Provision and Pursuit

*note - after hearing from local police officers at my MOPS group today I will no longer be using my family members' full names on this site. If you know me personally, you know their names. If you don't know me, you don't need to know them.* Oh! and I am sooooo glad I am not on Facebook. 

Provision

I love the way God provides for all our needs. Even the seemingly "silly" ones. Especially the small ones, actually. What blows me away, though, is when the provision is so clearly set in motion long before the need arrives. His sovereignty just thrills me. I revel in stories of God making impossible links.

Jesus is already providing  family identity for our adopted child. I have been asked three times in the last six weeks what ethnicity T is. Today a woman at the Korean grocery store about fell over when she found out he was my biological son. She thought he was Korean. And not because of the embarrassing white thought that 'all Asians look alike to me.' She IS Korean. She knows what they look like.



T snarfing down a Korean cracker.

This double provision is so delighting me that I smile every time I think of it.

First, I'm getting practice answering people when they ask me about my child's race/ethnicity/heritage. This is new territory for me. I would have thought I would be better at it since I have thought about it so much. But it's different to think about how you're going to respond and then actually responding when caught unawares.  The second provision is that our child(ren) will have an older sibling that he/she/they can relate to. Just like he/she/they may face embarrassing questions and stares, his/her/their big brother T does, too.

T knows he belongs, he's just trying to figure out if he can grab that umbrella from his brother. Or eat my face.



Pursuit

God has been mercifully revealing some things that need to change in my life/heart. Mainly one thing, really. That is my lack of loyalty, love & real relationship with Him. I have fallen into a superficial life of Christian habit. I have been reading my Bible, but not in an effort to know Him more. I have slipped into outright prayerlessness. I go to church begrudgingly. I write tithe checks out of habit.

But I never saw the decline. I didn't even realize what had happened. Just like some people allow their marriages to rot to the point of becoming something in name only, I had become a Christian in name alone. Thankfully. Yes, thankfully, God did not allow it to stay stagnated there. He has used a number of Scripture passages to convict, enlighten & revive me. Here is one:

Come, let us return to the Lord.
For He has torn us,
and He will heal us;
He has wounded us,
and He will bind up our wounds.

He will revive us after two days,
and on the third day He will raise us up
so we can live in His presence.
 Let us strive to know the Lord.
His appearance is as sure as the dawn.
He will come to us like the rain,
like the spring showers that water the land. Hosea 6:1-3 HCSB

I love this whole passage, but I'm going to share the word study I did of the word in verse 3 that is translated here, "strive." I wanted to know what "strive to know the LORD" looks like. First, here are a few other translations:

 So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD. NAS

And let us know, let us follow on to know Jehovah. ASV

And let us have knowledge, let us go after the knowledge of the Lord. BBE

Let us know, Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. NKJV

The Hebrew word is transliterated Radaph. It means to hunt, pursue, chase after. The first time it was ever used in the Bible was in Genesis when Abraham rescued Lot after he was kidnapped. It is a rather strong, perhaps even violent term.

Imagine someone just kidnapped a family member and you are hunting that person down. What sort of energy and focus would you pour into your pursuit? What would distract you from reaching your goal? What hardship would cause you to stop short of saving them?

Now.

Do you pour that same energy and focus into your quest to know God? Does only the extraordinary serve as a distraction? Is the only thing that stops you from digging into Scripture a life-or-death difficulty?

I know my answers are rather pitiful "No's." Some days I grant God just the ebbing energy left right before I fall asleep. Pretty much everything serves as a distraction from my time seeking to know Him. Chores, internet, children, books, etc., all serve as effective roadblocks.  I don't wake up and say, "If I only accomplish one thing today, it will be making an effort to know my Savior." Brushing my teeth is of greater importance to me than striving after the knowledge of Jesus.

But now that I am aware of my misplaced priorities I can (and am) asking God to fix that. I am also putting forth greater effort to know Him. Even when I'm tired. Even when I don't feel like it. Though I am not in a full-blown hunt mode yet, I am picking up steam. Hopefully soon I'll be sprinting by, eyes focused only on my King, striving to know and love Him above all else.

copyright (c) Elizabeth, Bug's Beef. All rights reserved.