Tim | Living in God's Shadow

Who Is Holding Your Hand?

August 5, 2020 by Tim

I remember the day before my oldest daughter started to walk. We were going shopping. When we got out of the car, she grasped my hand on one side, and on the other side, gripped her mother’s. Receiving support from both of us, she walked from where we had parked to the back of a large department store. The next day she tried walking without assistance. She took a few successful steps before she tumbled to the ground. Following that tumble, she preferred to hold someone’s hand if she had to walk across an open area.

Although she did eventually learn to walk without support, she still liked to hold my hand. Holding my hand assured her I was there should anything happen that made her uncomfortable or frightened. It also kept her close to me. When she had my hand, her perspective changed. The person whose hand she held could resolve what she could not properly deal with on her own.

Throughout scripture, I find God is continually offering His hand to humans as they struggle through life. Some people accept His hand, and others reject it.

The early years of King Solomon’s reign demonstrated he was dependent on God to rule the nation of Israel. When God told Solomon to ask for anything he wanted, Solomon asked for wisdom. This request showed that Solomon recognized the need to have his hand held by God as he ruled the people. (1 Chronicles 1:7-10)

Requesting that God hold your hand is a sign that you are mature enough to recognize your limitations. Humans are limited in their understanding of situations and in their capacity to deal with those circumstances.

When my children were very young, we tried to hold on to their hands, especially when we were in parking lots and stores. We did this because we recognized the potential dangers to the children in those areas. Every once in awhile, one of the children would break free and run toward danger. This action would raise the parental stress level and cause us to attempt to regain the child’s hand. God does not force anyone to hold His hand. However, I believe that He chases after us when we run into danger. He offers to hold our hand and direct us despite our immature action.

When you hold hands with another person, you must be near them. We can use this principle in our spiritual lives. If we want God to hold our hand and give us support and guidance, we must move into a close relationship with Him. Problems arise when we try to move away from God and still receive His support and blessing.

I believe the natural response to receiving direction and encouragement from God is, offering support to those around us. Perhaps the proper understanding of this is God holding our hand on one side while we extend our other hand in support and encouragement to those on the other side.

While my daughter was learning to walk, we encouraged her. We assured her that she could take the step or two that was required to reach us. We were there to comfort and catch her if she fell. She knew that we believed she could, even when she was unsure. God has that same type of belief in us. He holds our hand, and He also encourages us to go ahead and take that next step. He knows that each step will bring us even closer to Him. Living in God’s shadow was never intended to be a life of misgivings and loneliness. When we hold God’s hand, we step into His shadow, fully confident of his support. We are encouraged and sustained by God’s hand in troubled times, enabling us to offer hope to those around us.

Occasionally, I hear about a person or animal rescued from the water by a human chain. A person safely on dry land is holding the hand of another, who holds the hand of another, continuing until they form a line out to whomever or whatever they are trying to save, forms these human chains. As people who live in God’s shadow, we should also offer a hand of hope to those who live in hopelessness. We must have one hand clinging to God’s hand and the other hand offering hope and encouragement to the discouraged and hopeless around us. We must offer them a hand to help pull them to the safety of God’s shadow.

Whose hand we choose to hold is a crucial detail. I have found holding my right hand with my left is not comforting or reassuring. It is kind of like plugging one end of an electrical extension cord into the other end of the same cord. For the extension cord to work correctly, it requires a connection to a power source. Holding God’s hand and connecting with God, energizes me and enables me to offer a link to that energy to those around me.

When my children were small, we discouraged them from holding any stranger’s hand. We chose this action because we were not sure where the stranger might lead them or what germs or other substances the stranger might have on their hands. We did not know if the stranger was just a person whose day was brightened by seeing a toddler or if the person was a kidnapper. As long as we had the child’s hand in ours, we knew they were in our control and safe.

Holding God’s hand gives us the safety we need to offer others the hope He gives to us. We have no fear of being kidnapped away from God simply because we provide the promise of a better life in God’s shadow to others. Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.” John 10:28 (NIV)

Hold tight to God’s hand, allowing Him to lead you to a life in His shadow. The most secure place we can live is God’s shadow, with our hand clinging to His.

