Testing and Rebelling

     How do we handle ourselves when we find ourselves in a place we don't understand? How do we approach the Lord when it seems like times are too hard, or we don't feel that we have all we need, or things just could not get worse. Exodus 17:1-7 shows the nation of Israel in a place similar to that, and I think they give us an excellent model of how not to approach such times:

The entire Israelite community left the Wilderness of Sin, moving from one place to the next according to the Lord’s command. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So the people complained to Moses, “Give us water to drink.”

“Why are you complaining to me?” Moses replied to them. “Why are you testing the Lord?”

But the people thirsted there for water and grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you ever bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” 

Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What should I do with these people? In a little while they will stone me!” The Lord answered Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take the staff you struck the Nile with in your hand and go. I am going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb; when you hit the rock, water will come out of it and the people will drink.” Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. He named the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites complained, and because they tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” 

-- Exodus 17:1-7 (CSB)

     The Israelites were travelling, as the Lord commanded, but there was no water where the Lord sent them. So they got mad at Moses, which then prompted Moses to remind them that it was God who had brought them to this place in life in the first place. That's the same as us; wherever we are currently in life, it is because God brought us there or allowed us to wander there ourselves. Nothing is beyond His scope or His vision; we are never apart from His presence and never blocked from His guidance.
     This didn't stop the Israelites from grumbling and complaining about the situation, though. I get it; there's not any water, and water is necessary for life to continue. It had to have felt like Moses was leading them out into the desert to dehydrate and die of thirst. They even started to long for the "good ol' days" when they were enslaved by the Egyptians, where they at least had access to water. I guess they figured that a terrible life with water was better than no life at all. So they kept complaining at Moses, and Moses did not know what to do. How was he to handle this situation?
     He turned to the Lord. He called out for God to help, knowing that God was totally aware of their plight and that it was God Himself who had lead them there. They had no rebelled and gone somewhere they were not supposed to go; it was totally through Moses's faith in God and His guidance that they had ended up in this predicament. God's people were on the verge of literally dying out, but God had no intention of that happening. He was not going to allow His covenant people to die out. His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would not be coming up short, and certainly not in a place that God Himself had led them. He led His people to a place of testing, and they responded by testing Him. They failed His test of faith.
     So Moses called out, and God answered with a plan. It wasn't the assumed, normal plan either. I'm sure Moses assumed that God would lead them to a place with more water, like a river or a lake. We often assume that God's plans will be pretty predictable, too. I know that I often think I can plot out God's answers and next steps for my life, and yet time and time again, I am proven wrong. God almost always surprises me with the next step on His journey with me, and He surprised Moses here, too. God brought their salvation in an unexpected and unforeseen way: He brought water from a rock.
     There is a ton of parallel here with Jesus in the New Testament. He's the Rock we stand on (1 Corinthians 10) and our source of living water (John 4). He is the salvation that came to us in an unforeseen way, as a baby in a boondocks town that grew up to be a street-preaching rabbi that literally died in our place to provide salvation to us. We do not have to go find our living water and our salvation; just like the Israelites, our salvation came to us in our hour of need, and we simply need to trust Him for salvation.
     This is not a one-time deal, though. We do not trust Jesus to save us once, and then live the rest of our lives. Trusting in Jesus as our salvation may be initiated and secured when we place our faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord, but our daily walk with the Lord is meant to be a daily step of faith. We daily find ourselves, like the Israelites, confused and frustrated. We don't always understand our circumstances and we don't always see how it will work out for good. Yet, we always have a choice to make: to grumble like Israel, or trust that our Savior is the Rock of salvation every day in everyplace. We must not test (Massah) or rebel against (Meribah) the Lord; we must trust Him.
     Hebrews 3:7-4:2 puts this Old Testament passage into a New Testament context; we cannot allow a sinful, unbelieving and distrustful heart to turn us away from God. We must have confidence in Christ. We must encourage our fellow believers to keep the faith. Hebrews 4:2 clearly shows that Israel had heard the gospel, same as us in the church today; they simply did not combine the good news with daily, practical faith in the moments of everyday life. When they did that, they rejected the rest available to them: both in the immediate rest we find in placing our burdens on Christ and in the future rest we have in eternity with Him. Their lack of faith showed a lack of heart change by the gospel, and revealed them to be frauds in the faith.
     Will we trust our Lord daily, while we still have time to walk with Him and rest in Him, or will we doubt and test Him until the end of our days? The choice is ours to choose faith, and I pray that we will each do just that.

