Late one night the opening text from a friend in another state was: “I am thinking a lot about death. I don’t know who to share with. Any ideas?”
Reading it I was thinking -- Phew! If that wasn’t a leading opener, I didn’t know what was! I texted back: “What do you mean you think about it a lot brother??”
To which he wrote: “How far does clergy confidentiality go?”
I called him. I could hear a victim mindset and could hear defeat, loud and clear. Once on the line, it felt like he was buried under a barrage of lies that had him giving up on life itself. It took a lot of coaxing but finally we were able to get to the point of doing some good praying, and the more we prayed and rebuked and dealt with the lies the more alive his voice sounded on the other end of the phone. Crying, Laughing and Grateful, he was out from under hell. Literally. It was a beautiful transformation to hear. That’s the kind of transformation Jesus can and does bring. That’s what can happen as we shift our focus from ourselves, from the circumstances, from the darkness back to Him, to the Light, to Hope. When our eyes are looking in the right direction, everything improves.
One thing we get from Elizabeth is that she had her eyes fixed in the correct direction.
Even when she had not had her prayers for a child answered for decades, she had never become bitter toward God. She had lived forward-focused, and not settled into anger. This is apparent from how she received the transformation of her life and body. After decades, Elizabeth could have been angry. But instead, we see her enveloped with gratefulness that overflows through her. In contrast, Zechariah, her husband, had given up, seemed nearly defensive towards the angelic announcement that his wife would conceive. It was too late in his mind and as a result of his unbelief, he was given the silent treatment!
Trust changes everything. Indeed, it transforms the heart. When we fix our eyes on ourselves, our circumstances, our conditions, our illnesses, when we own the things that are wrong, “My knees, my hips, my migraines” our tendency is to give those things more power and lessen the ability of God to impact us.
When we shift our focus, looking up and out at the greatness of God, seeing the change in colors, the brilliance of the sun, the beauty of the moon, celebrating the little gifts along the way, when we place our trust in who God is, in what God has accomplished, when we let God in through the open door of circumstance, then, everything changes. We allow God to write straight on the crooked lines of our lives, and that changes everything.
We notice how Elizabeth speaks of herself and to Mary, her cousin, when she arrives to visit. Elizabeth has stayed tuned into the goodness of God all through the years and welcomed a late-in-time answer to prayer.
Check this out in Luke 1:23-25; 1:39-45.
If there were a “trust-o-meter” to which you could hook yourself up and get a reading for how much your own heart is trusting God, what would it read? Would you discover you are trust “hot” or trust “cool?” Would you find that you place most of your trust in yourself and only minimally trust what God has done, who God is on your behalf? Or would it show trust like Elizabeth’s?
Trust God today and for all your tomorrows. See you Sunday.