We spent a quiet and rainy Sabbath afternoon at home, just the four of us. Brent coloured in while Reggie sharpened the pencils and Lucy impressed us all with her newly-acquired standing and balancing ability.
When we first arrived in Fiji, Brent and I decided to follow the story of Abraham in our family worships, beginning in Genesis 12, and God has used that story so much over the last few weeks to remind me how faithful He is. The kids’ Sabbath school lesson story for March is the same story, and Reggie and Lucy’s Whitford Sabbath school class sent them a book they’d made that said ‘Our story was about Abram leaving his home, to follow God, and go to a new country… just like your family did… it is good to do what God wants us to do.’ And I will confess, that brought a tear to my eye because more than anything, that’s what we’re trying to do: what God wants us to do. The whole class of Fulton kids actually related really well to the story because they all remember packing up their belongings and leaving their homes to come here, even if it wasn’t with sheep and camels like Abram. Brent took worship for our cultural group meeting on Wednesday night and brought out how God might have asked Abram to go, but He promised to go with him. God won’t ask us to do anything He’s not willing to do with us, and I have felt so full of peace the last few weeks, knowing His presence is here.
But the part that has stuck out for me the most, or perhaps challenged me the most, as we’ve moved through the chapters, is how often God appears to Abraham to tell him something. Sometimes it’s in a vision, sometimes He’s in a body, sometimes it’s not clear. But He and Abraham have this ongoing dialogue and this context helps me to understand how Abraham could come to a moment like God asking him to sacrifice Isaac and he could just obey, even though the instruction seemed so contradictory to all the promises God had made before; he knew God’s voice, because he conversed with Him all the time. Like if I’m handed a phone and Brent starts talking, I recognise his voice instantly because we chat all the time. And so I feel challenged to know God’s voice better for myself, whatever that ends up looking like in my own life. I want to fix my attention upward more, so I’m listening when God wants to speak.
Two prayer groups began last week; one is Brent’s evangelism class that meets to pray every day at 5am (Brent took the sunrise picture on his way back one morning), and the other was Kris’s idea. We don’t meet every day, we just pray at 6.30am, wherever we are, specifically that we will recognise our great need of God and then pray to know Him more deeply and more intimately. It’s a time, not for all the other requests we sometimes make, but simply to ask for more of God. I’m so up for that challenge, and if you are too, we’d love you to pray with us. Until daylight saving ends in NZ, it’s 7.30am NZ time, and then we will all have the same 6.30am. I’m looking forward to hearing all the stories of the wonderful ways we are recognising God in our lives.
Reasons I Choose To Look Up 