Category: March

Hold Loosely

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

Stuff

Boxes of stuff.

Rooms of stuff.

Garages and basements full of stuff.

Stuff we’re not using but someone else would use it – if they had it.

Stuff that hasn’t fit us for many years but we still can’t give it away.  Stuff that’s broken and we’ve never found the time to fix it but we still can’t part with it.

God never meant for us to keep all of our stuff for ourselves.

God told the Israelites that their 50th year in the Promised Land was supposed to be a Year of Jubilee.  During this year, all of the poor people who had sold themselves as slaves were supposed to be freed and all property which had been sold was given back to the original owner.  It was intended to be a year consecrated for redemption and freedom.

Does it surprise you that my research shows that the Year of Jubilee was never observed?

I’m not surprised.  Our culture has taught us to hold our belongings and our stuff very close.  We don’t give stuff away.  We worked hard for these things.  We earned them.  They will be ‘worth something someday’.

Well, they are worth something to someone else who has less than us today if we could just loosen our grip on them.

The Israelites couldn’t do it, either, so they lost the chance to see God work in a supernatural way in their lives.  They didn’t experience the joy and freedom of having open hands when it came to their ‘stuff’.

God wanted this to be a holy year for the Israelites where they would see his provision for them as they gave the property back to the original owners and set the slaves free.

But it never happened.

What about me?  What about you?  Are we holding loosely onto our belongings and stuff while we hold tightly onto God?  Are we seeing God work supernaturally in our lives because we spend more time and energy on loving him than we do with the things we own?

Do we own our stuff?  Or does our stuff own us?

Please help us hold loosely to everything that is not about loving you and loving others, Abba Father.

What’s New?

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

Growing….

changing…

I am not going to be done learning until my heart stops beating.  There’s a time to stop being flexible and stop being open to new things and that time is when I’m dead.  I have learned a lot in these last 50-some years 🙂 and I have a lot to learn in these next 30 years or whenever my eyes shut for the last time on this earth.

I am challenged to be quicker on the learning end than Gideon was as I read his story in Judges.  The Lord told Gideon directly that he was going to bring him victory.  But Gideon didn’t get it – Gideon replied that he was the least of his family.  So what?  God was going to do this, not Gideon.

Gideon prepared an offering to God and the Angel of God came down to burn it for him.  Are you getting this yet, Gideon?

Then God told Gideon to cut down the pole in town that was dedicated to the pagan gods and build an altar with the wood.  Gideon obeyed but he did it at night because he was afraid.

Really?  God is talking to him and sending angels with fire and still Gideon is sneaking around at night?

The townspeople wanted to kill Gideon for cutting down the pole but a leader in town stopped them.  Who did that, Gideon?

Then God called Gideon to lead the Israelites into battle but Gideon still had to test God by laying out a fleece.  Twice!

When are you going to understand that this is God you’re dealing with, Gideon?

It appears like Gideon is starting to learn and trust God when he lets God limit his army to 300 men.  But then he takes a step back when he’s afraid and has to sneak into the Midianite camp to hear what’s going on before he will attack it.

From what we read, that looks like the final step of learning to trust God for Gideon because we don’t read of him testing God again or being afraid.  Gideon leads the Israelites into several successful battles without testing God first.

He learned to trust.

He got it.

So I have to ask myself – how well am I doing in learning to trust?  Do I get it?

How well are you doing?

Please help us to trust you, Abba Father.

Lost in the Weeds

On By Judy GlasserIn March2 Comments

Going in the same direction.

Moving forward together.

Shared goals.

Unity.

And it feels good when I’ve got it, doesn’t it?

But unity isn’t an easy thing to achieve.

There is compromise – it doesn’t have to be all my way.  I need to take a look from other people’s perspective – there are other valid opinions.

Prioritizing – is it worth creating an issue?  Wisdom = losing a lot of battles in order to win the war.

And – if this is a battle that needs to happen – much planning and selflessness needs to be included in figuring out how to bring up the issue.  Emotions stay out of it because they cause me to over-react and say things that aren’t helpful.  Just because something is true doesn’t mean that I can say it anytime I want to.  The timing of discussions on difficult issues can determine success or failure.

I can get lost in the weeds.  Details that don’t really matter can derail me when I’m trying to discuss difficult issues, causing any forward movement to stop.  Sometimes I get so lost that I actually move backwards.  Very disappointing!  I know you’ve been there, too.

So unity is not easy to achieve but it’s very much worth the effort.  We read about the joy the Israelites experienced in Joshua 22 when they avoided some serious conflict between groups merely by talking with each other.  One group thought the other group was rebelling while the 2nd group thought the first group was going to try to make an issue of where they were living in the future.  During their discussion, they realized that they worshipped the same God and they were on the same page.

Unity.

We could use more of it, right?  Where do we get more unity?

God.

As my relationship with God grows, he is able to give me the wisdom and perspective I need to bring more unity into my life – more unity with my husband and family and more unity with my church family.

