Taking Time with Jesus

Isaiah 43:1-4 (The message)

When You’re Between a Rock and a Hard Place
But now, God’s Message, the God who made you in the first place, Jacob,
the One who got you started, Israel:
“Don’t be afraid, I’ve redeemed you.
I’ve called your name. You’re mine.
When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you.
When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you’re between a rock and a hard place,
it won’t be a dead end—
Because I am God, your personal God,
The Holy of Israel, your Savior.
I paid a huge price for you:
all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in!
That’s how much you mean to me!
That’s how much I love you!
I’d sell off the whole world to get you back,
trade the creation just for you.

Oh that that were true God. I want to believe it, but people say I don’t. Do I?

“Sometimes I need to take time just to be with Jesus – to find out who and whose I am again.” Kathy Trocolli.

I believe that statement heart and soul – I also believe that if I don’t take the time, he will make the time. Can I hear an amen?

There is nothing like, burying most of your friends, losing a school, having health issues, teaching Bible Study, and leading prayer teams only to go home, wrap yourself up in a blanket on your back porch and stare at nothing for hours on end, believing that God and whole world hates you, – to get to your attention. He had my attention, trust me. The problem was, so did the enemy, and it was his voice I heard the most.

If you were to ask people their impression of me during that time period – they would have told you I preached a good sermon, taught a good class, but I didn’t know the gospel. That used to frustrate me to no end. How could someone think I didn’t know the gospel, just look at all of the things I get to do for God. Of course I know the Gospel. How could they even think that? Uhm… the fact that I shook like a leaf in the presence of Christians might have been a clue. Or the fact that when sharing my victories I was really sharing my fears. The “I cannot’s” of my testimony. Are you sure I’m called? Look at this mess. Really? Hmmmhmm. I wasn’t communicating victory, I was communicating defeat. And fear.

And so the cup breaks, and the real work begins.

Part of my personal testimony includes bits and pieces of loss, abandonment, and fear. when I was eight years old, I found out that I was originally given up for adoption and taken back by my grandparents as an infant. I’d been snooping in my mother’s room after school and found my original birth certificate and adoption papers. She was furious.

My father’s name was no where to be found. And neither was my father, as he had walked out on us when I was four. Even though the papers went on to show that he did legally adopt me, and I was given his name he still left. My mom tried her best to convince me that those choices were the best she could make when she had me and had no reflection on her current feelings or those of my birthfather. I had value and I had worth, and that our present circumstances (she was now raising me) should speak for themselves. At eight years old however, I reasoned that if she gave me up once, she’d do it again. And being adopted meant nothing if followed by being abandoned.

Much like Mary, I took those things and pondered them in my heart for most of my life. Imagine becoming a Christian, being adopted, being given a new name, and believing in your heart that it’s only temporary.
No wonder I shook.

Can you imagine being a Christian, gratefully receiving the triumphal entry of Christ into your life and yet believing it temporary? If not, you are blessed. If so, there is hope.

Zechariah 9:9
9 Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!
Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!
See, your king [b] comes to you,
righteous and having salvation,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

Those words are repeated in Mathew 21
4This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5″Say to the Daughter of Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’

– with the Triumphant return of Christ to Jerusalem.

Those are also words sung during Handel’s Messiah – something I participated in on a pretty regular basis. Shaking the whole time. “Arise oh Daughter of Zion!”

How is it, I can know those words? Sing them even, and yet not believe them. It’s true. My head was full of grace, but my heart was full of fear.

And yet, I knew God’s word. God’s word said “Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you.”

My temple, had thieves. No sooner than seeds were planted, the enemy would steal them.

It shouldn’t surprise any of us that the first thing Christ did in Matthew after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem was to clean out the temple.

The first thing to go false shame. And it would take a spiritual fire to burn that one out. But first, I had to learn how to stop setting myself on fire.

cont…