The Holiday

Leviticus 22 And when you sacrifice a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord, you shall sacrifice it so that you my be accepted. It shall be eaten on the same day, and you shall leave none of it until morning. I AM the Lord.

Last week as I was preparing to meet with my sisters in the Lord for direction and timing for an upcoming trip the Spirit led me to this verse. I believe that this is a direct answer for my question on timing for this trip.

Does that seem strange to you? I admit sometimes it is strange to me as well but I believe that this is one of the ways that the Spirit leads us and even though I find it odd, at times, I also find it fascinating.

So today I asked the Lord again for guidance, clarity, wisdom and understanding for what is to come. I picked up where I had left off yesterday in reading through the Psalms and this is where I landed....

Psalm 50 Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon Me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

If this is coincidence, if there is no divine influence in this being just where I happened to leave off yesterday, then I should go buy a lottery ticket immediately. The odds are just about the same. So many times I think we ask the Lord to speak and when things like this happen we dismiss them as ironic, weird or coincidence instead of seeing the fact that God speaks to us through His Word.

So I believe that what the Spirit is speaking to me is that I will be in Jerusalem for Thanksgiving. It does not feel like a sacrifice in either sense.

Whether we are offering the gift of thanksgiving to the Lord in the traditional sense or giving to Him the holiday itself it feels like an offering rather than a sacrifice.

Lately I have been thinking about essential things in our lives and absolute truths and dismissing the lies from the enemy. This is an essential truth for me that the Holy Spirit leads us in various ways, through various means such as people, scriptures and songs. He speaks to us in different ways because we are different. And He always leads us into truth. The Lord speaks to me in quiet places. In isolation. For you it may be totally opposite.

One of the problems with learning to listen to the Lord is that we talk ourselves out of what we hear. Or we let "human" reasoning discredit what we have heard. For instance, when you read the verses above and how the Holy Spirit used these unrelated verses to impress upon me that I should forfeit Thanksgiving dinner with my family to be in Jerusalem was there a part of you that thought, Wow that's a stretch! Are you uncomfortable when someone says to you that God has spoken to them?

Why does it seem so odd to us that God would have conversations with his children? Where do we think the Word of God came from? Did He complete all He had to say to us when the Bible was written?

II Samuel 23 The Spirit of the Lord speaks to me; His word is on my tongue.

Psalm 143 Teach me to do Your will for You are my God! Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground!

Luke 12 And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.

John 16 I still have many things to say to you, buy you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that He will take what is mine and declare it to you.

I think the bottom line for most of us is this; we believe that God can speak we just don't believe that we are worth speaking to. We see the people of the Bible as having some great purpose from the Lord or that somehow God only chose a very few people to present Himself to and sometimes that may be the case. It may also be that they were the only people listening or believing that what they heard was from the Lord.

Joshua 21 Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

It is the same as the promises that He has made to all who bear the name of Christ.

Matthew 7 Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who as Him.

I Chronicles 28 Know the God of your father and serve Him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek Him, He will be found by you.

So, for me, this is the absolute truth and something that is essential....The Lord is found by us when we seek Him. And we are worth speaking to. We are not going to be authors of Scripture or build Solomon's Temple or lead the children of Israel out of Egypt but there is work for us to do. Important work. Work that will not be done if we do not accomplish it. The only way to find out if God will do extraordinary things with us it to be willing to be extraordinary for Him.

I will refuse to believe in the lie that God no longer speaks or performs miracles. I refuse to put Him into a box or try to contain Him. I will search the Scriptures and seek for Him there and when He speaks I will follow. I will not listen to self or to the world or to "reason". I will learn to recognize His voice have the attitude of His mother.

John 1 His mother said to the servants, Do whatever He tells you.