Bits for Sunday, August 10, 2008

I was halfway through the writing this week when I realized I’d already written about that particular topic. This is a very good example of why you should not try to watch the Olympics while writing something meaningful.

Normally I’m not such a sports girl. At all. If you asked me to tell you the channel location of EPSN on my TV…well…you’d have to wait for me to find the TV guide and read it to you. But there’s something about this Olympic spirit that gives me just a bit of sports fever. And this weekend I’ve kept very close to the TV…watching swimming, diving, biking, gymnastics, sculls (is that the right word?), volleyball…and taking crash courses on each thing as it flashed across my screen.

But aside from my fresh every-four-years encounter with sports this week, I have to tell you that God did a lot of teaching in my heart this week – and it was completely aside from anything Olympic-related.

For the past week, as part of my daily devotions, I’ve been following this little prayer guide I received. I loved it so much because every day had a theme (yay!) and all the theme words started with the same letter (double yay!) Search, Surrender, Seek, Silence, Stand, Secure, and Sing.

Sing is actually today’s, so I’ve not really explored that one too much yet, but the study on Secure last night really hit me.

I had stayed up far too late (as is the norm for Olympic season for me) and knew I was really going to regret that decision when the alarm sounded for church. I crawled into bed with my Bible and my journal and put the Olympics on mute. My heart was pretty restless, and I needed to know that God was aware of that. (As if the audible “AAAHHHHH” hadn’t been clue enough.)

I settled in with my prayer guide and flipped open the Bible to Joshua 1:9. The reference seemed familiar even before I arrived on the right page: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Perfect verse. I could have closed the Bible right then and known that I’d been heard, but I kept reading the other verses on the card. Deuteronomy 31:6…8…23…pretty much the same words in a slightly different order. It was exactly the confirmation I needed.

And it took me back to another time many years ago…when I was in junior high. The youth pastors at my church were newlywed college students, and they were just so sweet to me. They were very good influences during a time in my spiritual life when I was first starting to get excited about having my own thriving relationship with God. They encouraged all of us in the youth group to memorize verses and told us how the verses they knew best were ones they’d learned when they were younger.

This verse, Joshua 1:9, was the first one I learned under their teaching. It seemed an appropriate junior high verse…don’t be afraid, don’t be terrified…God is with you. Maybe life has become an extension of junior high…I’m not sure. I am sure, though, that I was very glad to re-encounter this verse this weekend. I needed these words. I needed to know that I could be strong and that God was going to be with me. I needed to be reminded that all security comes from Him and to try to find it anywhere else is futile.

And I needed to be reminded that it’s good to memorize verses. That’s one of my commitments for this decade – to work on Scripture memorization. (The memorization of the actual words…not just saying “I know it’s that yellow verse in the lower left hand corner of the page.”) What a perfect verse to push me forward in that commitment.