Since I've Been Gone

Hello there. Long time, no see. I will say, it feels weird to sit down and write on this blog. I haven't seen the familiar orange-and-gray color scheme of the Blogger homepage in quite some time. In fact, I haven't seen my blog much at all in quite some time. I periodically would check in to see if anyone had commented or anything, but overall, I truly left this thing for awhile. I needed to get away. I needed to spend sometime writing, just me and God.

Since then, I have come into a new place. A lot has happened, that's for sure. My, has my life been nuts since May. It wasn't long after my last post that my mom went in for a routine scan (to see if her cancer was back) and found a mass in her lung. About a month and a half later, a surgical procedure found that her soft-tissue sarcoma had returned. She originally had it in her left arm before this find, and went through both chemotherapy and radiation to rid her body of the disease. She was "cancer-free" for about a year-and-a-half, and then the cancer metastasized in her lung. No bueno, that's for sure.

She had the mass removed, but more returned quickly. The cancer was more aggressive and in a more dangerous spot this time, and had to be handled as such. Mom began working with the University of Texas's MD Anderson Cancer Center, which has a large number of doctors devoted to this particular form of cancer (and about every other kind, for that matter). MD Anderson is one of the very best cancer centers in the world, and they have been more than helpful in working to cure my mom.

She is rapidly approaching her final of six rounds of chemotherapy, in which she was forced to stay in the hospital for a week at a time, letting literal poison to drip into her circulatory system. It has been both a blessing and curse, seeing her receive treatment that could save her life, and yet was also making her sicker. While the first bout was difficult, this second bout has been all the more.

While this was all going on, my college ministry at the University of Kentucky (where I still attend) has been continuing our purpose of glorifying God by making disciples of our generation through prayer, relationships and studying God's Word. EPIC Ministry launched a website, made some contacts and gained some members on UK's campus, held an outdoor worship concert and even went through a study on our basic beliefs and values. We even expanded our meetings, going from a small-group Bible study to a weekly gathering with teaching and discussion times. We then brought back the small-group-only format on Sunday mornings, allowing us to spend more time together as a community in the Word and in prayer.

One of my mentors, Wayne Lipscomb, has continued to battle ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease. I have watched and followed as this strong man has tried to defeat this neurological monster. He has continued to work at his church, and still preaches regularly, despite being weaker than he once was.

My sister got married not long after I went on my blogging hiatus. She married her longtime friend, Trent, and they had a gorgeous wedding at their church in Louisiana. Not long ago, Trent and Brittany announced that they will be having a baby in the spring. I've already become a brother-in-law, and now it appears I will be an uncle. Weird.

I was blessed to be able to preach on several occasions over the past few months, ranging from churches in South Louisiana to Frankfort, Kentucky, and twice in my home church of Victory Baptist Church, here in Lexington, Kentucky. Each time, I am more and more affirmed in my calling that I am a preacher. That is what God put me on this Earth to do. There is nothing in my life that I receive such satisfaction from doing, and there is nothing I strive for more than to help someone in their understanding of God and His Word. I know I was questioning that when we were last together, and God resolved that internal conflict. He made Bryan Watts for one thing, and that was to preach His Word and His Name to the nations. I am a preacher at heart, and now know that I am, without a shadow of a doubt, been made to do so.

