Not Today Wolf!
I need to preface this post by telling you that my mind is a very strange place to be...I’m talking Tim Burton kind of strange. That being said, you need to know that God speaks to me through some very strange things and in some very strange ways. This is one of those times when God spoke clearly to me and made a very unusual connection between Pastor Clay’s message on Sunday and a fairy tale from my childhood. This post is coming straight from my strange mind, so please hang with me to the end. I am hopeful that the connection will make sense to you in the end.
I really enjoy fairy tales. Most of them are fairly short and to the point, like the one I am going to talk about today. This one also has a lesson to be learned, as many fairy tales do. Interestingly enough, God decided to show me some new lessons in this fairy tale that I had never considered before.
Pastor Clay began a new series on Sunday called, “Rebuilding." In it, he will be talking about how we can rebuild what has been torn apart in our lives over the past two years. He talked about Nehemiah and how heartbroken he was that his city had been torn apart the way it had and how he longed to go and rebuild it. I think a lot of us can relate. There are so many things in my own life that I have had to grieve the loss of over the past couple of years. There are some things that I am okay with losing, but there are many things that I would love nothing more than to rebuild.
The past two years have left many people with a heightened sense of fear in their lives. Fear of getting sick. Fear of dying. Fear of losing their job. Fear of making the wrong decision. Fear of starting over. Fear of leaving their homes. Fear of crowds. Fear of losing a loved one. Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear of their past coming out. Fear of what their kids are being exposed to or not being exposed to. Fear of losing relationships. Fear of thinking differently. Fear of staying silent. Fear of speaking out. Fear of not having enough to eat. Fear of not having enough money. Fear of the future. If you really look around, there is a lot more fear now than ever before.
As I sat in the service on Sunday listening to the message, all I could think about was “Three Little Pigs." I thought it very strange that “Three Little Pigs” began to consume my mind during a church service, but then God began to connect the dots for me.
Most everyone knows this fairy tale. These three little pigs leave home and go out to build their own homes. The first one builds his house out of straw, and the big bad wolf comes along and blows it down. The second one builds his house out of sticks, and the big bad wolf comes along and blows it down too. The third one takes his time and builds his house out of bricks, and the big bad wolf cannot blow his house down no matter how hard he tries. The moral of the story is that hard work and perseverance always pays off in the end. At least, that is what I have always taken from that fairy tale...until now. Before Sunday, my focus had always been on the materials that the pigs used to build their new homes. God shifted my focus on Sunday to the words that the wolf used to warn them that he was about to destroy their new homes, “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down."
Pastor Clay mentioned three things that are absolutely necessary if we are going to work on rebuilding our lives. The first was extraordinary prayer, and this is exactly what we need to counter the wolf’s first threat. Extraordinary prayer can be extraordinary amounts of prayer or extraordinary faith in prayer.
Scripture talks about extraordinary amounts of prayer a lot. There are many instances in scripture where people fasted and prayed for days on end. Jesus fasted and prayed for forty days and forty nights (Matthew 4:1-11). Later, He asks His disciples to stay up and pray with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane and is not happy when they fall asleep (Matthew 26:36-41). 1 Thessalonians 5:17 tells us to pray without ceasing. Praying non-stop leads to an extraordinary amount of prayer. This idea of extraordinary amounts of prayer is a very important and common concept throughout scripture.
Having extraordinary faith in prayer is also a common theme found throughout scripture. The best example of this, in my opinion, is found in 1 Kings 18:20-40. This is where the story of Elijah taking on the prophets of Baal can be found. Elijah is so confident in God that he mocks the prophets as they try to call on Baal and has them pour lots of water on the altar that he will be asking the Lord to send fire down to. Elijah’s prayer is very short, but it is filled with such extraordinary faith that the Lord answers him immediately and sends fire down to the altar. It is amazing.
So, would you say that you pray extraordinary prayers? Does prayer control your life or does fear? Do you spend more time praying or worrying? Do you shoot your fears down with prayer or give in to them and allow them to control your life? I struggle with this one myself. There are certain aspects of my life where I let fear take control, and it needs to stop. When the wolf comes to huff at me, I need to huff right back with prayers full of extraordinary faith. Better yet, I need to send up such extraordinary amounts of prayer that when the wolf comes to huff at me, he is too late, and I’ve left nothing for him to huff about because I have already sent it up to God in prayer.
The second piece that Pastor Clay talked about was willful obedience. The importance of obedience is something else that scripture is very clear about. There are many verses about this, including James 1:22-25, which tells us to not just be hearers of the word but doers. I don’t know about you, but some days I just get sick and tired of all the talking that people do now. I know that may sound bad, but it’s true. I get so sick of hearing all the things that people have to say about what should be done or what they are going to do. Sometimes I just want to look at people and tell them to shut up. I want to tell them to stop talking so much and get on with the doing! When it comes down to it, I really don’t want to hear about it; I want to see it. Maybe that makes me a mean and horrible person, but words don’t mean nearly as much to me as action does. Even the wolf in the fairy tale gets this. He doesn’t just puff himself up and then do nothing like many people today do. Don’t be one of those people. Don’t puff yourself up because you have memorized a lot of scripture. Do what it says! When the wolf comes and puffs at you, show him up by actually doing something and not just talking about it.
The last thing that Pastor Clay talked about was radical generosity. This one is exceptionally hard for a lot of us. We have grown up in a world that has beat the idea into our heads our whole lives that money equals security. That mindset is hard to break free from. When the wolf threatens to blow our house down, most of us get scared. Losing our money and possessions is frightening for a lot of people; myself included. The fact that this idea scares me is a big red flag in my life though. It is a warning to me to check myself and ask where I find my security. Is my security tied up in money and things, or is it in God and God alone? It should be in God.
John 12:1-8 tells the story of a woman, Mary, who poured out a jar of expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet. Scripture says that this jar of perfume was worth a year’s wages. Can you imagine? She basically took her entire salary for a whole year and dumped it at the feet of Jesus. That must have taken some kind of faith. This act showed where she found her security and Who she put all of her trust in. I struggle to wrap my brain around it, and then I get sad because I struggle with it. I long for that kind of faith and trust. It is such a beautiful thing.
Radical generosity is what robs the wolf of power when he comes to blow your house down. When you have given it all back to God, the wolf is left with nothing to blow down. Mary did not have to live in fear of having something so valuable stolen from her anymore. She had already given it back to Jesus. Luke 12:33 tells us to store up our treasures in heaven, not on earth, because the treasures that we store up in heaven can never be stolen or destroyed. Those are treasures that the wolf will never have access to. Matthew 6:21 tells us that our hearts abide wherever our treasure is. If our treasure is here on earth, we will live in constant fear of the wolf, but if our treasure is in heaven, we can rest easy knowing that the wolf is no longer a threat.
I don’t know about you, but I am excited to take a deep dive into these three things over the next few weeks. I can’t wait to see how God moves on the hearts and minds of all of us that call Next Level home. I have no doubt that there will be some extraordinary stories that come from this series...make sure to share them with us. Congratulations to those of you that have made it this far. You have successfully navigated my crazy strange mind and lived to tell the tale. Hopefully, it all made sense by the end, and you have some new ideas on how to combat that big bad wolf the next time he comes knocking at your door.