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The Designs of Life

July 29, 2020 by Tim

For more than 25 years, I have professionally rewoven chair seats and other furniture pieces that incorporate caning or wicker. Designs and patterns are a part of my life. The design of each piece of furniture that requires weaving is for a specific type of seating material. The design of the chair’s structure must support the seating the builder has in mind when they construct the chair. Restoring the chair’s seat requires understanding the design elements and envisioning what the original builder imagined when they built the chair.

Each of our lives has a specific design. Some of us have a very constant repeating pattern in our lives. We go through our days using the same routine for years without any changes. For others of us, our life feels more like a haphazard patchwork of events. Nothing stays the same from day to day. Some, like me, prefer to work undisturbed and focused. Like my wife, who is a nurse, others enjoy working in the middle of chaos, saving lives. Neither person is right or wrong. We just are designed for different things. No two life experiences are the same. We all have some things we do better than others.

When we live in God’s shadow, we recognize that He is the designer of all life and has a specific plan for our lives. We cannot always see the design in our life. Sometimes life feels haphazard and chaotic. We may even worry that God has run out of ideas with us and is experimenting to see if anything will work. God has a plan. We will not always understand everything that happens in our lives. Sometimes we may feel that we do not understand anything that is happening. Yet every event and circumstance has a purpose.

Following instructions can be challenging. Inability to see the end product emerging as we follow each step makes this especially true. Once I had a client bring me a piece that required an advanced weaving pattern called “spider weave.” I found instructions and began to replace the weaving. Even though I followed the instructions carefully, I could not see the proper pattern emerging. I worried that I had missed something or failed to understand the instructions. Then as I was putting the last set of strands into place, the pattern suddenly appeared.

We like to understand everything that happens, and we want to believe that we comprehend the context. There will be things we cannot explain and things we cannot put into proper context. What design element was God incorporating into my life when my oldest daughter started her life in the Neo-natal intensive care unit, and we were unsure if she would survive? What crazy design element was my wife having cancer? What is God designing when it seems like your goals are at your fingertips and then disappear like a mirage? Unfortunately, I cannot explain the reasons for any of these or even promise that you will eventually understand the reason for everything. I encourage you to wait for the Master Designer to complete the pattern He is weaving in your life.

A key design feature in every life is encouraging each person to develop a close relationship with God. Some people fight this element, and others embrace it. Scripture tells us of a time when the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians. (Exodus 1) Just before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, God sent several unusual design elements into both people groups’ lives. (Exodus 7-11) The Egyptians appeared to have rejected the invitation to know God and suffered the consequences. The Israelites chose to embrace God and follow His design for them, enabling them to find freedom from their slavery.

Occasionally, I get a chair project that has a surprise element in the seating. Some of the chairs I reweave have hollow spaces under the seat. Paper and cardboard usually fill these spaces. I find lots of dust, bugs, and crumbs from meals past. Sometimes these voids are stuffed with cornstalks, bulrushes, foreign newspapers, or perhaps nothing at all. (I keep hoping for a chair stuffed with money but no luck so far.) Most of the time, the owner has no idea that there is anything more to the seat than the part they can see. As a professional who reweaves seats, I know about these spaces and look for them. As humans, we have no surprise elements for God. He knows the most hidden places of our hearts and all our secrets. (Psalms 44:21, Ecclesiastes 12:14)

Occasionally a client wants a chair changed to accept a material it was not designed to take. They will bring me something and ask for a more durable seating than what the designer put into it. Sometimes I have to explain that the chair’s design does not permit a change in the media used in the seat. Other times I can make creative adjustments to use another kind of woven seating.

In our lives, we often approach God with requests for changes in the design He is weaving. These requests usually revolve around what we would make our lives easier. Who would not like more time to relax or enough money in the bank never to worry about a bill for the rest of our lives? We ask for the design change and then think God is ignoring us or perhaps is mad at us if we do not receive the change we requested. James wrote about this, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:3, NRSV) When we make ask for things that help us follow God more closely, we are not the only ones blessed by God’s response. There is something about living in God’s shadow that makes us better humans.

If we want the best design for our life, we must trust God to do the creative designing. There is no way better to see the design develop than to live in God’s shadow.

