April 18--Where to Find the Home You've Always Wanted

Feeling wanted and welcomed at the place you're most comfy, isn't this what finding home is all about?  Today's passages tell us where we can find home no matter where we are:  Joshua 16-18, Luke 19:1-27, Psalm 88, Proverbs 13:11-12.

Click here for the written post of this episode.

Eve reads her Bible journal aloud on this episode.

Click here for the FREE Yearly Bible Reading Plan she uses.  

Transcript

Joshua 16-18

Luke 19:1-27

Psalm 88, Prayer, Proverbs 13:11-12

SPEAKER_00 0:00

April 18. Where to find the home you've always wanted? I won't be reading the scripture references. For those, please check the written post. I once went to a friend's vacation house in upstate New York and felt at home the minute I walked up the steps to the porch on the second floor. But it wasn't a porch on just part of the second floor. This porch covered the entire second floor. It felt like a tree house perched there on top of the house, and I was the lucky bird who landed and found a cozy nest. It had a three hundred sixty view all around and down to the lake. I'm a sucker for a good porch, and even more for a one hundred year old house with a great porch and lake view. Feeling a sense of home is a wonderful thing, as if where you are is exactly where you belong, as if you're not just expected, but welcomed wide, with your favorite snacks waiting and a bed pushed against the screens for napping. I felt stabs of home like this in other places, but this one included time with God in a whole new way for me. It was the experience that started me reading and writing about the Bible in earnest. It was what inspired me to start this blog in the first place. Finding home and feeling welcome there come up in today's passages. The Old Testament chapters are Joshua sixteen to eighteen. To get all the land God's marked out for Israel, they must fight the natives without the latest warfare technology. To win they have to ask God for help and trust Him to give it, which would be both humbling and a natural feeling when you think about it. It would be so much easier to trust God if they also had a couple hundred iron chariots to fall back on. I'd much rather do something myself than ask for anybody's help, much less trust God to show up in the process, but that's the life he gives us, one we can't manage without him, one that's actually impossible humanly speaking. This is where we find the Israelites who have taken over most of the promised land by chapter sixteen. Joshua and the leaders are dividing it up based on the number of people in each tribe. While God has said the land is theirs, they still must fight to claim it from the Canaanites. The second half tribe of Manasseh complains that their allotment of land isn't big enough for all of them. Joshua agrees that they need more room, but rather than give it to them, he tells them to clear the forest they've already got. These Manassehites also complain that the locals with iron chariots are too strong for them, but Joshua's not buying it. He knows what God's already done for them in the wilderness and in crossing two bodies of water, and he knows what God has promised he'll still do for them, help fight the Canaanites and drive them out. Joshua stands on what God's already said, that the land is theirs and that God will fight with them to take it. God has already promised Israel's victory, and Joshua is confident when he says, quote, the powerful Canaanites, even with their iron chariots, won't stand a chance against you, end quote. It's the people's job to decide whether or not they'll believe him and fight for it. God gives us promises just like this, promises that are as true as He is, and He waits for us to believe them, to lay claim to them, to partner with Him and do what it takes to receive them. Faith isn't a sit back and watch God work situation. It's a cooperation, a join up and get fit for service opportunity, working out your salvation, quote, with fear and trembling, and quote, trusting that God is the one who supplies both the desire and the drive to do it. It's an interesting sort of relationship that he calls us into where mainly we listen to what he says and do it, but also where we seek him out and press in for the how to and we ask for reinforcements and refreshments too. It's not all up to me as it turns out, and it's not a large part that I do compared to his part, but it's all I can do, and it's quite a lot compared to nothing. The walk of faith is like a tour of duty behind enemy lines with a state of the art walkie talkie, which is what prayer is. It's a strategic tiptoe through minefields consulting the design manual, which is what the Bible is. There are regular days off living it up, plus naps in the back seat while God drives the truck. It's resting and trusting, it's asking and listening, it's obeying for goodness sake, that word no one likes, including