When we are all looking to God for direction and insight, God provides unity.  It’s his desire for us to live peacefully together and live a life full of joy.

In him, we are unified.

And we find joy.

Thank you, Abba Father.

 

Sold Out!

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

What would you sell your life for?

It’s a great question because sometimes we dedicate our lives to things that just aren’t worth it.

We can sell our lives to making money and spending it.  But everything we buy gets old, breaks and requires more money to fix it up or replace it.

Our ‘stuff’ will always disappoint us.

We can sell our lives to work and accomplishments.  We may love it but, someday, that all goes away.  We get fired, laid off or we just get old.  I recently retired which meant giving up a nice paycheck and a lot of rewards and recognition.  I loved working and now I love being retired.  I’m glad I worked long and hard for over 34 years at something I loved to do.  Now I’m very happy to reclaim all of those hours in my week and move on to the next phase of my life.

We can sell our lives to relationships with our spouse, our children, our family and friends.  They are very important but they will also dissappoint us at times.  It’s a fact.  And they all will eventually pass away some very sad day.

In Joshua 8, Achan sold his life for a robe and some gold and silver.  It was too good to pass up.  So he didn’t, probably believing he would never get caught.  Not smart. He couldn’t hide from God.  After getting caught, he admitted his disobedience but that didn’t change the consequences. He lost his life for that ‘stuff’, ending up under a pile of rocks.

I don’t want to end up like that.

So I choose the path of obedience and faithfulness to God.

I choose to be ‘sold out’ to God.

And I’m 100% confident that it’s the right choice.

What is your choice?

I love you, Abba Father.

Control Freaks – Chill!

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

Her home was demolished.

Everything she knew was gone.

Her city was burned down by foreigners.

All of her friends and neighbors were killed, only her family was saved.

Things didn’t look good for Rahab.

She and her family were still a live but every one and everything else from her life was gone.  Crushed.  Burned.  Now she had to live in the enemy’s camp.  What good could possibly come from this situation?

Well, we know the rest of the story.  Rahab’s name would later show up in the lineage of Jesus!  She was Jesus’ great, great, too many greats to count, grandmother.

God had unbelievable plans for Rahab when he saved her from being destroyed as Jericho burned.  She didn’t know it.  I’m sure there were times as she started up a new life in the camp of her former enemies when she wondered why she was still alive.   Everyone else except her family was dead.  Everything that she had known before was gone.

Rahab had no way of knowing that God was going to bless all of creation through her lineage.

Just like I have no way of knowing what God is doing as I struggle through the twists and turns of life, trying to figure out how to transition from phase to phase.  Looking back, the pieces often make sense.  But it can be very hard to navigate through the maze of today.

I just don’t know.

But God does.  So I focus on him, trusting him to show me the way one day at a time.  Its often one step at a time.  Trying to control the world causes frustration and stress.  Trying to control even my little space in the world is impossible.

This last year of my life really proved this to me.  I ended up in so many places I never thought I would be – never wanted to be.  God is working good things out of the evil that is done.  I am already seeing some of the good things but there will be many more that I will never see.

Like Rahab.

So I will trust you, Abba Father.

 

Watch Closely Now

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

I love it.

God is not limited by cultural rules.  He created justice, he is just and he acts justly.

Whenever we see God’s actions and directions not lining up with current culture, we need to take note of it.  We know that God is right and our culture is wrong in every one of these instances.  Sometimes it takes our culture thousands of years to catch up to what is right.

The historical account of Zelophehad’s daughters in Numbers 27 is one of my favorites.  We’ll call the Z’s daughters from now on  🙂

At that time in history, women were considered to be the property of men and most men had more than 1 wife.  When Z died without having any sons, Z’s five daughters asked to inherit his property.

What!?

That just wasn’t done.

Women didn’t inherit property.  They WERE property.

When Moses took this case to God, God directed him to give the property to the daughters as an inheritance.  He stipulated that they had to marry within their tribal clad so that the land stayed with in the family.  If you think about it, that makes a lot of sense since the land was physically divided by clans.  This kept everything organized as God had designed.

I bet there were many long and heated discussions by the male leaders of the families as they gathered around the campfire at night!  This story is only 4 paragraphs in the Bible but I’ll bet the arguments against doing this could fill up several scrolls if they had all been written down.

I’m sure the same concern came up that was discussed with King Xerxes later in the book of Esther.  If these women received this request now, they are just going to ask for more and more.  A dangerous trend was starting!  But we read that they made the right decision and obeyed.

It took thousands of years but – yes, women inherit and own property now.  As recently as the 1950’s women were generally considered not capable of inheriting and running large properties and businesses.  But way back in ancient times, God knew he had created women equal to men.  Different, but equal.  He set a spiritual leadership hierarchy in place that has everything to do with order and process and nothing to do with intelligence and aptitude.

And our culture has finally caught up to God’s truth….. in most cases.

Please help us live by your truth, Abba Father.

