Remain in Him

Today’s Reading: Esther 9:1 – Exodus 2:25

It’s funny; normally I never play video games on my own. Occasionally I will play them with the kids, but even then it’s seldom that I cease my constant motion long enough to sit let alone play a video game. We had made plans earlier in the week to go swimming at our friend’s house and I’ve been looking forward to it all week! No parties to plan, no house to clean, no homework to do, nothing but sun and wet giggles filling my senses. Last night I even dreamed about swimming in the pool and playing with the kids, if that tells you how much I’ve been looking forward to this time off. Then this morning when I got up I realized that it was a day off, so I wasn’t even going to write today either… but then I sat down and played the video game and had to share with you what God had been showing me this morning1

At this point in our life my husband and I are being faced with many decisions. We’re felling the nudging of the Holy Spirit to the changes that are coming… but what will they be? Which way do we need to move? How do we make these decisions? Are there even decisions to be made? This morning, just like many of the mornings lately, as my husband and I embraced to pray at the front door on his way out to work, I could feel his tension mounting. I could sense his hesitancy to leave. Work has not been a pleasant place for him to be lately. Not that there’s anything unusually “bad” happening there, it’s just time for a change. So as I held him close breathing in his scent and savoring this intimate moment I opened my mouth and prayed “Lord, please show us the w….” and then I laughed. “Yes Lord, YOU are the way. Thank You for such a tremendous reassurance. You are the Way, and we are following You. Lord we trust You completely. Thank You.”

There’s nothing like an instantly answered prayer, where Jesus stops you in mid-sentence with the TRUTH. He is the way. He is not only the way to the Father; He is the Way to everything in life. Every decision, every path in life, every question in life can be answered with one name – JESUS! And what a precious name it is isn’t it! J

In playing Super Mario Brothers this morning with my son he achieved something impressive. He reached 99 lives. He had read online that when you reach 99 lives “something weird” would happen. So all morning, before I joined in on the fun and was just watching, he worked and worked to get up to 99. And he would get so upset when he would lose a life in the attempt to gain one. And I would look at him and say “Honey. You have NINETY EIGHT LIVES! I think you’ll be OK.” Because in the game, when you get down to zero lives the game ends. And so I kept pointing out to him “Honey, there’s no way you’re going to die, you’ve got NINETY EIGHT LIVES!”

So often we look at life upside down. We look at this life as it’s all we’ve got… but it’s not! Yes, it’s the only mortal earthly life that we have and we shouldn’t treat it with contempt, however it’s not the end. We have NINETY EIGHT LIVES! Well, really when you think about it, it’s more like infinity than ninety eight, but still, you get my point right? We’ve got to look at this life from the point of eternity, not the here and now. We have to feel free to take risks and “fail” in order to learn something. Because no matter how many times we “fail” it doesn’t really matter because we have more “lives” to live after the failure. We get to keep playing the game. We may have to start the level over again, but that’s OK, because every time we start the level over again we learn something else that we didn’t know the first time. We get an opportunity to play the level better than we did at first.

There are times in life when words slip out of our mouths that may hurt someone else. There’s no way to pull those words back in and swallow them down as if we never said them, but that’s no reason to bemoan the opportunity that we’ve just been given to learn! Every time we are faced with what seems like a huge life changing decision to make, a leap of faith if you will, what’s the harm in leaping? So what if we don’t make it to the other side we were leaping to, there’s always another life, another chance to leap again and perhaps make it to the other side this time. However, I’ve learned something about leaps of faith; generally they’re not nearly as much of a leap as a short step into the dark onto solid rock. One of our kids’ favorite movies is Monster’s vs Aliens. In this movie the main character Susan is being chased by a giant alien robot and she’s on the top of a roof and sliding down seemingly to her death. She gets to the edge of the roof and is hanging on by her fingernails when her grip lets loose and she falls… about two inches. She had forgotten that she was fifty feet tall – the same size as the building! God doesn’t let us fall when we leap into His waiting hands, it just may feel like that sometimes because that’s what we’re expecting to happen. We aren’t realizing that the leap is really just another step in our walk together with Him.

In today’s reading in Esther we finish the story of the Jews in their plight against Haman the horrible. We read about how the Jews were able to fight back and well… we always know how that goes don’t we. “No one could stand against them”. God had their backs the whole time. It didn’t seem like it in the beginning because things looked so dark and hopeless but He was there. And in the end, no one could stand against them.

God’s got our backs.

No one can stand against us.

God is with us, and if God is for us then who can be against us, right?

God bless you my friends, live in His truth today. He is the way, go in it and no one can stand against you1