Glimpses of Glory: Baby Steps

I went to women’s Bible study for the first time in months and it felt like a wonderful little fall reunion. Many faces I hadn't seen in about a year.  

The lesson was on worry and I knew right away, this is God’s plan for me to refocus my heart on this essential foundation. I’ve been letting it slip! 

Like a kite twisting in the winds, sometimes pointed up and rising, and suddenly taking dips and nose-diving toward the ground, my faith and fears do constant battle. 

It’s back to the famous Sermon on the Mount. Nothing new. In fact, I’d been visiting some of the very same verses in recent days.  Don’t worry. Look at the birds and flowers of the field. Aren’t you worth more than these?

I listened pensively as several women shared. Some said it gets easier with age, but I sat there grappling with my own apparent inability to stay in the zone of trust! How come I know these things so well and forget them so easily? 

With various physical pains stabbing at my shoulder, heal and wrist lately, and concerns about security after losing a job five months ago, I’m not seeing a good foundation for building my dreams here.

I confessed to everyone that I’m grappling with trust even after all these years. I miss my husband’s words of assurance and his shoulder to lean on. I feel alone in the ministry God's called me to and the weight is on my shoulders at times. I keep forgetting that the Lord carries the yoke, but I keep taking it back. 

Oh yes, I give it to God and even rebuke the devil. I’ve been moving forward with every opportunity before me. But the point is, it doesn’t come easy. Maybe two steps forward, one or two back. 

It feels like I’m back to baby steps in my spiritual life, walking through new challenges and asking God to hold me up. 

Lord God, help me stay in the zone and take this one day at a time. No matter what it feels like, no matter how painful, no matter how ridiculous it looks, I intend to keep going until I see you face to face! No matter what!

Tears were in my eyes when we closed in prayer, and I asked God simply to hold me up and help me remember it's one step at a time. How can he love me? How does he put up with me?

My face was in my hands, tears were in my eyes, when I became aware that one of the women’s toddlers had tiptoed over to me. He stood right under my face and peered up and said, “Hello!” 

I opened my eyes.  Such a perfect and innocent little face! Blonde curls and and big blue eyes were peering up at me sweetly. Chubby bare feet reminded me of my own tiny clumsy adorable feet and the baby steps I’m taking. 

“Hello sweetheart!” He touched my heart so, I just wanted to scoop him up! He was absolutely angelic! I saw no fault in him whatsoever. 

Oh dear God! It doesn’t matter that we take such faltering steps. You know exactly what I’m made of and yet, you love me still! You are moved at the sound of my little voice. 

Thank you for loving me, Father!

I need to recognize hardship as part of God’s plan. Show me one baby step at a time, Lord. Even if it’s not what I expect!

I will be content to know that you love me, you know my needs, and you won’t fail. 

You have all my tomorrows figured out.

Part I - You Hear the Wind

One night in Jerusalem, well after everyone was shut into their homes for the evening meal, a member of the high order of Pharisees came to talk privately with a rabbi as he wrestled with his teaching. This Rabbi Jesus was the buzz of the city, and stories of his words and healings filled the streets. Nicodemus just had to know for himself, but not publicly. Too much was at stake. He wanted a private audience to voice his questions to this miracle-working man who called himself the Son of the Most High. 

Nicodemus was trying to make sense out of everything he was seeing and hearing, but it was terribly confusing. So when he finally met Jesus face to face, his thoughts must have tumbled out rather awkwardly. Where do you begin when you come to the One who calls himself God? 

“I think you have to be sent from above,” he stammered. “You have to be from God, as you claim, or how could you do the things you’re doing? We've seen the man born blind regain his sight, and a man who was lame from birth walking in the temple courts.” Then his unspoken questions hung in the night air between them, but the Lord shot straight to his heart and addressed what he was missing. 

Jesus started his lesson with a very basic spiritual principle. “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” It comes like a word of caution to an educated man. Beware, Nicodemus, you can’t figure it out in the normal way, with your natural mind. The life you seek doesn't come through the mind of man, or the things you're relying on. You need to start over, with a rebirth.

