Faith Archives – Brewing Ground

Renew Your Dry Bones!

February 27, 2017

Sometimes life can be so depleting. Have you ever felt that way? This can happen in a couple of different ways. First, life sometimes throws so much your way AND all at once. So much so, that you feel it requires more than what you have mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically to deal with it all. Second, life sometimes has you in a particular battle that seems as if it will never end. You feel as if you can’t replenish your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical resources quickly enough; you are using them up faster than you can replenish them. Either way, you feel depleted, used up, reduced to nothing but a pile of dry bones. Well, there is hope! God can restore any pile of dry bones.

A Valley Of Dry Bones

So, it began around 597 B.C. Babylon attacks Judah. The Babylonians captured and exiled about 10,000 Jews. Ezekiel happened to be one of the Jews that was captured. While exiled, God called Ezekiel to be a prophet and preach to all the captured Jews. God used visions to speak to Ezekiel and give him the messages to preach to the Jews. Some of these messages focused on why the Jews were captured; it was God’s punishment for their sins. God was using this as a “wake up” call for Judah to help them turn from their sin and return to God. Ezekiel walked the streets of Babylon for 22 years as a prophet preaching and trying to convince the people to repent and return to God.

God brought me to a particular vision that Ezekiel had during his time as a prophet. Ezekiel 37 tells of a vision that begins with Ezekiel in the midst of a valley where he was surrounded by dry bones.

“⁴Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. ⁵Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: ⁶And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.” Ezekiel 37:4-6 KJV

These dry bones represented the Jewish exiles and the state of their spiritually dead condition. Fast forward to the end. The vision continues with the people being restored and the two kingdoms being reunited. This is not a one of the Bible stories that is typically talked about often. But, God had a message for me.

A New Word

God whispered a couple of messages to my heart with the dry bones vision. First, He will do whatever it takes in order to get you to repent of your sin and restore your relationship with Him. Even if it means you are taken captive and are a prisoner of war for years like the Jewish people were.

Second, life is hard and can be filled with so many different challenges. Sometimes we get taken over by these challenges and that’s when we can become depleted. When depleted it is easy to miss the bigger picture and what God is doing, like the Jews did. When depleted mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically we sometimes feel all used up like a pile of dry bones. Now, some would say that once you are a pile of dry bones – well, there is no coming back from that. Luckily, we serve a powerful God. He can restore and bring life back to an army of dry bones. Thank You Jesus! There is hope!

Next Question

The next question is: How do we keep from becoming a pile of dry bones in the first place? Well, is it even possible? Anything is possible with God! God never meant for us to carry the weight of all of life’s challenges on our own. Give them to Him, let Him guide you, and be restored!

“¹¹And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” Isaiah 58:11 KJV

So, can you envision this verse for yourself? God will guide you and satisfy your soul in it’s time of drought. He will make you like a spring of water whose waters never fail. Since your spring will not run dry, you will be like a watered garden full of new life and growth. Claim God’s promises for your life! Let God help carry your load and renew your dry bones.

Let’s Brew and be Renewed!

Please share if you were blessed!

Will You Trust or Question?

January 24, 2017

The Question

How can you do everything right and how can everything go so wrong? Welcome to your Brewing Ground! Let’s face it, sometimes this happens in life. This can be the case in any number of situations. Things can go wrong when you do everything right with smaller moments; or, this can happen with major life altering situations or events. Why is this? That is the real question. There could be a number of reasons why things don’t work or go as planned. Let’s explore these ideas a bit.

The Muffins

Let’s begin by looking at a smaller situation. Let’s say that you have decided to make some muffins. You search and find a recipe. Next, you gather all your ingredients. You make sure to follow the instructions in the recipe. Once you pull them from the oven you realize they look nothing like the picture. Well, that doesn’t matter if they taste good. So, on to the taste test. OHHH – They are awful! The question now arrises – What went wrong?

Being perplexed by this situation you go back over the recipe; maybe you missed something. Now, this is where you will see a natural division form. The first group will find that maybe there was an ingredient left out, or the muffins were baked at the wrong temperature, or they didn’t get mixed well, the list goes on. In this instance it may be operator error. Now, for the second group. After checking, all the ingredients are present and accounted for. You even followed the directions exactly. So, what went wrong? Well, sometimes there is just a bad recipe. It happens! Unfortunately, not all recipes are good recipes. Either way, despite our best efforts things went wrong but for different reasons.

The Life Changer

There can also be major life changing situations in which you can do everything right and everything can still go wrong. Job is a perfect example of this. In the Bible, the entire book of Job tells the tragic, yet glorious, story about the life of a man named Job. Job contains 42 chapters. Every chapter’s focus is on one particular life changing event in Job’s life when he did everything right but everything went wrong.

Job’s Story

Job was a Godly man. He had a wife and 10 children. Job was a very prosperous farmer owning thousands of livestock and having many servants. Job had it all, family, friends, wealth, possessions, and prestige; he was the most famous and wealthiest in all the land (Job 1:3). He also built his life on God. It all began in Chapter 1. Satan came to God and claimed that Job only loved and trusted God because he had everything; he said that Job would not feel the same if had nothing. Satan asked God if he could test Job. God’s response,

^“12And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.” Job 1:12 KJV

Quick Side Note: Did you catch what this verse is really saying. GOD IS IN CONTROL!!!

Satan tested Job in a very serious way. In one fail swoop Job lost ALL his children, livestock, and servants. Wow! Talk about a bad day!! But, Job still loved and praised God. God allowed Satan to further test Job with extreme physical pain. He still remained faithful! Now, Job’s friends heard of all what happened and came to be with him. All this only takes us through Job 2.