myself. But it's not running off or refusing to show up. It's never nothing. And it's the intimacy that surprises me, not all the impossible work, because the work you kind of expect. I mean, being on God's team you kind of figure you'll have to do a lot. Trusting him with your entire life is really so alien, isn't it? But it's the long hours with him in the hammock, the friends and family who show up exactly when you need them, the love notes he leaves everywhere, a bird song, a heart shaped leaf, a cool breeze. It's the you're my favorite one, my beloved that throws you off, because you thought you were simply reporting for duty, tolerated like a disappointing recruit. But no, God says you're the apple of his eye, that even if all the rest of his sheep are safe, he'd still leave them all and spend all night looking for you if you got lost. What's more, every time you say help and head home to him, he's already running to meet you. He throws a party when you get there, and he doesn't ask where you've been or what took you so long. Gotta love a God who celebrates sinners who repent, who lets his glory and goodness clothe them, who gives them all his loot at the expense of Jesus, simply to have them home, popping atop with him. I don't know about you, but I want to obey a God like this, and that's what I didn't expect, finding God as my home, with his door open, light on, and him waiting up for me. The New Testament passage is Luke nineteen one to twenty seven. Jesus finds Zacchaeus, a Jewish traitor and tax collector, a government sanctioned thief, a little man hated by everybody, both Jewish and Roman, except for Jesus. Jesus stops beneath the tree Zacchaeus climbed into so he can see Jesus pass by, and Jesus invites himself over for a meal, stumping the rest of the crowd, who've got to be thinking, why this guy? It's because this guy quote wanted desperately to see Jesus, end quote. That's all it takes, as it turns out, to get Jesus to come over to your house. All Zacchaeus did was run ahead and climb a tree so he could see him. And Jesus did all the rest, came to him, connected with him, and then parted with him and the rest of the Rifraf back at Zac's house. Salvation came to Zacchaeus, Jesus said, because quote, the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost, end quote, which subtly says he didn't come to restore the found. People who aren't lost don't need finding after all. Jesus finds himself at home with a thief among other outcasts and welcomes them and makes homes for them with him. From Psalm eighty eight. This may be the darkest Psalm in the Bible. It begins with the writer telling God he's his only hope, and it ends with quote, darkness is my closest friend, end quote. There are no rays of light anywhere in it, except that the words of this psalm are addressed to quote, the God who saves me, end quote. The writer is near death, as low as he can get, and we find out that he's been suffering like this all his life. We also find out that God has put him here for reasons we don't know, quote, you have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths, you have overwhelmed me with your waves, end quote. But the psalmist still cries out to God for help, quote, in the morning my prayer comes before you, end quote, even though he feels like God rejects him and hides his face. The question I'm asking is if God hasn't helped him, why does he keep praying? But the better question is, where else can he go? The writer keeps coming to God because he's the only God there is, and prayer connects him to God, even his unanswered prayers. The psalmist knows that God is the only one who can help him, and he chooses to trust him regardless of his situation. Faith doesn't give up simply because times are hard. In my experience, it's when times have been hard that my faith has exploded. There's nothing like pain and heartache to send me running to God for comfort. As much as I dislike reading that a person can suffer all his life without feeling God's help at all, I'm also encouraged that even in the worst of situations, hope in quote, the God who saves, end quote, is still possible, and even life giving, maybe hope like this comes only when you're in the deepest, darkest pit. No matter how God responds, praying tethers us to him because being home with God is still the best place there is. God, thank you for being the home I most need, even though I hate what it takes to get me there. Thank you for making your home inside me too. In Jesus' name, so be it. From Proverbs thirteen, eleven to twelve. Money saved little by little grows. Money gained by swindling dwindles. Hopelessness leaves you heart sick, but good news cheers you up in a moment. For the rest of the story of that porch experience, click the link at the end of this written post. Passages in Joshua, Luke, Psalms, and Proverbs are selected for today in the yearly Bible. This is Eve de Bartelaban, Roebuck.