One day this winter after going to bed pretty late I woke up to a fully awake state pretty early, maybe around 5. That is pretty unusual for me, so I tried to pray for a bit, then thought I would read in the Bible, and felt like Psalms would be a good place to go. 108 was the number that came to mind. So I read it. Not a whole lot jumped out at me. I finished reading and went back to sleep I guess. A morning or two later, I opened the Bible to read again in the Psalms, hoping a random turn to the page would, through the Holy Spirit, be some kind of spiritual food I needed. I opened to Psalm 60, and started reading. A few verses in, it started to seem very familiar. I was trying to remember why that would be...had I read Psalm 60 recently? But no, when I thought about it, these familiar words were in another place on the page when I had read them before. Suddenly it clicked...several of the verses in Psalm 60 were nearly identical to Psalm 108. And they weren't just any words you might expect, say, declaring God's praises or asking for deliverance. Read for yourself from Psalm 108:
7 God has spoken in His holiness: "I will exult, I will portion out Shechem And measure out the valley of Succoth.
8 "Gilead is Mine, Manasseh is Mine; Ephraim also is the helmet of My head; Judah is My scepter.
9 "Moab is My washbowl; Over Edom I shall throw My shoe; Over Philistia I will shout aloud."
Needless to say, I was more than a little bit curious about why I had "randomly" read these two passages. Was God inviting me to search out a mystery? Maybe. So I decided to study these three verses in Hebrew (to the best of my ability--I'm still pretty much a novice). I wouldn't say it felt like there were any hallelujah choruses ringing to accompany whatever revelations I might have had as a result of this, but there were some really good things He showed me. One of these was in the phrase, "Gilead is Mine, Manasseh is Mine." Every word in Hebrew can be traced back to a three-letter root word. So when you look a word up in the lexicon, there may be insights to discover from the definitions of its root.
The root for Gilead is spelled gimmel lamed ayin. It means expose, lay bare; disclose, make known.
The root for Manasseh is spelled nun shin hey. It means forget; forgottenness.
Yes, these are geographical places that existed, and God was declaring His possession of them when you look at the literal meaning. But He is so deep. He can say a few words or letters and be telling us so many things at once we could learn something new every time we read it! I think He may have also been saying, "It's Mine to expose, it's Mine to forget." I believe God pursues us and woos us with His love, inviting us into relationship with Him so that He can teach us who He created us to be...people who walk and talk in fellowship with the Living God of all creation! When we invite Him to come into our hearts and change us from the inside out, that is the process of transformation that makes us more and more like Him. But it seems to usually be a process, at least in my experience! There are things we hold on to inside that are decidedly not like Him or from Him. At the root they're all lies from the enemy of our souls. Wounds from the past that may have warped our hearts somehow. Maybe resulting in bad habits or dysfunction, or even physical ailments. Maybe hatred or bitterness or depression or lust, or maybe even cancer. One thing I am confident of is that God is willing to show us those things that He wants to heal in us and deliver us from. HE is the One who does that. He exposes what needs to be brought to light (sometimes gently, sometimes by ripping the band-aid off if 'gently' isn't loud enough), so that you and He can deal with it together. But you know what else? After it is dealt with, He FORGETS it! The wrongs we've done, the times we've messed up, the lies we've believed and wrapped our lives around...it was all taken care of through the life, death, and resurrection of His son Jesus Christ. In God's judicial system, it disappears from your record! So go ahead. Ask the Lover of your soul what He wants to expose and bring into the light of His mercy and love, so you can both forget about it and move closer to the ultimate joy of becoming one with Him.
May He bless you on the journey.
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