Job 3 begins the discussions between Job and his friends about his situation. These conversations take us all the way through Job 37. You will find a natural division here also. During these conversations Job’s friends question him. His friends believe that all Job’s tragedy was caused by sin; they urged him to confess. However, Job continued to defended his innocence. While his friends questioned that he was missing something, he knew that he had done everything right. Job knew that there was another reason this was all happening to him.

The Visit

Job 38 through 42 tells about Job’s next visitor – God! God finally spoke through a mighty storm. During His conversation, God addressed Job.

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, ²Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?” Job 38:1-2 KJV

God himself had a conversation with Job – Woah! This conversation actually consisted of questions for Job about the natural world. His point was to demonstrate that we do not even have a full understanding of our natural world. How could we possibly be able to understand why bad things still happen when we do everything right – we can’t. God’s point was that it is more important to trust than understand. We may never be able to fully understand. But, God does heal and restore.

“¹⁰And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” Job 42:10 KJV

God gave Job twice as much as he had before. He also blessed him with more children.

Biblical Truth

Even when we do everything right, things can still go very wrong. That is, wrong in our view. God has a plan and purpose to use these situations for our good. This is the whole reason for our Brewing Ground. Will you question God or trust Him?

Let’s Brew in Trust!

Have you experienced a situation like this in your life? Comment Below!

How Will You Weather Unexpected Answers?

December 19, 2016

Queue the Christmas music. I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas. Just like the ones I used to know. Where the tree tops glis…Wait! Brown?! Yes brown. Welcome to a West Texas Christmas.

It was an exciting day at our school. The last day of the semester before we took Christmas break; it was even a half day! All the kids were so excited. Everyone was having their class parties and celebrating the season. The morning actually started off warmer than the high was the previous day. What a great way to start the day! Well, if you live in West Texas or have ever visited then you know what I am talking about when I say “If you DON’T like the weather just wait 5 minutes – It will change! Only in this instance it was “If you LIKE the weather then

get ready in 5 minutes you may not!” Well, the weather did change! And right at the end of the school day before school ended for lunch.

The weather changed from a beautiful day with nice mild temperatures to the wind blowing a million miles an hour. Here is the problem with strong winds in our area. When there has not been any moisture falling, it creates a nice dry ground. Well, since we are surrounded by forever flat nothing but farmland, the wind picks up the dirt and we have dirt storms. The sky turns brown and visibility drastically drops. If you have to actually get out in it, you are sandblasted and covered in dirt in just seconds.

Road Trip

This year in particular we were scheduled to walk out of the school building, straight to our vehicle, and hit the road. We were headed to my sister-in-law’s house to celebrate Christmas with my husband’s family. Of course this is when we would have a dirt storm! Why wouldn’t we have one then!? It makes for great traveling weather. As we were driving down the highway I was watching for tumbleweeds and debris. It was a moving obstacle course with the added challenge of not getting blown off the road. As I was looking into the brown sky I began singing, in my head, “I’m dreaming of a brown Christmas” while thinking it would be nice if it was really white. We don’t get many white Christmases around here.

Through the brown sky I could see that we were passing cotton fields. It was also stripping season. We began passing one field that had already been stripped and the cotton bales were all lined up. As we passed a couple of bales I realized that, for whatever reason, the farmer had not put tarps on any of the bales yet. The wind was strong enough that it was grabbing cotton off the tops of the bales and it was flying through the air. And there it was! I got my white Christmas after all. Was it what I was thinking about when I thought of a white Christmas – well, no! But, God has His own way of doing things.

Weather the Storm

This brought to mind a conversation I had with a dear friend earlier in the week. We were talking about this very thing – how God does not always answer our prayers the way we plan. We all have expectations or envision things a certain way. Sometimes we have a plan for what we want or have an idea of how we think God should answer our prayers or help “fix” a problem, BUT…this does not always work out the way we plan. Sometimes, God surprises us with a plan that totally changes the course of our day, year, or even life. God has His own plans of how He will help us navigate the seasons and weather the storms of our Brewing Ground. This is how he refines us through our Brewing Ground. And, He has a purpose and reason for doing things the way He does.

Humble Beginnings

Let’s think about Mary, Joseph, and the birth of Jesus for a minute. After all it is Christmas.

^“7And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7 KJV

I can imagine it went something like this. Mary and Joseph are traveling. Mary tells Joseph the baby is coming. Thank goodness they are coming into a village. Joseph is frantically trying to find a room for them. There is nothing to be found. Knowing that time is running out, Joseph frantically prays for a place for them. He gets an answer to his prayer alright – a stable! I am sure that as he was walking up to the entrance he had a “human” moment and thought “Really? With the animals and poo – these aren’t very sanitary conditions? This is not quite what I had in mind God. Well, Ok!”

We now know that God had a purpose and plan for those humble beginnings. However, that may not have been what Mary and Joseph saw standing there at the entrance looking at the animals and smelling the air. But, they had faith in God and His plan!

Weathering Unexpected Answers

God is so creative! His plans are very organized, well thought out, and with every detail in place. And, His plans are always exactly what we REALLY need (even if we don’t think so). He is refining us as He is helping us weather the storms of our Brewing Ground. When you encounter a new season, stormy weather, or challenge will you trust God and His answers? Will you be flexible and use the stable or be open to whatever God plans? This requires an incredible amount of faith. Not knowing what the plan is or how it will turn out is challenging. Will you weather your storm in faith and be open to the unexpected answers to your prayers?

Merry Christmas! Let’s Brew in Faith!

Have you ever gotten an unexpected answer from God? Comment Below!