Lessons learned from Eliab.....

Learn from words, pictures, deeds... embrace the pause.  Acknowledge that which speaks.  Not just the written word but the speaker, the artist, the poet, the tree, the sky, the breeze, the color.  Linger will you over the words and their offerings and not just be pushed into the culturally read and be done.  Process will you the words, the joy, the beauty?  Allow the images to strike a chord and reverberate and make a difference. Be changed and embrace, let those things written down make a difference or do not read at all.....  Let the moment be that which it is and grant that which it offers.  To just let it roll off and through is a wasted opportunity . Grant the seed soil.

 

It has been a journey of refusal, of trial and error... of not believing I had hit the heart beat of that which I wanted to write.  I refused to begin to write this piece until I had vision for it, which in itself will become humorous to the reader as this piece is read.  For it is all about vision. 

Oh I would try but in my attempts I would focus upon one piece and not grasp the entirety of what needed to be said.  I would feel myself judgmental or angry and knew I had not the right heart.  Why bother the reader with such details?  Why not just step into the piece and write what it is that is to be said?

Beyond believing in the process?  My life journey has brought me to a place of thoroughly embracing and learning to enjoy the embracing of the wait. The Selah moment.  You know that place in the psalms where we are told to pause, reflect, journey  a bit more slowly.  So process and train of thought and the reality of emergence as holding within itself the passing of time has become preeminent in my heart. 

I have been meditating upon 1 Samuel 16 for months.  I have thought  upon Samuel, upon that which he saw, upon God's response...  upon his presumptions.  God had given one king because of the demand of the people, now God was giving a king because of the demand upon His own heart.  The two men were going to be vastly different.  What did Samuel learn when God informed him that neither Eliab nor the six others who were present were going to be king?

1 Samuel 16:7 -  But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

My times of pausing would begin to intertwine Samuel and John and Isaiah and the reality of temptation and this world.  With each I would sit, not yet being able to fully articulate what my heart was feeling.  

I will share this.... The prayer of my heart began to emerge as: let me not be deceived by my own eyes, by the trickery of this world.  Let my eyes see as does the heart of God.  Let me not look at exterior circumstances or appearances and make conclusions of the flesh or worldly understanding. 

In Hebrews 5:14 states; " But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil."  And I began to add this to my prayer. My husband, Jim, and our organization, Stir The Water, has made this passage a primary one in our lives.  Training people to understand what it means to have senses trained to discern good and evil. And I began to dig deeper.  Beyond seeing in the spirit the things that are there in the supernatural and growing in discernment that way, how can we train ourselves to become blind to that ways that man sees as God illuminates to us in the Samuel passage. 

The first title to this blog was going to be something like "Even Samuel didn't see.."  But the truth of the matter was he was in a new process.  The Lord had had him pick Saul because of the hearts of men and look at the result versus when we wait and allow the Lord's choice to be made known.  Process. 

As my life moves forward I no longer feel the need to wrap up all my thoughts to make a nice, neat "15 second sound bite" tweetable conclusion for the reader.

More and more I am inclined to live you with questions, with things to ponder....  what do you conclude when you pass someone on the street?  By what basis do you do so?  Are you practicing discernment?  

I will end with a story and some quotes...

I was in Starbucks in Charlotte.  A woman who was dressed perfectly from head to toe came in, the woman I was with saw her as picture perfect and indeed she was.... but my heart lurched as I watched her and I ached.  

What do you conclude when you pass someone on the street?  By what basis of measurement do you use?  When you see a rich man? A poor man?  What does your heart do? What do your eyes do? What do your senses do?  What do you presume to know? Is it true? Is it false?  

"The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."
-   Marcel Proust

 

"The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing."
-   Pierre Bonnard  

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

1 John 2:15-17New American Standard Bible (NASB)