You can have anything you want

“You can have anything you want.”

When I hear these words it reminds me of Solomon’s dream where God said this to him, and of course it echos words of Jesus that anyone who asks, receives.

            But mainly when I hear, “you can have anything you want”, it reminds me of my mother. Not that I ever heard, “you can have anything you want” from her when I was a kid. But it was a frequent statement that she made to my five children, every month when I took her to Dollar Tree. You know The Dollar Tree, right? The store where everything is only…a dollar.

            And so she would tell her grandchildren before we went in, “you can have anything in the store you want, just ask Granny for it”. And for a while this was pretty amazing, my children would wander up and down every aisle looking at everything, because they were told they could have anything, and so they would check out shower curtains and socks, note pads and wrapping paper, until they finally settled into the toy or the candy aisle. At some point they even realized that when the decision was really hard, and they couldn’t decide between the pink iced animal crackers and the sparkly hoolahoop, that Granny might buy them both….if they asked.

            As they got a little older the wonder of those trips began to wear off, I suppose when they realized that getting anything you want in a place where everything is only a dollar, wasn’t quite as thrilling anymore.

            “Ask for whatever you want me to give you”, the Lord tells Solomon in a dream. And Solomon’s request is one that we are all familiar with. Wisdom. The whole story can be read in 1 Kings 3:4-15 New International Version.

            Imagine this bold declaration was made to us by the Lord, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you”. What would we say to such a statement? What would we ask for in 2020?

            Many things are much different now than they were in early March. Many things have been cancelled, or changed so dramatically that they don’t even feel like the old things anymore. And yet the one true constant, the unchangeable, the immutable, the eternal stability in our lives, is Jesus, who is the same today, and yesterday, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

            Our church worship services have been, perhaps, forever changed by Covid-19. And even though the orders of worship have been altered, even though the predictability of our services has been up-ended, and even though the normality of our Sunday mornings is very different, the reason we worship has not changed.

            Seeking God in worship, and in prayer, is still the first step in hearing what God has to say to us. Before we ask anything of God, before we can do anything for God, we must first be still and listen to what God is asking of us, or perhaps even offering to us. That’s probably why God visited so many men in the Scriptures in their dreams, for some of us this is the only time we are still enough to listen.

            And so Solomon asks for wisdom to govern the people where God has placed him. A discerning heart, and to distinguish between right and wrong. Between good and evil. And to administer justice, to do what is right and to ensure that what is right is what is being done. And then in the 2^nd half of chapter 3 this wisdom gets put to the test.

Ask for whatever you want me to give you.

            Solomon could have been dumbfounded by the magnitude of this, he could have been overwhelmed by the enormity of the options. When you can have anything in the whole store our tendency is to go up and down every aisle, and to look at everything, many things that we simply don’t need.

           

            Solomon asks to be the leader that God will equip him to be. The leadership and the throne was given to Solomon by God anyway, so it makes sense that the tools that Solomon needs will be provided by God as well.

And perhaps that hasn’t changed.

Perhaps God is calling you into a more defined Christian leadership role within your family, within your church, within your community. And perhaps this reminder of Solomon asking to be the leader God wanted him to be will help you.

1.      Seeking God in prayer and worship (1 Kings 3:4)

2.      Admitting what we don’t know (1 Kings 3:7)

3.      And asking boldly for God’s guidance and wisdom to be His servant leader to the people where we have been placed (1 Kings 3:8-9)

This is not just a summary of Solomon’s gift of wisdom, these are steps we can implement in our own leadership roles to be the transformational servant leaders that God has called us to be, who God is equipping us to be. Right here. Right now.

So, “Ask for whatever you want Him to give you”, and trust that He will give you what you need.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Burdens and Baggage

I read a story this week about a dad who was on a hike with his daughter. She was tired and wanted to go home and was begging him to carry her bucket of rocks.

Evidently, they had been hiking for a while. She had been picking up rocks and twigs and dumping them into a little pink plastic bucket. Now, however, she wanted to go home. She was too tired to walk and carry the bucket. So, she was crying and asking her dad to carry the bucket for her. He told her, “No.” He could see how tired she was, but he could also see something she could not. He knew she needed someone to do something more than merely carry her bucket.

So, he knelt down, and asked her to carry the bucket while he picked her up and carried her on his shoulders. She began to cry. She did not want to carry the bucket, but he lifted her up anyway. He hoisted her with her bucket on his shoulders and started to walk away. And as he carried her she rested the pink bucket of rocks on his head.

In Matthew 11:28 Jesus says, “Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

I have preached the sermons before on what we need to lay down, and that is true to an extent. There is baggage in our lives that we carry with us that we need to lay down. There are past experiences and regrets that we need to lay down. There are habits and hang-ups that we need to lay down at the feet of Jesus and walk away from.

And for those things, that baggage needs to be given to God so that we can be free of them. We weren’t ever meant to carry those.

But then there are some burdens which we can’t lay down. There are some things that are affecting our lives right now, or the lives of our loved ones, that are heavy and tiresome, but are just part of life right now. We can’t lay them down and walk away because they are right here with us.

That’s where the picture of the dad and his daughter I think is helpful. Maybe there are some things which we just have to carry right now, in this season of our lives. But how do we do that when we just want God to carry them for us? What about the burden? I think the answer is in the yoke.

It’s an interesting picture, especially as we think about our freedom we celebrated just a week ago. The apostle Paul said that we are free in Christ and should never again be bound by the yoke of slavery. Throw the yoke off, I am free!

And yet Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me”.

A yoke was a wooden crosspiece that was normally fastened around the necks of two animals to pull a plow or a cart.

The yoke does not alleviate the burden, but the yoke does share the burden. And Jesus’ offer here is not necessarily to take it all away, but to submit to a different kind of yoke. To work in partnership with Christ. And you will find rest for your souls.

I believe we all need some soul rest, especially right now. May you find it today, yoked to Jesus Christ our Lord to carry the burdens of today, knowing that God is with you.