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Follow the Recipe!

July 22, 2020 by Tim

I know it is incredible, but I have been in the kitchen before. Not just raiding the refrigerator or getting a drink. I have cooked. Yes, my abilities exceed cooking grilled cheese and hotdogs. I even figured out how to modify meatloaf into a dish I call “Italian meatloaf.” (Hint: it includes ground meat, cheese, ketchup, and Italian seasonings) Because I am a guy, I even figured out how to cook this in the microwave. When I am hungry, I don’t have two hours to spend cooking. I can cook, but that only means that I can keep myself from starving when I am home alone. It does not mean that I eat well or should be relied on to cook for others. I must admit that usually, if I am in the kitchen, I prefer baking, not cooking.

My wife is thrilled by the fact that I clean up after I use the kitchen. She enjoys the things I cook or bake. However, it seems to bother her that I get very consistent results with whatever I am baking. I watched my wife one day and discovered why my results were more constant than hers. I measure everything meticulously. If the recipe calls for one cup, I measure precisely one cup and not a speck more or less.

When she bakes, she uses rough measurements. Her baking includes pouring the ingredient directly from the canister into the mixing bowl and estimating how much is there. Most recipes are forgiving enough that her method works with slight variance in results. There is one cake that I am the only one of us who can bake it successfully. I view the recipe as the instructive laws governing the final result. She considers the food formula as helpful and suggestive information pointing you in the general direction.

I have found that living in God’s shadow requires us to follow the recipe that He laid out for us in the Bible. Exodus 20 gives us the Ten Commandments, which tell us the requirements to live a life pleasing to God. The instructions in 2 Chronicles 7:14 tells us how to live in God’s shadow. Jesus summed up both when He said, ” ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:37-40 (NRSV) Following this recipe precisely is imperative.

Following the specific order that recipes generally are written in is very important. One cake recipe I have used calls for boiling water or coffee to be stirred into the other ingredients just before putting it into the oven. If I added the boiling water at the beginning or forgot it, the cake would not turn out.

Reading through the Ten Commandments, I notice that keeping the first two commandments enables one to keep all the rest possible. The only way to complete this recipe is to follow the order.

When following a recipe, I have found that it is necessary to put in all the ingredients. God wants us to apply the formula for living in His shadow to every part of our lives. Attempting to skip or alter the parts of the recipe never ends well. Even if parts of the prescription are uncomfortable for us, we must follow it. Imagine if I tried to bake my favorite chocolate cake and then decided to substitute mashed peas for the cocoa powder and used orange juice to replace the boiling water. Does anybody want some of this cake?

I find it very interesting that we will take a recipe at its word. We will follow it exactly, hoping for a mouthwatering final result. Why do we consider the method God gives us to be different? Many times we only want to follow the commands that are easy and comfortable for us. Why do we try to claim to live in God’s shadow if we are unwilling to comply with the instructions on how to get there laid out in 2 Chronicles 7:14? I do not write this as a master of the recipe, but as one who is trying to follow it and challenge others to pursue it. The goal is to enhance our relationship with God, not to seek to outperform other people. God was not attempting to make things difficult by giving us instruction. He was trying to make it easier for us by providing clear directions on living in His shadow.

I challenge you to pursue God. Follow His recipe. Live in His shadow. Encourage others as they attempt to follow God’s recipe for a close relationship with Him.

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Big Scary Things

July 15, 2020 by Tim

While my son was still a toddler, he was afraid of dogs. It likely came from the fact that I owned a Siberian Husky at the time, and the dog was much larger than my son. When the dog turned suddenly and accidentally bumped my son causing him to fall, this added to his fear of dogs. The Husky was always gentle with the children, but the sheer size scared my son. I tried to convince him that the dog was gentle and kind. I told him the dog loved him. No one could persuade him that the large dog he saw was not dangerous. It took getting a miniature Schnauzer puppy to help him overcome his fear of dogs.

