Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Two Types of Stirring

There is a story of a bride going to visit a coal mine with her white dress on.  She asked the miner leading her into the ground, "will I get dirty?'  He replied, "I can tell you one thing.  You won't come out looking like you did on the way down."

1 Kings 16 tells us about a king who is on the way down into the coal mine.  In this case he, the husband, is the one who is about to be drenched with soot.

The sixty years of rebellious leaders before him were "trivial" (1 Kngs 16:31).  Ahab went further and willingly married into a family of murderers and sexual prostitutes.  1 Kings 21:25 notes "there was no one who sold himself to do wickedness in the sight of the Lord, because Jezebel his wife stirred him up."

There is another sort of "stirring" mentioned in the New Testament--"And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works." (Hebrews 10:24).

Before one considers a marriage it is important to contemplate what type of "stirring" the other person will do in the years to come.  A sober analysis beforehand may bring a signal of trouble.  The prophet Amos raised the question "Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?"  Obviously no.  If one is trying to stay clean while the other is making trips deep into the coal mine, it will follow that both will end up being dirty.

Had Ahab taken a lesson from the miner he would have known that one important thing--when you knowingly choose the wrong person you never come up looking like you did on the way down.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Rebuilding what God has Stopped

Hiel of Bethel rebelled against God by rebuilding Jericho despite a divine curse that Joshua had invoked generations before (1 Kngs. 16:33, Josh. 6:26).  Jericho represented the Lord's first victory in the establishment of a nation under Him.  God had destroyed the city and it was not to be reconstructed.  Any who dared would lose both his firstborn son and his youngest.  Hiel disobeyed and received the consequences.  Elijah appeared in the very next verse (17:1).  It was not coincidence that God's servant was now speaking against the king.

The verses teach a godly principle--"don't rebuild what God has stopped."

Noah is a less severe example.  After the many years of building the ark, Noah then lived inside it while the world was destroyed by the flood.  When the time came to let the animals out and for his family to again take up the creation command to "be fruitful and multilply, and fill the earth" (Gen. 1:28, 9:1,7), did he hesitate? Was he tempted to hang on to the ark as something sacred when God was calling him to move forward?  The ark was quickly becoming a sign of another time, another command of God.  Would he try to renew that trace of the familiar or press forward into the new?

Would he try to rebuild what God had now stopped?

God gives fresh vision while we often have difficulty in letting go of the old.  We may not provoke God as Hiel did, but we can swiftly become guilty of disobedience if we continue to ignore His call into a new direction.

Is God doing a new work?  Don't rebuild what God has stopped.