The beauty of an ugly narrative

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The beauty of an ugly narrative

These are designed to be 10-15 minute meditation practices. If you don't complete the practice then good! Come back for more tomorrow and until it completes a work in your soul rhythms.
​Scripture Contemplation Guide: 1. Invite the Holy Spirit to speak, resonate, reveal, and renovate you. 2. Read through the Scripture passage, Journals, and Poetry writings while you take in the take in the landscape. What thoughts do these meditations provoke? What word or phrase pops of out for you as you enjoy time with Jesus? 3. Read slowly through the passages again and meditate in silence. What do you hear as you wait in God's presence? 4. Pray conversationally through the scripture to your good Father. Ask Him questions, tell Him about the things you are wrestling with in the passage. Cast your cares on Jesus, be candid, thorough, authentic, and most of all be you. 5. Now thank the Lord for the work He is doing in you and then come back for more as needed!

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Psalm 83:4-13

Our enemies keep saying,
“Now is the time to wipe Israel off the map.
We’ll destroy even the memory of her existence!”
They’ve made their pact, consulting and conspiring,
aligning together in their covenant against God.
All the sons of Ishmael, the desert sheiks and the nomadic tribes, Amalekites, Canaanites, Moabites,
and all the nations that surround us,
Philistines, Phoenicians, Gadarenes, and Samaritans;
allied together they’re ready to attack!
Pause in his presence
Do to them all what you did to the Midianites
who were defeated by Gideon.
Or what you did to Sisera and Jabin
when Deborah and Barak defeated them by the Kishon River.
Do to your enemies what you did at Endor,
whose rotting corpses fertilized the land.
Repeat history, God! Make all their “noble ones”
die like Oreb, Zebah, and Zalmunna, who said in their pride,
“We will seize God’s people along with all their pleasant lands!”
Blow them away, God, like straw in the wind,
like a tumbleweed in the wilderness!
Burn them up like a raging fire roaring down the mountainside;
consume them all until only charred sticks remain!
Chase them away like before a mighty storm and terrifying tempest.
O Lord, disgrace them until their faces fill with shame,
and make them acknowledge the glory of your name.
Make them utter failures in everything they do
until they perish in total disgrace and humiliation,
so they will know that you, and you alone,
are Yahweh, the only Most High God exalted over all the earth!

Let's contemplate the Ishmael effect for a moment because it has been playing out over and over again in the Narrative of God.

Have you ever missed the mark or felt like you have blown any opportunity to be used in God's plans for you? Well, you are in good company and I have good news for you!

If you find that the narrative of your story has left you in desolate places or that you have made mistakes that you can't undo, then give consideration to how God still is working out His narrative even in the resulting mistakes of Abraham, the consequences of a wrong relationship, and the birth of something that got ahead of God's plan. You remember a guy by the name of Ishmael who became the father of the Arab people whereas his brother Issac became the lineage of the Jewish people and the two were at odds growing up and they are at odds even to this day. The root of all the tension that we are experiencing in the world today goes all the way back to the mistake that Abraham made. He got in the flesh, he lost his faith a bit, he tried to do things in his own energy and we are seeing the repercussions in the world today.

Now time goes on and Ishmael is sent off, It breaks Abe’s heart but God says “I want you to listen to your wife, you're doing the right thing!’ And off Ishmael and Hagar go. Time goes on and Issac grows up has a family and then he dies like Abraham before him but he has a son named Jacob and Jacob has 12 sons one of which who was named Joseph. Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob and the other sons became increasingly jealous of that fact so they threw him into a pit and left him there to die taking his coat, dipping it and blood and planning to convince their dad that he was attacked by wild animals and killed so as not to take any blame for their evil plot. But, while they were waiting for Joseph to die there in the pit, there were caravan’s coming along and one of the brothers convinced the others to sell him into slavery so Joseph's blood would not be on there hands. Genesis 37:28 says that merchants who were Midianites came by and pulled Him from the pit and then sold him to Ishmaelites, descendants of Ishmael who then brought Him to Egypt and sold him to a guy named Potipher.

Now here is the kicker! The Ishmaelites, Abraham's mistake, Abraham's goof, Abraham's missing the mark, Abraham's sin, as a father who fathered Ishmael. He got ahead of the Lord, He wasn’t obedient to the lord, and now Joseph, the great, grandson of Abraham is being taken by Ishmaelites to Egypt where through a series of miraculous events he winds up becoming the Prime Minister of Egypt. Meanwhile in the promise land there is a famine and the whole story hinges on the question, who got Joseph to the place where he needed to be to save the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob? It was the Ishmaelites! It was the descendant’s, the offspring of Abraham's mistake! In this amazing story what God does through the mistake of a father ultimately saves an entire nation. We all as followers of Jesus have Ishmael’s in our lives, We have all dropped the ball at some point, but God had a plan to redeem your story, to restore his people, and to keep us on the Path of Jesus. Your Narrative may have been ugly at times but God is at work and accomplishing His Plan in you!

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