What time I am afraid, I will trust in YOU, Lord!

 Leaning on the Everlasting Arms?

How do we lean on the everlasting arms and what does it mean to not lean on your own understanding?

God is God and we are not, but with so many conveniences, we have no idea of how to identify the things that we should press and do for ourselves and that which we should wait on the Lord to give us an answer for.

We reflexively click to our phones for the answer to this and that question that perplexes us.  Some things we know and commit to memory and these days most things we just google or look up online through some online search engine.  We can get some answers in that way.

Learning to depend on Jesus for our confidence and our identity is the tough wrestling for our day!

As a teenager, I remember with fondness the all night prayer times at church.  I wasn’t doing it to rebel against my parents.  They thought I was and often I was punished for having stayed too long.  But, truly learning to cherish the presence of the Lord was my deepest desire.  He never, ever disappointed me.  It wasn’t money or a tangible gift that I got for staying and lying on the floor before the Lord for hours praising and worshiping and beseeching his presence.  He was there.  He taught me to know HIM.

He taught me to seek him in the uncomfortable and the anxiety of my parent’s chagrin, now only adds to the delight that He is my dearest delight.

I would never suggest anyone to go against their parents in these things today.  But, I had to seek Him.  God has to bid you to come to Him.  Seeking Him in the context of your church’s gathering is soul strengthening!

Convinced and Convincing of God's attendance to our needs!

 Underneath are the everlasting arms!

Without a view of this there is such agony.

Part of the African American tradition of music gives , what I think is musical expression to the everlasting nature of the arms of the Lord!  

We lean on those everlasting arms.  It is comforting and comfortable.  In the dark of trial it is a winsome place to be, but if we presume upon the everlasting arm of the tradition and not the God of the tradition, God will shake us loose from our own trust in the arm of man.

If we refuse to share the weapon of the spirit speaking and singing to one another in songs and hymns and spiritual songs because that is not their “tradition”. We are hoarding priceless treasures of the Lord that were meant for the sharing with the Church universal.

None of these traditions are powerful without God’s Holy Spirit and power.  God’s word is power.  Life and spirit.

His Arms are above our traditions and there apart from our traditions,  but I do love the expression of the everlasting Arms in the music of the African American Church!

When Jesus says yes? When God says you are going to mother nations...? Rebekka

 “And Rebekka inquired of the Lord”

“Call wisdom your kinswoman”

Learning to get an answer from the Lord is a feminine wile, so to speak.  Sometimes the pain of your situation forces you to inquire of the Lord.  If this is your will, why am I thus?  This is unbearable pain without some kind of insight as to why.  From before birth these boys were at each other's throats.

Can you just imagine the contorted belly of a woman whose stomach was always in motion.  Cant sleep, cant eat, cant figure this thing out.  

These boys never did work it out.  The parents had to continually occupy them apart from eachother.

This is about how God deals so gently with an expectant mother.  This is about how God draws us to him in our taking on the amazing adventure of mothering.  This is about how to request real information from the one who made you and your body.  In this passage it doesn’t show that she first inquired of her husband and he said, “am I God?”  He directed her to inquire of the Lord.  She did.

In my personal experience inquiring of the Lord, as an aside.  

God always gives you the information that you requested.  He has never said to me as I have said and as has been said to me, “look it up!”  Never.  He is the dictionary.  He is the answer.  So He doesn’t say that.  He also, knows if you really want to know the answer to that question.  What is going on with this pregnancy?

God was there long before sonograms.  Rebekka was an example of learning to ask God our questions.  We do gossip to God about others, all too often: As though he doesn’t know.

Asking God about other people’s stuff is part of our prayer considerations.  But, what is going on inside my body and with these two, three, etc Children that have been entrusted to my body and my soul.  I think that is a good question to ask the Lord.

God answers very specifically her request for information, but he gives her such thorough information that no woman and no person could have a plan to accomplished.

She sits in God’s office and he tells her that he has chosen her to rear 2 distinct Nations?  Who could have accepted that answer without grace?  Like Mary, her future daughter in the faith and in progenity.  She accepted the task and set her sights on keeping God’s plan as her plan.

I need YOU once again