Experience has shown me that the challenges in life that appear insurmountable cause us the most fear. When there is a cancer diagnosis or more bills than money. When we face uncertainty, and no one else believes in our dreams and plans for the future. These things look gigantic. They appear like they will gobble us up. a

I recall one time that I told a pastor about an area of ministry I desired to develop to help a specific group of people. He responded by laughing at the very idea. It seemed like an impossibility to offer the assistance needed. While I could not form a support group for people with that specific need in the church, I did choose to provide support and encouragement to them apart from the church. It can be intimidating to start something believing that you have no support system. We must remember that God will support us in whatever He asks us to do.

Living in God’s shadow gives us the ability to have a different perspective of the giants that we face. When my son was so fearful of my big dog, he would only go near the dog if he were with me. He knew that I had a greater size than the dog, and he believed I could control the dog. When we live close to God, we recognize that He is significantly larger than any problem, criticism, or adventure we will face. Our ability to deal with the situation will be directly proportional to our reliance on the fact that God is bigger than the circumstance. God allows big, scary things to enter our lives to grow our confidence in Him.

Expressing the fact that we believe that God is bigger than the circumstance we face is not always effortless or fashionable. Scripture tells us about when the Israelites were preparing to invade that land that God had promised them. (Numbers 13-14) Attempting to understand where they were going and what they would face, they sent twelve spies into the land. The men chosen as spies inspected the area as they traveled through it. When they returned, the spies all agreed that it was fertile and prosperous land. They all agreed that some of the people in the area were very tall. Their belief in God’s abilities is where the division among the spies began. Ten of the spies said the people who live in the land are too tall and powerful, and even God cannot help us with this problem. The other two spies believed that God could do anything and encouraged them to follow God’s command to invade the land.

The Israelites chose to listen to the majority and refused to enter the land promised to them. Once they refused to invade, God gave the command to return to wandering in the desert. The people then presumed they could resist God’s second order to return to the desert and instead invade the Promised Land. This presumption that they could pick and chose which commands to follow caused them to lose the battle.

This story illustrates the fact that there is a difference between faith and presumption. If the Israelites acted in faith, they would not have allowed the ten spies to dissuade them from following what God had formerly commanded. They chose to hold back in fear. When God said to wander in the desert for a while longer, they decided it was time to invade. They presumed that God would be with them and fight for them even though they had disobeyed Him. Faith is essential to living in God’s shadow. Acting on presumption tends to move us out of God’s shadow.

We can only live in God’s shadow if we follow His directives. We cannot choose which ones to obey or follow them only if they are comfortable and convenient. Our understanding of how to apply God’s commands to our lives will increase as we spend time living in His shadow.

When God asks us to do things outside our comfort zone, He expects us to trust Him. He knows the matter is big and scary to us. He understands we do not see how things will work out. Sometimes the big, frightening circumstance that we face is God redirecting us.

Approximately a month after I graduated from college, I became the pastor of a small church. My training and interests were in foreign mission work. At that time, the denomination I worked for required two years of service as a pastor to be considered for missions work. I thought I was pastoring to fill that requirement. God had me stay at that church for six years. During those six years, God allowed various circumstances to prevent me from going into foreign missions. Eventually, God redirected me to the area where I currently live.

I have learned that God will not send us into any circumstance without giving us the courage and endurance we need for the situation. This grit will usually come on a minute-by-minute basis, as it is required. Living in God’s shadow is not a matter of lacking fear of anything. Instead, it is the ever-increasing confidence that God is in control and will be with us, providing us strength through each situation.

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Learning In The Garden

July 8, 2020 by Tim

My family had a huge garden when I was a teen. The garden stretched out to about 200 feet in length, and each row that crossed it was fifty feet long. I recall my father planning the garden each year. He regularly rotated the vegetables to new places each year and tried to keep only friendly crops beside each other.

Working in the garden taught me many things. I learned things like, never plant onions beside the potatoes, salt would kill the slugs on cauliflower and cabbage, and that raw corn in the garden was delightfully sweet, sticky, and satisfying. Perhaps the biggest lesson learned was to work hard and be persistent.

As I have pursued God, I have come to understand that, like a garden, God has a plan for each thing He plants in our lives. We may not enjoy everything in our lives, but each item has a purpose. I know that as a teen, I did not enjoy the hours weeding and hoeing the garden. There were times when I would have preferred to go hiking instead of helping the family shell a large wheelbarrow load of peas, but it was not about what I liked, it was about having food for the winter.

