I can’t imagine it – God being silent for 400 years.
That’s the amount of time between the Old Testament and the New Testament. So it is said that God was silent.
But was he? Really?
It’s hard for me to imagine that my Father God who loves us and cares for us so diligently each day would be quiet for 400 years. I think it’s very possible that he was speaking and interacting with people at that time but none of it was meant to become part of his revelation to us so it was not included in the Bible.
When I think about how much I need God each day and knowing that there were faithful people during that time as well, it doesn’t make sense that he was actually silent for 400 years. It doesn’t sound like something he would do.
But we know that there were 400 years between the two parts of the Bible. For some reason, God put in a significant break before he begins the account of his greatest Gift of all time – salvation through his son, Jesus Christ.
Mark’s account starts with, “The beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the son of God”. (1:1)
John’s account starts, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (1:1)
The Light of the World was arriving – we would never be the same.
it’s the big equalizer among all of us. You have 24 hours in a day and I have 24 hours in a day.
So the ‘I don’t have time for God’ excuse just doesn’t fly. We all have 24 hours and some of us find regular time with God.
Yes, I know all of our situations are different – work schedules, kid’s schedules, and all kinds of commitments fill our calendars. That’s where the challenge comes – how we choose to fill our calendars. Because it’s a choice.
I am now in a very blessed time of my life in relation to time because I am retired. I retired 5 years ago and my new schedule is pretty incredible. My calendar is mainly filled with things I want to do but I don’t have to do. I have a lot of time for God.
But this was not true of my life before retirement. I worked for 34 1/2 years straight for Corporate Jack in the Box. I was married with a 9 month-old child when I started working for Jack and had another baby 4 years later. I traveled a lot and got promoted regularly gaining more and more responsibility.
With a husband who worked fulltime, 2 kids, a house, a dog and a 60-hour workweek, you can imagine my life. And right in the middle of all of that, God challenged me to put him first. I had been running on empty for quite awhile, not happy when I realized that this is how the rest of my life could be. So when I realized that God was offering me the only way I was going to find joy and purpose in the middle of this crazy time in my life, I accepted the challenge.
And I began to reorganize my priorities. I changed my focus from my career onto my relationship with God. I started using my time differently – I stopped working 60 hours a week. I cut down to 40 or 45 hours a week, always used all of my vacation days to spend with my family and asked God to take care of the next raise or promotion. Interesting – I performed better when I worked less and I ended up with a career that blessed my family instead of taking away from my family.
My week was still packed with work, kids, sports, work travel, and more. There wasn’t much I could do about that. So I revamped my weekends. I stopped planning anything on Saturday night that would make us too tired to get up for church on Sunday. I took cleaning totally off my list by hiring a service to clean my house twice a month and trained my kids to they clean it the other weeks. I started doing my laundry, shopping and errands on Saturday, leaving Sunday open for worship and time with my spiritual family in the morning. Sunday afternoon and evening became a great time to spend with my kids and husband, study the Bible and also meet with Bible study small groups. Sunday became God and family day – all day.
I admit, it was hard for me to find my personal time with God during the week. I have never been a ‘get up at 4 am to read my Bible type of person’. It just doesn’t work for me – I’m a ‘get up at 4 am and go right to work’ person. I’m also not a ‘read a devotional every day’ type person. I don’t get much from that, I want to dig deeper.
So in the middle of the busiest time of my life, I would try to find an hour or two here or there during the week with God, knowing that I was going to dedicate Sunday to him. I believe God honored my desire to spend time with him because, somehow, I would often find myself spending two or three precious hours with him on Saturday as well.
I find it interesting to read when Nehemiah confronts the leaders in Jerusalem about ‘neglecting God’. They had stopped supporting the Levites so the Levites had to go get jobs and were unable to serve in the temple. Everyone had started working on the Sabbath – selling all sorts of produce and merchandise inside the walls of Jerusalem.
This could not go on so Nehemiah shut the gates to Jerusalem when Sabbath started and they stayed closed until the Sabbath ended. He put guards on the gates and told everyone to start bringing their tithes to the temple again and start supporting the Levites so they could go back to their temple duties.
He shut the gates.
I feel like that is what I needed to do to find significant time to spend with God. I had to shut the gates on all the other things that me and my family could do on Sundays. I had to shut the gates to the things my family could do that would keep us out late or up late on Saturday. I had to reorganize Saturdays to make room for God in my weekends. Looking back, I feel like this re-prioritizing was a blessing for my entire family because it slowed down our Sundays and we had more time to hang out with each other.
And I saw God multiply my time on Saturday and Sunday. On Saturdays I could get all of my errands and chores done AND play in the pool, have friends over and have fun. On Sundays I had time for God – worship and service in church, small group Bible studies, time with my family AND extra time to read and study God’s word which eventually led to reading the entire Bible every year and writing this blog.
When the path right in front of me looks like its straight up hill.
When the issue confronting me is big
and confusing
and scary
and heart-breaking.
