May 19--Where To Find The Power To Live Your Best Life

Even the best intentions to turn over a new leaf and live a new life languish and let us down.  If the power's not in us, where do we find it?  Today's passages tell us:  1 Samuel 24-25, John 10:22-42, Psalm 115, Proverbs 15:20-21.

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Eve reads her Bible journal aloud on this episode.

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Transcript

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May 19 Where to find the power to live your best life? I won't be reading the scripture references. For those, please check the written post. Sunshine streamed through the foggy bottoms, while blue sky, gray sky, and every kind of cloud you learned about in fifth grade science danced their dosy does above. The white clouds looked bashful and out of place, like they didn't get the memo about it being a rainy day and wore sun dresses. There was even a little rain, but the light streaming through the woods was blinding just the same. I love rainy days and fog as much as I love sunshine. Getting to experience both at the same time felt like a gift with my name on it, a gift I didn't deserve after the snarky comments I'd just made to my husband. Despite what I'd said, I was swept up in the glory of the scene in front of me. The effect was so intense I lifted my arms in praise, my heart tied in my chest. Wait, hadn't I just bitched? The words were still hanging in the air, the sound lingering in my ears. Wasn't I still trying to justify those words in my heart because what I'd said was true and therefore warranted? I'd even ask God if I should speak up like this more often, wondering if my anger might be a relational tool for us. No kidding. I took a video of the glory I was glimpsing while the wonder of it kept washing over me. Why this? Why now? Why me? Still feeling self righteous and superior, I didn't deserve this gift. I bowed my head. Speak, Lord, for your servant listens, I managed to squeak. Clear as the sunshine that was streaming, I thought or heard, or thought I heard, put away your anger. Then a pause and anger won't achieve righteousness. Well, there it was. As surely as I'd wanted to get Hubby's attention earlier, God came and got mine. He dazzled me at first and then answered what I'd asked with such authority I couldn't miss it. When I looked at the video I took, I thought I saw a face in that dazzling sky, and maybe I did, but through those eyes I also saw the pride in my critique. Who was I to judge anybody, least of all the one who feeds me? I went inside to apologize. The rest of the evening I felt aired out, like the way you feel after it rains, when you open the doors and fresh air runs through the house. I don't have the power to live my best life or even a very good life to be honest, but I do have a power source that supplies me when I ask him. Today's passages say where you can find the power to live your best life too.

1 Samuel 24-25

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The Old Testament chapters are first Samuel twenty four to twenty five. These two chapters hold two very different accounts of David. In one he's the suffering servant who's so taken with God and his timetable that he won't allow even one hair to be harmed on Saul's head when he has the chance to kill him. In the other, he's enraged to the point of murder over an insult from a churlish nobody. Pleasing God doesn't seem to cross his mind because what he has in mind is a revenge that's all consuming. David is both the God fearer and the petty personal avenger, which David is the real one. It's a question I keep coming back to when I read his stories in the Bible. It's a question I keep coming back to when I think about my own stories too. The flesh isn't obliterated when we come to faith. It's alive and well and has to be put away. I have the power to do it, but not the power never to need to do it. Sometimes it takes a knock upside the head to get a clue about what we need to put away. It took a display of glorious weather to get my attention, and it took a beautiful woman to get David's. Abigail was one of the quickest thinking women in the Bible and one of my favorites because she's sensible and decisive. Here's the backstory. David and his men needed food while on their getaway from Saul. David sent representatives to ask Nabal, a wealthy landowner if he would supply them. He was bold enough to ask for his four hundred plus men, because when Nabal's shepherds grazed his sheep before this, David's men protected them. But Nabal refused David's request and insulted him in the process, acting like he'd never heard of him. But who hadn't heard of David by then? The whole country had been singing his praises since he killed Goliath and went on to be in charge of Saul's army. But Nabal asked, quote, Who is this son of Jesse? As if he'd never heard of him, and further he said that runaway servants were a dime a dozen those days, another put down. He made it clear that feeding David in his entourage wasn't his problem. A servant alerted Nabal's wife Abigail to what Nabal had said, and in a moment she took the crisis into her own hands. Who knew what David insulted and desperate might do to avenge himself? He might include vengeance against Nabal's entire household, which included herself and her maids, so she gathered enough supplies for David's men and sent them ahead of her. Abigail was intelligent and wise, the Bible says. She knew what living with a hot head was like, and she used that experience to act quickly to keep everyone she loved alive, and she didn't alert Nabal before she took this action either. She followed the supplies she sent, and when she met up with David she bowed to him. This must have gotten his attention since Nabal had just insulted him, but Abigail was also bold and she challenged David, saying that murderous revenge was beneath him, and she begged him to reconsider. After all, he was God's next choice as king, and wasn't it God's job to get rid of his enemies, to hurl them, quote, as a stone is thrown from a sling, end quote, and not David's? And further, did he really want this rash act of vengeance to haunt him when he became king? By referencing a sling and stone, it's obvious that Abigail knew the Goliath story, and as she did, so did Nabal. And while she was at it she put in a good word for herself, when all the good came to David that God would surely give him, remember me, she said. Your guess is as good as mine for what she meant, but here's what happened. When Abigail told Nabel what she'd done, he had a heart attack and died a few days afterwards, and when David heard that Nabel had died, he came calling for Abigail to be his next wife. Not only was Abigail intelligent and wise, she was also wily. There's a lot to learn from this woman who feared God and not men. For one thing, she didn't bow and scrape to Nab, and she didn't try to change him. Maybe she tried in the past and learned it didn't work, and she waited to give Nabel the news of what she'd done when he was sober enough to hear it. And for another thing, Abigail kept a cool head when she learned that David was offended, and she helped him cool his. She reminded David who he was and how God was his avenger. She also reminded him that his destiny was great. Did he really want to spoil it? The memory of murders like these would linger. And finally, she didn't play hard to get when David sent his proposal by messengers. She packed her bags ASAP and left with those who brought it. There's nowhere else I know of in the Bible that gives such clear guidance to folks with foolish partners, whether the foolish one be husband, wife, child, or coworker. When I think about how Abigail finessed this situation, I see that she responded quickly and wisely to real danger, acted with level headed fearlessness, kept calm regardless of another's upset, spoke winsomely rather than critically, reminded a hothead of his best self despite evidence of his worst, waited to deliver bad news until the receiver was sober, didn't let another's foolishness fool her into thinking she had no agency, and was humble throughout the process. The Bible doesn't say directly that Abigail trusted God, but her mention of him seven times in her conversation with David reveals her faith and her wise and humble behavior is the fruit that proves it. Despite her foolish husband, Abigail lived her best life by depending on the God who saves her, and eventually he freed her altogether. To find power to live your best life, you've got to be plugged into the one who saves you too.

