that wilderness – a time of rest and restoration, a time for new steps of faith and different avenues of service and obedience, a time to learn about love from a thriving Christ-centered community.

I almost missed out on all of those beautiful – different - things because I wasn’t looking for what God was doing; I was looking for what I wanted, the things I was used to.

In Hosea, God speaks to the idea of waiting in the layovers:

“Therefore, I am now going to allure her [Israel]; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.” Hosea 2:14

Through Hosea, God was telling the nation of Israel about their rebellion, and comparing His plan to win them back to the time they had spent wandering before entering the Promised Land. I’m astounded by this passage; the wilderness isn’t an accident or a problem!

The layover – the wilderness – isn’t a scheduling mistake by God; He plans the layover because He has something there for us.

In Deuteronomy, Moses reminds the people of everything before they head into the Promised Land at the end of their forty-year desert layover; he warns them about the abundance that is coming:

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you – a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, and olive groves you did not plant – then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 6:10-12)

Moses is reminding the Israelites that when they come out on the other side of this long layover, they will have all the things they were crying out for – all of that and more! And yet, in that abundance, they will be prone to forget God. The wilderness was the place where they were most aware of God and His goodness; receiving everything they thought they wanted would tempt them to forget Him.

In the daily needs of the wilderness, they learned of God’s goodness. They learned that God was the only source for all of their needs. As He was faithful day after day, He invited them to trust Him.

We sometimes miss the good and gracious gifts of God when we are stuck with our eyes and hearts on our own waylaid plans during life’s layovers, unable to see the goodness of God as He cares for us. If instead we remember God’s faithfulness to us – that He has been good in the past, and we can trust Him to be good to us again – we will be in a position to let God allure us and speak to us in the wilderness. 

[Robin Bupp is married to Caleb, and they are from many places east of the Mississippi (but are calling Michigan home for the foreseeable future). A former high school science teacher, Robin is slowly turning the two Bupp kiddos into tiny nerds while they teach her lots of things, especially humility and patience.]