Leeks & Garlic {with a Side of Chains}

Over the course of two decades or so God has taken me on an adventure.  He called me out, asked for my hand, and He has taken me deeper in Him, shown me His glory in bits and pieces; I’ve been on the peaks and in miry valleys, I’ve flourished and failed; but overall, the overwhelming theme of this journey has been trust and surrender.

While God is not a respecter of persons (for those who don’t speak ‘bible’ this means simply that His attributes and character do not change from one man’s interaction with Him to the next) we are each on a different journey.  We all have varied pasts, we live in different cultures, we struggle in different ways in different seasons of our lives; and while all of this is undeniably important to note, this is what I’ve learned.  God has a plan and His plan is GOOD—no, His plan is THE BEST, and I want it.

This journey of faith and trust began the moment that I recognized how lost I was and how incapable of making the changes that were necessary to align my life, my character, my habits, with His word.  From the moment I found myself humbled and broken on the cold, blue tile floor of my bathroom, helpless, I understood that God’s plan was the only way.  Salvation comes through Christ alone and only He can do what is necessary to appease a just and holy God whom I had offended greatly.

 

God’s plan.  

I was saved by grace according to His plan, not my own. 

We hear a lot of talk about God’s grace and His love as shown to us through salvation.  It is truly an AMAZING GRACE!  But does His grace stop there, as I so often hear people suggest?  Do God’s plans for us stop at salvation?  Is that the ultimate, or primary, purpose that He has created and saved us for?

Too often people discredit the Old Testament, casting it off as irrelevant in today’s world now that Christ has come to fulfill the law.  We know that God’s law can be summed up in two commandments, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  But I want to suggest something here that may seem bold to many…can you love a God that you don’t really know?  Can you truly trust a God whose intentions and purposes you don’t understand?  I’m not so sure one can.

  

To me, the Old Testament has been a rich, fertile garden from which I have freely harvested knowledge of, and a deeper understanding of, God.  My goodness, the stories within those pages are filled with picture after picture of who God is!  His character, His GOODNESS, His promises upon promises to people who follow Him, and many examples to strengthen us and to build up our faith as we begin to see who God is and, MOREOVER, what His plans are for men!  

I am convinced that God has not created us and saved us so that we can go about our merry way here on earth, living the life we have always dreamed of.  No, I am convinced that God has a plan and purpose for us and that it will impact every single area of our lives, just like all of the other people with whom He made covenants in ancient days.  Noah, Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses as He led the generation of God’s people to His promised land for them, then Joshua (one of my heroes).  All of these men were promised something wonderful, God’s plan for them and given a choice.  And let me add here that His plan for them was nothing they had ever dreamed of.  In fact, it looked totally different than the lives they were living, and I’m sure planned to live, when God called them to forsake everything and trust Him.  There is a phrase that I will use here in the spirit of Romans 12:  the lives that God called these men to follow Him into were “counter-cultural”, looking vastly different than, even foolish to, the world.

As I look back on what God has done in my life, on what He’s doing now, and whatever may lie in the future, this is what I see.  I see a young woman whom God approached and gave a choice, not a command, “Follow me”.  As He’s revealed Himself to me and His power in my life, I understood that His plans for me were good…when I once again, and again, and again, was faced with the choice between following my dreams and plans OR following Him, I knew beyond a doubt that His plans were worth following, worth leaving behind the life that I knew, the comfort, the goals, the expected... And just like the God of the Israelites, He didn’t give me a road map or show me a picture of what my life would look like where He was leading me, he didn’t warn me what I would find and experience along the way, but He did give me a promise.  And hope.  The one who created me has a plan for me.  Custom designed…

Have I always followed Him perfectly with a faith like Joshua?  Nope.  I have been as stiff-necked as the rest of them.  Afraid of giants that I knew lie ahead, weary from the walk, from the attacks, and I have given in for a time here and there to the logic of the world that says, ‘you know better.’ 

BUT

God has convinced me each time that it’s not worth it.  It’s not worth it to worry about the giants, because He plans to take care of them.  It’s not worth it to long for leeks and garlic with strings, rather with CHAINS, attached, and sacrifice manna.  

It is undeniably clear to me that not only are God’s plans better, but they look entirely different than the plans of the world and--boldly, once again, I will claim—than the lives of the vast majority of His people.  Because we all have a choice to follow Him and then again a choice to enter into His promised land--we can be courageous enough to follow Him out of bondage only to lose sight of who He is and what His plans are for us and end up wandering in the wilderness.  We can look back at Egypt and yearn for leeks and garlic, willing to be in bondage to the world in exchange for its pleasures, or at the very least for the comfort of the known...forgetting that God has already miraculously provided exactly what we need.  We can get tired of wandering with no vision of what the future, what that Promised Land, will look like. We can get anxious and create idols to worship when God is not meeting our expectations, we can whine and grumble against Him…we can settle for less than what God has in mind for us.  But only when we do not understand, or when we forget, who He is and what He’s done.  Only when we lose sight of the fact that He’s made us a promise (actually, promise after promise!) and He is faithful.  We can enjoy the grace of salvation and yet miss out on so much of God’s goodness when, because of fear or complacency, we would rather wander the wilderness of conformity, than to be transformed and face the magnitude of God’s good and perfect plans for us.  

I didn't reference a lot of scripture here because, frankly, I hope that anyone reading this will be inspired to pick up their bibles and greedily devour the pages.  I hope that they will read the stories in the Old Testament, which they may have known from childhood, with 'new eyes' to see God become real to them in ways that He never has before.  

I pray that whoever reads this will be encouraged to seek after God and be willing to follow Him wherever He leads because they KNOW He is good and His plans are the best.  I pray that whoever reads this will no longer be willing to settle for less.