Something that God has been doing
to prepare me lately is giving me insight into the Bible. Lately I’ve been
seeing His word differently and through different “lenses”. For so many years,
I had been reading and hearing verses out of the Bible, but these verses were
only part of the story. So many of the verses I had heard were leaving out an
integral part of God’s heart, what one of His biggest desires is.
One of the biggest events in the
Bible, an event that really kicks off the greater story of the Bible and gives
us the promise of a Savior, is the story of God’s covenant with Abraham. God
called out Abraham and promised to make him a great nation, that He would bless
Abraham, so that Abraham would be a blessing to all people on earth. This is
just the beginning; God later reveals what exactly He meant when He said all
nations would be blessed through Abraham. Later, during the Exodus, when Israel
was enslaved by the Egyptians, God gave a glimpse of what He meant by His
covenant with Abraham. God used Moses to represent Himself to Pharaoh and all
of Egypt, bringing plague after plague down on the Egyptians, with the demand
that Israel be freed. But God wasn’t unleashing hail, locusts, a bloody Nile,
etc. just to free the Israelites. Were that His sole purpose, He could have
struck down Egypt with ease and sent the Israelites back to their promised
land. But God had a bigger purpose. In Exodus chapter 9 God tells Moses to tell
Pharaoh that God is cursing Egypt so that Egypt will know how great God is, and
so that His name would be proclaimed in all the earth. This was a big
eye-opener to me, as I had never really noticed this part of the story before,
and had never seen how it fit into the bigger picture of what God is doing.
Another place in the Bible where I
had looked over this part of God’s heart is in Psalms. In so many places in
Psalms, David cries out for the name of God to be known among all nations. In
Psalm 96:3 David says, “Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous
deeds among all peoples.” In Psalm 9:11 David says, “Sing praises to the LORD,
enthroned in Zion; proclaim among the nations
what he has done.” There are other psalms that many people know, albeit only
half of the psalm. Psalm 67 starts off saying, “May God be gracious to us and
bless us, and make his face shine upon us,” My old youth group used to quote
this verse at the end of every Sunday night worship. Now, I see that we were
leaving out the rest of the sentence, which is probably the most important
part: “that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.”
And it doesn’t end there, either. The rest of that psalm is centered on the
earth praising God. All that time we had been saying this verse, asking God to
bless us and to look out for us, but without recognizing why God should do so. God
didn’t want to bless us just so that we could feel good, but so that His name
would be known. Another verse that I was only looking at halfway was Psalm 46:10,
“Be still and know that I am God;” Most Christians probably know this phrase,
especially since there are many songs trumpeting it on Christian radio stations
everywhere. But that phrase doesn’t end with a period, it keeps going, “I will
be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” It seems all
this time I had been hearing that I should rest in God, and ask for His
blessings so that I could find peace, so that I could be closer to Him. That’s
all true, and a very good thing, but it’s not to be my main purpose. My purpose
is to honor God’s name among the earth. When God blesses me, I should use it as
a way to let others know about God and His goodness. I should rest in God so
that others will see the peace God gives, so that I will know God’s plan for
the world.
Through all of these insights, God
has been preparing me for what He’s going to do. He’s been preparing me for the
purpose of furthering His kingdom. Whether this means telling people the Good
News overseas or in my hometown, I don’t know. But God has been growing me and
preparing me to do work in part of His bigger plan of spreading His kingdom
across the earth.
