Tent Stakes

For me, this is cornerstone.  This is glue. This is mission-critical.

They came out of a time in life where I was not in contentment or harmony with who I thought the Lord was.  I had spent sweet developmental years creating ground on which God and I operated in a love drenched, insight fueled, experiential relationship. I knew who God was because I had experienced him.

Then, we got bad news. I could not reconcile the character of God with the devastation I was looking at in the natural world, personal and specific to the ruin that now described my hopes and expectations. Not only that. How in the WORLD, once that door of the autricitys of the world is cracked open and you peek inside...do you continue to operate with the kindness of God as your mantle?

This post is not going to satisfy the above incompatibility of God’s kindness and world atrocity. Through experiential shaping and divine listening I have come to understand it all comes down to what questions I am asking.  And I plan to write some essential thoughts about that next month.  But here I would like to pass on my personal tool that is based in Isaiah 54, my life passage.

In the midst of the devastation, God showed up with out-loud, neon Favor for all the world to see. Like, inexpiable undeniable miracles that resulted in provision for our family I could have never imagined or dreamed up. I realized I wasted grief assuming God was a party to the ruin that scared me to doubt the goodness of the future.  I had prayed Habakkuk 3:2, and he answered:

2 Lord, I have heard of your fame;

    I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord.

Repeat them in our day,

    in our time make them known;

I then said to the Lord: “I am convinced and I commit to you, Lord, that I will NOT forget.  Next time things look on the outside that you are not for me, I will declare and root and choose to believe that you are at work in ways I do not see with my natural eyes. Because I saw you do it before. I know life is hard.  I know this is not the only gut wrenching hard thing that will come upon me. I know people get sick. I know life here in earth’s context is not as it should be: people die, people betray, precious things are lost.  Keep your promises on my lips, Lord, even when these things hit me over and over like waves of doubt Let me surf on the truth that Jesus is perfect theology and His character is clear to me and unchanging.” {Psalm 119:172}

Out of that prayer came tent stakes. These are core messages that I commit to hold tight to in the midst of those waves and outside evidence that God might not be for me.  They are my roots and I insist on claiming their reality no matter what the circumstance. This is the invitation from the Lord:

“Enlarge the site of your tent, and let your tent curtains be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your ropes, and drive your pegs deep.” Isaiah 54:2 CSB

You need to develop your own core messages (AKA tent stakes) that speak to your uniqueness.  However, in the spirit of explanation, a few of mine are:

●     I will thank God for his provision of what I need before I have it in hand {Isaiah 54:1}

●     God’s presence is the only thing that makes me well and it is what I pursue above all else. {Psalm 103; Isaiah 53}

●     God is invested and knit into MY cause and MY fulfillment even as he unfolds HIS cause and HIS fulfillment wrapped around the whole earth. I. Am. Not. A Pawn. {Psalm 9:4; Psalm 18}

●     Jesus is perfect theology {John 14:9}

●     Small, mundane things are the stuff of holiness {Zech 4:10}

One more application to this offering is in addition to over-arching life tent stakes, sometimes in life I have needed to create a couple of handlebars of faith for a specific situation.  Maybe you are starting a new business or new pursuit, maybe you are going through a time of illness…What stakes do you need to claim?

Should you get into God’s Word, and should you ask him for an anchor….I would wage that you will get one.  And make that sucker a tent stake! And when doubt creeps in…”St. Benedict” it.  I made “St. Benedict” a new verb.  His famous quote is, “Begin again.”  So, when my mind wanders in prayer or yoga or should an anxiety nag while I am driving or trying to go to sleep, I “St. Benedict” it.  Which means I bring myself back again, and again, and again, and again to that which I am determined to cling to: my tent stakes.