When I am threatened on all sides by more problems, more sadness, more darkness.
What am I supposed to do?
Have you been there?
Have you felt the weight of too many responsibilities and so much conflict?
When Nehemiah found himself in this type of situation, he turned to God and prayed “Now strengthen my hands.”(6:9)
Nehemiah had groups of powerful people plotting against him as he led the Jews in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. His enemies were trying to frighten the Jews so they would stop working on the wall. But God answered Nehemiah’s prayers and the wall was eventually finished.
Is there something in your life that looks like its impossible to accomplish? Impossible to fix?
Give it to God. Ask him to strengthen your hands and then trust that he is answering. He may use you like he did Nehemiah to actually orchestrate the answer. Or he may want your strong hands to be folded in prayer before him, admitting your dependence on him and remaining faithful while he works all things out for your good.
When we want to accomplish something big, it takes a team. One person can only do what one person can get done.
I have discovered when a group of people join energy and brainpower to tackle a goal together, their efforts are multiplied and good things happen. I’ve seen big successes roll in when a team of people are engaged, committed to working together and helping each other achieve a goal.
And when God is involved I have seen a supernatural factor come into play that is truly astounding to witness. Projects turn out much better than planned. Blessings pile up. We see our faith growing as, together, we experience the power of God in our lives.
Has this happened to you? I’ve experienced this many times and its exciting every time it happens.
I find the historical account of Nehemiah leading the Israelites in rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem to be very motivating. The Jews were being attacked regularly by their enemies who didn’t want them to complete the wall. They were very discouraged.
We’ve all been there.
Nehemiah refused to stop building. He knew that he had been sent back to Jerusalem to lead this project so he couldn’t stop. He organized the men into teams, “From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bow and armor. Nehemiah 4:16. They protected their brothers with everything they had.
Working together,
protecting each other,
they accomplished the goal of rebuilding the wall.
They could not have done it without each other.
Our Spiritual family is like this. We need each other. Each one of us needs to identify our spiritual gifts in order to build each other up and fulfill our purpose of reaching others for Christ. We watch each other’s backs – loving and forgiving each other in supernatural ways.
And we love those who don’t know Jesus yet…
while our Spiritual family supports us and cheers us on.
I would normally tell you from experience that it’s not a good idea to test God. You won’t like consequences. God wants us to have faith in him and trust him, not test him.
With one exception.
There is one place in the Bible where God says, “Test me”.
He knows all the issues we have with money – it quickly becomes our god, we always want more and we’re willing to sacrifice our families to get it, we have trouble giving generously, we get in such deep debt that we think we can’t give. Just to name a few.
God says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” Malachi 3:10.
I have attended a couple of different churches who sponsor a 90 day challenge for giving to God. People tithe for 90 days – no cheating because nothing is hidden from God – and they watch God move in their finances. If they don’t see God move, they get their money back.
Nobody has ever asked for their money back because God always moves. I love it! Test him!
And you will find out what those of us that have committed to tithing have found out – the refunds, checks for overpayment and unexpected credit to our accounts start rolling in. Regular stories like this –
I had a dental claim paid by my insurance a couple of years ago and the medical assistant looked at me with surprise when she handed me back a check for $900. She told that insurance NEVER covers this part of the procedure but they did for me. Thank you, God!
The air conditioner in our home recently started making a very loud and worrying noise. Our house is 15 years old and the air conditioner is original to the house so you know what we thought – time for a new air conditioner. Nope! It was fixed for the cost of a service call. I always give God the credit for anything like this that happens to us because I know he’s watching over us.
You would hear these kinds of stories from anyone who has committed to tithe. God is faithful and we can count on him to respond when we are generous givers. I believe God moves in how often our cars break down and how quickly appliances stop working. If we are stingy with God, we don’t need to be surprised when we spend that money anyway on repairs and unexpected bills.
God is a good Father and he wants to teach us the right way to handle our money. Test him!
Through the years, my husband and I have donated two of our older cars to charity because we know God will bless us more for that than what we could sell them for. We donated a 2 year-old refrigerator to a church mission for the same reason. God knows.
When you and I faithfully tithe, we are putting our finances under the umbrella of God’s blessing. When we do that, he not only blesses our finances, he pours other blessings into our lives as well. These are things that money can’t buy – like joy, love and purpose. And more.
So much more pours out that it fills us up and starts to spill over to the people around us. The windows of heaven open up for us when we get our money in line with God. The more we give, the more we have. That’s God’s math. We cannot outgive God.
If you don’t have any of these stories, go ahead and test God! I know what will happen.
Thank you for your faithfulness with our finances, Abba Father.
I have discovered that many of my ‘why?’ questions are not answered immediately. God’s answer comes later. In some cases, many years later.
I have learned to recognize God’s movement in all of my why’s. God is a huge planner. He is the master orchestrator of the past, present and future for all of his children.
Why am I going through a tough time today? Often I realize much later that the first tough experience trained me for an even tougher trial that was coming my way. I learned lessons in the first struggle which helped me be more successful in navigating the next difficult situation in my life.
