Scattered to Gathered | Pails and Veils
Do you have someone in your life that really enjoys scaring you? For me that person is my husband. Eric loves to scare me. He just laughs so hard when I get startled. Not too long ago, me and Eli (our youngest) were turning off the downstairs lights before heading to bed. I was so sleepy. I could not wait to snuggle up under the covers of my bed. As we rounded the corner upstairs, Eric popped out of the dark with a loud yell. While I would typically jump and gasp my breath, I was so on a mission to get to the bed that I just looked at him and pronounced, “You don’t scare me.” He was disappointed in his failed attempt to scare me, but in his very wise Eric-way, he turned the moment into a teaching moment.
This is how he explained it: “Did you notice how your head was up in confidence of where you were going? You knew what you wanted—to go to bed—and you weren’t going to let anything, or anyone stop you. You just looked at the distraction and told it, ‘You don’t scare me.’”
I was confident in that moment because I knew what I wanted and how to get there, but there are times when I’m not as confident. The enemy knows when those moments are. You know, the moments when we’re scared to move forward because of the unknown. The moments when we let our worries kill our confidence.
I’ve said before that worries don’t water, worries wilt. We have to stop watering from empty pails! Empty pails of worry, complaining, comparison and wishing we could go back to a time we could predict before everything became so unknown. These things will never fill our pails.
We can trust all of our unknowns to an all-knowing God. And I know this from experience and so do you! If we could go back to the past, we’d see how God’s faithfulness turned what was once unknown to us into a memory that now makes sense.
But how do we walk confidently IN the unknown moments?
In the first post of this series, we started reading in Jeremiah 31:10-12. Now we are going to drop down a few verses to 31-34.
“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the ]house of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and with the house of Judah (the Southern Kingdom), not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the Lord, “I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And each man will no longer teach his neighbor and his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me [through personal experience], from the least of them to the greatest,” says the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness, and I will no longer remember their sin.”
The New Covenant is all about personal experience; the phrase, “I will write it on their hearts…” is all about a personal relationship with God because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross!
So, yeah, life will be startling sometimes but we can keep our heads up in confidence because we now know where we’re going…toward God.
And here’s the best news: we can go toward Him freely! Read Mark 15:37-38 with me…
Jesus let out a loud cry and breathed his last. Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
The veil was a big heavy curtain in the temple that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. The veil was about 60 feet high and 4 inches think. Once a year, only the high priest was permitted to pass beyond this veil into God’s presence to make atonement for all of Israel. This veil was thick and heavy, because it was never meant to be easily opened by the wind. To enter God’s presence wasn’t to be taken lightly. The priest had to be physically prepared to open the veil, and spiritually cleansed from all unrighteousness.
But when the veil tore from top to bottom – it signified that Jesus’ death (and soon to be resurrection) was something only God could have done. When it tore, it signified the “old" covenant was no more, but a “new” covenant had come.
Now, WE (anyone who has faith to believe) can go to God on our own!
We don’t have to wait for a priest to go on our behalf. We don’t have to wait on our sins to be atoned. We don’t have to live dry and away from his presence. We don’t have to walk around empty anymore. Instead, we can now make any place an altar! His presence is everywhere, and we are the priests. No longer is there a veil between us. Jesus atoned our sin and God poured out His Spirit for all mankind.
I’ve had moments when I thought about a need and said to myself, “I will pray about that when I get to my journal in the morning,” or “I need to pray about that when I get home,” or “when we pray as a family tonight.” But it dawned on me one day, I can come to God at any given moment, anywhere. I don’t have to wait for an altar to pray.
We can pray while we’re driving— just don’t close your eyes while driving. We can go straight to God while we are sitting at our desks or laying in our beds. We can go to God on his throne while sitting on our throne, haha. He is all ears no matter where we are physically, and we can go to Him no matter where we are in our hearts.
The enemy of our souls has come to steal, kill, and destroy. He will do anything to separate us from God. If he could wrap up God’s presence and put it back in the temple, he would hang the veil back up. But he can’t. The only thing the devil can do is try to scare us. He will attempt to distract you and put fear into your minds and worry in your heart.
Not that I’m calling my husband the devil, but like my husband, the devil wants you to think he’s waiting in the darkness when you’re all alone, just so you don’t move towards your hopes and dreams.
But forget all the devil’s attempts. When you face the unknown, you have the confidence to say, “YOU DON’T SCARE ME!” After all, we know where we are going… and God is with us every step of the way.