Everybody is Doing it……

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

But that doesn’t make it right.

Peer pressure can be a very strong influence in our lives and it can push us in a direction we don’t want to go.  It can give us ‘permission’ to do things that aren’t good for us, causing negative consequences to happen in our lives.

“Do not follow the crowd”.do-not-follow-the-crowd

God told the Israelites this thousands of years ago in Exodus 23.  And we have the same issue today.  When we see a lot of other people doing something, we can start to wander and think its ok.  All of these people can’t be wrong, can they?

Yes, they can be.

Yes, they are.

If I want to live a life of truth and integrity, I need to build my house on the Rock which is God.  He is the creator of truth.  He designed justice.  He knows everything.  The crowd has no effect on his right and wrong.

When I am in line with God, I am in line with how he created me to be.  I’m in line with ‘why’ I was created.  I was going to say that I’m in line with the universe but that sounds like the beginning of a song from the 60’s. 🙂

If I’m not building my house on the solid ground of God’s truth, it’s going to get washed away by the next storm.  A lot of the mess we see in our culture is the result of people’s houses getting washed away in the storms of their lives.  And there’s always another storm coming our way.

What is your life built on?

God’s truth?

Or the wavering, changing, untruth that defines our culture?

This is an important question for each of us to answer for ourselves.  It has eternal implications.

Thank you for your truth, Abba Father.

Justice For All

On By Judy GlasserIn March2 Comments

Equal Justice.

Due Process.

Our modern justice system was modeled after the laws which God gave Moses.   The culture at that time was filled with cruel kings who capriciously imposed evil and sub-human punishments upon their people.  The processes and procedures God set up brought a higher level of due process and equal justice than that culture had ever seen.

The Mosaic laws were meant to teach the value of life to the people and raise the level of ethical conduct within the Israelite nation.

One of the key words there is ‘ethical’ which means ‘how one should live’.  Our current culture has morphed that definition into ‘how I think I should live’ and ethics don’t mean anything with that definition.  When we lose a compass, any shared standard of ethics is also lost.  This explains a lot of the mess in our culture today.god-is-our-compass

Because our compass can only be one person – God.

He created us.  He knows how he designed it all to work.  He wants the best for us.  He is omnipotent – he can do anything.

There is nothing and no one else who knows us and loves us like God.

When I make him my compass, I am plugging into the Creator of the Universe.  It’s not what I think is right that matters.  What matters is what God thinks.

And so I read God’s word.  Study God’s word.  Memorize God’s word.  And I’m very serious about this journey towards the truth.

I’m very glad you are on this journey with me.

We love you, Abba Father.

 

The Giver

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

He gives us everything we have.

Our families.

Our jobs.

Our skills and talents.

Where we live.

Joy!

The air we breathe.

Our next heartbeat is a gift from him.

The Giver.

This is one of my favorite names for our Father God.

Because he gives…..

and gives.

He never get tired of giving the very best things to us, his children.

He gave us his only Son –

that we might have redemption and purpose here on earth followed by eternal life in heaven with the Giver.

In 1 Samuel 8, Samuel starkly contrasts the differences between earthly kings (and governments) and our heavenly king.  The earthly kings (and governments) just keep taking –March 28 2016 The giver

taking sons to serve in the army.

taking daughters to cook in the kitchens.

taking the best of the land and a tenth of all crops.

The earthly king takes a tenth of the flocks as well.

Eventually, everyone is a slave working for the earthly king.

Unlike our heavenly king who has given us everything.

Yes, he asks us to give some back.

But not because he needs it.

He knows we need to be able to give it.  We need to be able to put God’s kingdom before the other things we want to do with our money, time and possessions.

He knows whats best for us.  He wants the best for us.

Let our gratitude grow as we think about all God has given us!

Thank you, Abba Father!

Do What You Want

On By Judy GlasserIn MarchLeave a comment

What a good description of how our culture makes decisions!

We just do what we want.

And then we wonder why we have problems and issues.  So much emptiness.

Just like the Israelites.

As we read through the end of the book of Judges, the Israelites are going from one bad decision to the next.

They are making idols and then killing each other over these man-made statues.

They slaughtered the tribe of Benjamin and then wiped out another tribe in order to get wives for the Benjamite survivors.

Craziness!

The book of Judges ends with this verse, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” ( 21:25).March 25 2016 do what you want

And their choices were causing all kinds of mayhem and problems.

This is what happens to us when we aren’t submitting to God.  When we’re just doing what we want.

In order to have the meaningful, successful lives that we’re looking for, we need direction and wisdom from God.

He created us.

He knows what’s best for us.

When we seek his will and obey him, we avoid the traps we encounter when we are  ‘doing what we want.”  We avoid the consequences for those bad decisions.

And, the longer we’re committed to this journey towards the truth, we gradually want more of the things God wants for us.  It might be a slow process, but God performs a supernatural transformation when we stay aligned with him year after year after year.

Please give us your direction and wisdom, Abba Father.