John 10:22-42

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The New Testament passage is John ten, twenty two to forty two. Jesus keeps tangling with the naysayers who want him to say point blank whether or not he's the Messiah, but Jesus says he's already told them by his actions he does just what the Father does because he and his father are one. The problem here isn't with how Jesus communicates. The problem is that these folks won't believe what he tells them. In fact, they're enraged by it and they want to kill him. Jesus has already claimed to be God and they just won't accept it. What nobody seems to ask is what their hatred means or how much they need the Savior they want to get rid of. He exposes them and they're infuriated. Jesus slips through their fingers while he wows those who turn to him. It's uncanny how many times the Jews want to arrest or kill him and miss their chance to actually do it. It's also uncanny how often people turn in faith to him despite the religious leaders who hate him. In God's hands, conflict flames faith, it doesn't extinguish it. Sometimes I'm angered by Jesus. I hate that I can't live a good life without him. I hate admitting that I keep needing saving. I hate having to go back over the same ground again. My flesh still has hold of me because I'm a recovering Pharisee. Lord have mercy. But this is the dark side God tells me to put away, and he does it gently, like through the weather of heaven's IMAX in my backyard yesterday. The field of faith flaming is still fresh in me this morning, to find power to live your best life, put away your pride and anger, and embrace Jesus as your Savior.

Psalm 115, Prayer, Proverbs 15:20-21

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From Psalm one hundred fifteen. The Psalmist asked God to show his glory so that people will know him so that no one can say Who's this God? I don't see him. And he asked God to do it because he's merciful and faithful. By contrast, those who trust in their idols don't get to see God's glory. They're too much like the no gods they worship, blind, deaf, and silent, so they never see his glory, let alone glory in it. But those who trust in God do get in on glory. In fact, they're blessed by it. They even grow in it. They become more alive, more themselves, and more full of the desire to bless God back, quote. We bless him now, we bless him always, end quote. It's one great big old cosmic circle of blessing that we've got going with the God of the universe. He wows us with himself, and we say our wows back, and the blessings between us just keep going round. To find power to live your best life, look for God's glory all around you and praise him for it. Prayer. God, you go to great lengths to show me who you are in sunshine with rain, in truth wrapped in love, in a humble Savior who humbles me. Thank you for your glory that wows me into worship. In Jesus' name, so be it. From Proverbs 15, 20 to 21. A wise child brings his parents joy, while a foolish one hates them. Parents are proud of children who make good their opportunities, while the lazy child embarrasses them. Passages in 1 Samuel, John, Psalms, and Proverbs are selected for today in the yearly Bible. This is Eve de Bartle Laban Roebuck.