Gardening is challenging this year. Over the past few years, I was too busy to get the garden planted. I would till the soil but never find the time for planting each year. The problem with plowing but not planting is that I had no reason to pull the weeds, so the garden area had reverted to a rather wild state. This year I began by tilling the soil and picking up all the quackgrass roots I could find. I tilled again and turned up even more root pieces, which I picked up before planting. I hoped I was saving myself some weed pulling, but when the vegetables came up, so did the weeds. I am always amazed that weeds seem to grow at twice the rate of the things I planted. Pulling weeds in the garden gives me time to think.

I have come to realize that growing a garden is very similar to living life. Once I bury my seeds, I must leave them alone. If I dig up the seeds to check to see if there is any growth going on, I will most likely destroy any new growth. Patience is a requirement for gardeners.

Living in God’s shadow is very much like growing a garden. We can believe the promises and obey the commands in scripture. However, it requires patience to see the fruit of the Spirit develop in our lives. Failure to see any growth in our lives may indicate that we are only acknowledging the commands in scripture. Spiritual growth comes when we are following the instruction of scripture.

I have a love/hate relationship with pulling weeds. I do not enjoy spending the time required to remove the unwanted plants, but I do receive a sense of accomplishment once I get an area of the garden clean of weeds. It is refreshing to see the clearly defined rows of vegetables separated by weed-free strips of loose earth.

I think while I remove weeds. I realized that cleaning the garden of unwanted plants must be very similar to how God operates in our lives. When we choose to live in God’s Shadow, we move closer to God. Moving closer requires that we align our lives more closely with His commands. Thus moving closer to God naturally reveals the “weeds” in our lives. To continue to move closer to God, we must allow Him to remove the weeds. When I review my life, I know there were times when removing the weeds from my life was overwhelming for me. I had to rely on God to do the weeding. There were times when the plant I wanted to pull was something God wanted to cultivate.

Where I live, the growing season varies from year to year. This year we had our last frost in June. Some years we will have our final frost in mid-May. Some years we will have our first fall frost in the third week of August, and other years it will not come until October. Due to this unpredictability, I have to be very selective about what I plant. I need plants that mature quickly but will continue to produce should frost come later than expected.

Our lives are as varied as the weather in the area where I live. We must trust God. He is the master gardener. He will know what will produce the most substantial amount of good fruit in our lives.

I usually have difficulty getting the rest of my family excited about tilling the soil, planting the seed, or weeding the garden. Harvest time is entirely different. Everyone is eager to help. Each person can now see and hopes to taste the results of the work that produced the harvest. Only the person who tills, plants, weeds, and helps to harvest will know the harvest’s real cost. Others may try to imagine the effort required but cannot fully understand it until they have done it.

When we look at another person’s life and marvel at the beautiful things that God has grown in them, we are looking at the harvest. We do not see the time spent pursuing God and living in His shadow. We do not know the time God spent weeding and pruning their life. We often forget that a fruitful life does not magically happen one day. It is the culmination of many years of living in God’s shadow and allowing Him to nurture and direct our growth.

This year it was a very windy day when I tried to plant carrots. The result was that when the carrots came up, I had extra carrots. Some of the carrots formed their little row alongside the primary row, and others grew in between the usual uniform rows. I know that there have times when I have tried to give God some “help” with my life. Those times when I thought I did not need instruction or assistance from God. It is those times when I tried to instruct God that caused irregular rows and random planting in my life.

Sometimes we get impatient with God because we cannot see the harvest. We fail to understand that He is still doing the planting. Several years ago, God generated an interest in me for missions work in South America. So far, I have been unable to engage in such work full time. Sometimes this frustrates me, but then I recognize that it must not be harvest time yet. God will provide the way and work when it is time to harvest the fruit of the desire He planted in me.

Living in God’s shadow requires us to have a gardener’s patience if we want to see a bountiful harvest. The Apostle Paul encouraged the Galatian church about this very idea in Galatians 6:9. “So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up.” (NRSV) Let God plant and weed your heart and life. Doing so will enable you to live closer to Him and see the bountiful harvest He is preparing for you.

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