So, what have I learned through all of this? What have I learned as I left on a little time of Christ-reflecting and such? Did I "find myself," or something like that? Here's a brief touch of what I have learned:

1. I'm still learning
• You are crazy if you think that I disappeared for a while and have come back with all the answers. That doesn't happen. We are not able to "find ourselves," because our identity is not in ourselves. If you are a human, and I bet you are, then you were not made for this world. Doesn't it seem like we're always messed up or in the wrong spot? Guess what: it's because we are. We're made for so much more than the petty crap we fill our lives with. I am not made for Kroger and UK and writing and girls and friendships and NASCAR and all the other things I fill my life with. I am made for one purpose: to worship God. I am designed specifically to be a worshiper, an image-bearer of the Lord God who reigns over all. By saving me, He took it another step further by making my heart new and allowing my to come to Him. My identity and my heart are not made of myself; I cannot craft a true identity for myself. I am in Christ, and He is in me. I am His and He is mine. My identity is found solely in Him, and I must continue to realize that as time goes. If you are interested in getting a head start in finding your identity in Christ, rather than yourself, then check out the Identity in Christ reading plan by Mars Hill Church on YouVersion. It's worth a month of your time. 
2. Life is fleeting
• I have written on this in the past, but has become more and more clear to me that our lives are not but a blip on the radar of time. We have such a minuscule, yet useful, span of time here on earth to accomplish what we are set here to do. James 4:14 says that our lives are but a mist, a vapor, wisp of smoke, and that we are not to be presumptuous about tomorrow. Instead, we live for today. When Christ talks about what we treasure in Matthew 6, He goes on to say that would should not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Instead, we seek the Kingdom. We push forward from where we are now, thanking God for the position He has put us in today and living for Him in that position. It isn't unwise to make plans, but it is certainly unwise to make plans without keeping in mind that He determines what we do and could change our little plans at any given moment. Therefore, we prepare for the future, sure, but our primary focus is on what we can do for the Kingdom today. 
3. Prayer is essential
• Oh, how I have seen prayer work in the past few months! I have seen prayer sustain my mother, give my family peace, bring people to hear the Gospel when I would never expect them to listen, help me with temptations, give me direction in my life, affirm my calling and bring me closer to God. Prayer is our lifeline to God, and we must make it a priority. If you are a Christian, you must pray regularly. Nothing is more refreshing to your soul than time spent with God. I am growing in this discipline, and I encourage you to come with me on it. Let's commune with our Lord. 
4. God has got you
• No matter what, if you are in Christ, you are saved. There is no un-saving you. God is not going to toss you out to the cold and forget about you. We are held in His hand, and in Philippians 1, Paul writes that he is confident that God will finish a work in the Philippian believers. Why was he confident that God wouldn't bail on them? They were partakers of grace, and by definition, God's grace cannot have anything to do with what we do. If you are a partaker of grace, then you have God's grace. Good or bad, you're under grace. Therefore, there's nothing you can do to be unsaved! God's got you! That frees us to live for the Kingdom, because we have to pressure to make sure we're still under grace! We can't fall out, so go for it!
5. Our discussions must be intentional
• I have a friend of whom I had the privilege of spending multiple extended coffee times together with over the past few months, and she taught me one thing in particular: our conversations must revolve around Christ. How often can we get distracted in talking to our Christian friends with talk of sports, fashion, music and other odds and ends? How much easier is it to gloss over the impact of Christ in our lives when speaking to our unsaved friends? This cannot be! We must discuss Christ constantly: for encouragement and rebuke among believers and for repentance and salvation among the unbelieving. Our lives on this earth, as well as our unbelieving friends lives forever, depend upon our discussing Christ on the regular. Have we really given up our lives for Him or not?

These are just a few of the lessons I have learned in my time away.  I have learned many more, but these are just the beginning. I'm glad to be back, and I'm ready to write again. Let's do this.