“I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is there anything too hard for me?”
TREE UPON TREE
In the 14th century, Japan consumed trees to keep up with a particular style of famous architecture. With limited land to plant, more material was needed to build these intricate and feudal homes. So, what did the Japanese do? Instead of paying excessive amounts of money to outsource trees from other countries, they resourced themselves with a new way to grow and harvest. They asked themselves: Is there a creative solution to our tree problem? With that question came the process that is now known as Daisugi. Daisugi is the innovative technique of bonsai pruning given to full-scale trees. (1) It is a tree growing on top of another tree to save space, resources, and nutrients.
Below are some examples of this creative and beautiful way to grow trees:
NOT BY SPIRIT, BUT BY MIGHT AND BY POWER???
So why am I bringing up Daisugi in this month's blog post? Early this year, I found myself laying down my burdens to the Lord in prayer, but I started to notice that I was giving God more than my petitions. I was also giving Him my 'solutions' for answering said prayers.
God, I need your help to do [X, Y, & Z] and to heal me from [X, Y, & Z], but I trust You to accomplish this in Your sovereign timing .... BUT GREAT NEWS GOD, I've got it all planned out that if you answered it today in the way I'm prescribing, God, it would give you the most glory because it would be a massive testimony to 'so and so' and would cause faith to rise in 'so and so,' and you don't even need to think about solving it because I have it figured out so just speak the Word and ...
oof.
I was reverting back to my former, controlling self because I just wasn't seeing the prayer answered in my timing. How foolish of me to think that If I came up with the solution, God would, at the very least, honor it and approve it with His blessing. Instead of simply submitting my concerns to the Lord who cares for me (1 Peter 5:7), I was subtly interjecting my plans in how God could answer my problems. I was attempting to solve the problem not by the Spirit but by might and power. This line of thinking blocks us from being open to God's creative solutions.
Well, one morning, while praying this way, I felt the Lord awaken me to this problem. In repentance, I reached out to the Lord. I immediately thought about the miracle story of Elisha and the widow's oil multiplied found in 2 Kings 4.
“The wife of a man from the company of the prophets cried out to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead, and you know that he revered the Lord. But now his creditor is coming to take my two boys as his slaves.”
Elisha replied to her, “How can I help you? Tell me, what do you have in your house?” “Your servant has nothing there at all,” she said, “except a small jar of olive oil.”
Elisha said, “Go around and ask all your neighbors for empty jars. Don’t ask for just a few.
Then go inside and shut the door behind you and your sons. Pour oil into all the jars, and as each is filled, put it to one side.”
She left him and shut the door behind her and her sons. They brought the jars to her and she kept pouring.
When all the jars were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another one.” But he replied, “There is not a jar left.” Then the oil stopped flowing.
She went and told the man of God, and he said, “Go, sell the oil and pay your debts. You and your sons can live on what is left.””
When I reread this story, a couple of new insights stood out to me:
Obedience to God's Prophet - I was impressed with the widow's restraint in wanting to promptly respond to Elisha's first question: What can I do for you? If I were the widow, I would not have let him ask his second question and interject with my answer - "I'd like you to call on Yahweh to put a curse on that creditor. Don't you know that my husband has served you well as a prophet?" Or perhaps, if I was bold enough, I would respond with - "I want you to bring my dead husband back to life. My children miss their father, and my heart breaks that I don't have my husband, whom I love, around anymore. I miss our old life. I miss him. " Elisha had the power to bring someone back to life (as we see later on 2 Kings 4:18-37), but he didn't even give the widow a chance to respond. Rather, he followed up with his first question by asking, "What do you have in your house?". As offensive as this might seem, the widow obeyed the prophet with an appropriate answer. What great faith she had in the prophet's instruction.
Obedience to God's Word - Just as I am impressed with the widow's restraint of interjection, I am also impressed with her obedience to the prophetic Word, even when she wasn't given an explanation on how it would all work out. She didn't get stuck in the WHY and HOW but gave herself to the WHAT. How many times do you and I long for God to explain why we're stepping out in faith or how it will turn out before we step out in faith, and yet this faithful widow obeyed the Word without question! What great faith she had in God's Command.
Obedience to God's Outcome - Lastly, when the story is over, I'm impressed with how the Lord cared for each person. The widow's kids were blessed because they were not sold into slavery, and the widow was blessed because she was able to keep her family together and live prosperously off of the rest of the newly acquired oil. Elisha was blessed as he heard that the Word of the Lord came to pass, but we tend to forget in this story that the creditor was blessed as he was able to get his debts paid in full. He legitimately had a right to claim these debts. Instead of looking solely at the creditor as an ‘evil antagonist’, the Lord saw fit to have a creative miracle that would bless all parties involved. This is where the intersection of justice and grace meets that doesn't make sense to you and me. Yet, it is the testimony of God's goodness far beyond what we could ever comprehend. While I want justice against those who come against me, perhaps God invites me to 'love my enemies and pray for those who persecute me' (Matthew 5:43-48). Even be open to a creative miracle in their life. What great faith the widow had in God's Outcome.
Could it be that obedience to God's Word and his outcome is the way forward for a creative solution to our problems rather than our controlling efforts?
DEEP CALLS UNTO DEEP SLEEP
To sum up this post, I'd like to share a story about the creative way James Young Simpson solved a particular problem he was facing. Back in the mid-1900s, Simpson had a complication that kept him searching for a solution. He was burdened by the mortality rate and pain of patients from extreme dental and surgical procedures. (2) Well, one time, as Simpson was reading the Bible, a light went off about how to solve this problem: "So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and then closed up the place with flesh." (Genesis 2:21, NIV). What could surgery look like, thought Simpson, if the patients were 'asleep' instead of awake? Taking this cue from the Bible, Simpson eventually created the modern-day use of Chloroform (3) and credits the Word of God as bringing the remedy to his (and our) problem. Holy curiosity begot the creative solution to this problem.
So, what is it that you believe God to answer and are having difficulty simply trusting Him to do?
My prayer for each of you reading this is that you would let go of all controlling efforts that prevent you from receiving a creative solution to your current problem. As you trust and obey the prophetic Word of Scripture, you find a solution that glorifies God and bows down to His outcome. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." (Ephesians 3:20-21).
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisugi#:~:text=Daisugi%20(台杉)%20is%20a,translates%20to%20%22platform%20cedar%22.&text=Shoots%20from%20the%20base%20of,began%20in%20the%20Muromachi%20period.