“How?” Nicodemus asked. This doesn’t make any sense. His whole life revolved around religious studies and his prestigious role, but he never heard anyone talk about the necessity of a second birth. That’s impossible! I was already born, he wrestled. Aren’t I good enough? I’ve studied Torah and tried to do the right things. I’ve attended religious services and followed all our regulations with the diligence and devotion of a saint, BUT a full-grown man can’t start life over again! How can we go back to birth? 

When we’re in a state of shock, and the boat’s rocking like this, God knows he has to go slowly, as a Father teaching us in baby steps. So, Jesus said it again. “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit… Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

Jesus was opening his eyes to an entirely different type of birth. Nicodemus was only familiar with the earthly birth of the flesh, but there’s a whole new realm into which God leads us. Without it, we will never know him. Period.

The blood drained from his face as Nicodemus grappled to understand if all his efforts and religious studies, the wearing of robes and his scholarly achievements, were now quite at risk of washing down the drain entirely. 

How sad, how frightening, to be confronted with such a daunting realization. Isn't there any value to what I’ve done? Jesus was saying that the fate of all religion is clear. You will not get to heaven this way. You’ve been barking up the wrong tree! You need to start over.

Are you serious? At my age? How many of us would turn and walk away at that point? But Nicodemus needed to see that duty and the law didn’t provide the answers he sorely needed to “meet God.” The accumulation of knowledge and accolades, the titles, legalistic fanaticism, and all the externals were not going to get him there. Religion isn’t enough! The world is full of religion, but we have a famine of the personal knowledge of God.

Did you notice the difference in the way Jesus articulated the essentials? The first time, Jesus said, “No one can see the kingdom of God,” and the next time he expanded that to say, “No one can enter the kingdom” without this new spiritual birth. There is progression in these statements.

We can see something from a great distance, but you only enter through actualization, in the step-by-step experience. You enter at your own pace and at discretion. It is personal. And certainly, we cannot enter what our hearts cannot see, or believe. Faith gives us the spiritual sight required where the kingdom of God is concerned. Entering in requires walking it out in an exercise of our own faith muscles. We must take the baby steps, spiritually speaking.

Knowing the thoughts of his heart, Jesus continued. “You shouldn’t be surprised…” In other words, don’t let yourself think that you know it all. You’re not there yet.  Let me explain what your heart is aching to understand.

I’m fairly sure that at that precise moment a great wind stirred as the Lord’s audio display. We can’t say, “look at the wind,” because it’s invisible, except for the dust it carries and the trees it bends. So the Lord said, “you hear the wind…” in another of his incredible universal illustrations to the planet. There's more to it than meets the eye! I need to develop other senses. 

“Don’t be surprised at my saying you must be born again. The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.”

Mystery! God wants us to come in faith and to respond in love by the tugging of our heartstrings, rather than the academic workings of the mind, so he has not removed all of the mystery.

The wind beautifully illustrates the undeniable presence and power of the Holy Spirit—invisible to our human eyes. We only know the wind exists by the things it does.  We can see leaves rustling, trees leaning over, or clouds moving across the sky. We love to watch a kite or an eagle soaring above the mountains. Wind sustains their flight. Wind makes it possible. We cannot deny its force or prevalence, but it is unpredictable, invisible, and mysterious.

“So it is with everyone born of the Spirit,” Jesus said. God works and dwells in the invisible realm. He calls us to believe in what we cannot see, for now, and I’m okay with that. 

I am only alive because I can breathe what is invisible, and I would die in a minute without it. Wind is all around us, and I never question its existence, do you? Either way, the day will come that I will see it clearly. "Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully..." I Cor. 13:12

My spiritual life also depends on an invisible source, except I must choose to breathe it in. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus that night, He came for this reason, “that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

So we [must learn to] fix our eyes [spiritually] and pay greater attention to what is not seen, for what is seen is temporal and passing, but what is unseen, and invisible as the wind, is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18 

John 3