God prepared me.
As I read God’s Word, I see God’s preparation as a consistent thread in his epic love story. In the book of Esther, Esther asked Mordecai to gather together all the Jews of Susa to fast with her for 3 days as she prepared for her audience with the king. She was going to reveal the fact that she was a Jew and ask him to save her people. At that time in history, you were putting your life in danger by going to the king when he had not invited you. If the king didn’t want to see her, he could have her killed.
As the story unfolds, we see that over those 3 days of fasting God helped Esther develop a strategy for delivering her message. She set the stage first so that the king was ready to grant her plea for mercy for her and her people.
Preparation.
I know it’s a big part of why God let’s difficult things happen in my life –
and your’s. Each step of the way, God guides us and teaches us what we will need to know for the next step, training us so we are ready to complete the purpose he has for us here.
How did we get here? Tell me about the mountains you climbed and I’ll tell you about the valleys I’ve struggled through.
God tells us in Psalm 107 that we all need to share our stories. “Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story.” Psalm 107: 2.
Each of us has a unique tale to share.
Some of us have wandered, looking for a place to belong. We were hungry for love, starving for a purpose. When we cried out to God, he drew us closer to himself – to the place he made just for us. God gave us a purpose to get up every morning.
Letus tell our story, giving thanks to God for he is good.
Others of us lived in darkness, bound by chains of rebellion and addiction, stumbling through life with no help in sight. But we cried out to the LORD and he brought us out of the utter darkness, breaking all of our chains.
Let us tell our story, giving thanks to God for he is good.
Some of us made very foolish decisions and were suffering through the consequences of those to the point of thinking that death might be an option. But, instead, we turned to God for help and he healed us, rescuing us from the living death we found ourselves in.
Let us tell our story, giving thanks to God for he is good.
Others of us have experienced violent storms in our lives as huge waves of pain and grief washed over us. When our courage and strength were gone, we finally cried out to the LORD and he “stilled the storm with a whisper” (Psalm 107:29), calmed the waves and guided us home to him.
Let us tell our story, giving thanks to God for he is good.
My story is that I have loved Jesus my entire life but I had never made him Lord of my life. In my young adulthood I decided to wander – trying out all the ‘fun’ things the world had to offer. It seemed great at first but gradually my life because very empty, my soul was constantly searching for real joy. So I called out to God who made it very clear to me that he had never left me. When I turned back to him, I found him waiting for me with open arms.
When I got off the throne of my life and put Jesus on it, I found the joy I had been looking for.
God has been drawing me closer to him as I travel this Journey towards the Truth each day. I have left the emptiness and darkness behind, finding meaning and light because I put God first in my life.
I will continue to tell my story for the rest of my life, giving thanks to God for he is good.
God speaks to you and me in Haggai about the negative consequences that happen when we have our priorities wrong –
We work hard but have little to show for it…except for a lot of bills.
We eat but there is still a hunger in our souls.
We drink but we are still thirsty….for something.
We put on clothes but then we need to buy more because the last thing we bought didn’t satisfy us.
Our money disappears like we’re putting it in pockets filled with holes.
Can you relate to any of these?
I can. I have experienced all of those at different times of my life when my eyes were focused on something other than God.
“Now this is what the Lord Almighty says; ‘Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” Haggai 1: 5 -6.
I love how God uses the picture of a purse – or into today’s world – pockets full of holes. Before I put God first in my finances, it felt like all of my pockets, my purse and my bank account had holes in them. And was I satisfied? No!
I learned that if my life is about money and stuff, I will never have enough. And that is what God is telling you and I today in Haggai. God was talking to the Israelites because they were busy building their own houses while ignoring the rebuilding of God’s house, the Temple.
What is keeping you and I too busy to put God first in our lives?
God is telling us to get our priorities straight and THEN we will find satisfaction.
I’m on my 11th time reading through the entire Chronological Bible and I missed this detail for the first several years. But God stopped me here a couple of years ago and he has stopped me here every year since then.
“As soon as you began to pray, a word went out, which I have to tell you…” The angel Gabriel said to Daniel. Daniel 9: 23.
Wow! As soon as Daniel began to pray, God was responding. Right away. Daniel hadn’t even finished praying before God was taking action on his request.
Love it!
God is telling you and me that this is still happening today when we pray. Before I have finished praying, God is moving, responding, orchestrating things for my good – every day, all day. It’s not according to my timeline, though. I might not see him moving, but I trust that he is. I will just keep praying until the issue/problem/pain is resolved.
I realize that the grief and loss I feel since my son’s death will not be going away this side of heaven so I continually ask God for the wisdom and perseverance and obedience I need to keep moving forward with a broken heart until I go to my ‘forever home’.
When I turn to God and pray, recognizing my dependence on him, he takes action. I don’t need an angel to tell me that God is listening, I have his Word on it.
Thank you for always listening and responding, Abba Father.
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