Before is a word we may not think of a great deal because it points to something that is about to happen that seems larger in importance than now. It is a time filled with anticipation but that anticipation may be positive or charged with fear and anxiety. Sometimes we don’t like the word before very much because it makes us wait.

Our memories are filled with things like that from childhood onward. Before you go out to play, you need to finish your homework. Before you race down the stairs and start tearing open Christmas gifts, you need to wait until your parents tell you it’s okay. And the list goes on and on for us. It’s some of those early memories about before that remind us of not only the anticipation but also the waiting.

Before also means preparation. We are often eager to get something over with to get to the next thing we think is better. We need to take training and pass tests before we can drive or do any number of things that require a level of skill or knowledge. As I write this, several come to mind immediately. A friend is soon to have surgery and was asked to prepare by doing various exercises to make recovery more successful post surgery. Our oldest grandson and his fiancee are eagerly counting down the days until they marry but first preparation means premarital counseling to better equip them for that new season ahead.

When we are expecting a baby, all those months before he or she arrives is filled with preparation. Some involves the physician’s care, but there is so much more. The baby will need a special place to sleep, clothes, and a vast assortment of items to prepare. If you are blessed, you will have those who have gone through this process before giving you pointers on what to expect about labor and delivery, loss of sleep during the early months at night, and so much more you cannot know unless you have been there. These preparations are all vital to when you first hold this wee one in your arms and are struck by wonder and an awareness that you are now the one responsible for this little gem and those helping you in the hospital will hand off everything to you before you are sure you are ready. That all happens before as you prepare to go home and begin family life together.

We also will have more than a few times that we wish we had known more before something happens. We think we would have prepared more, been better equipped in some way. We both want and are edgy about getting warnings about something in advance. In many cases we are aware knowing more doesn’t help as much as we wish because we don’t really have as much control as we hope.

We are all living in the now and not yet, the time before whatever is about to happen across the entire spectrum of our lives. That can be and often does stir many feelings in us, but it has been that way since the beginning of time. A classic example is how we are now anticipating the days before Christmas even as those in Israel were anticipating the birth of the Messiah based on hundreds of prophecies. Some were preparing, others were not. Some were ready and believed. Others missed the reality of what occurred on that night in Bethlehem.

We’re living in a parallel time now. Prophecies tell us the Christ will return and we are living in the now and the before. We have not been given a date even as there was no exact date before He came as a baby thousands of years ago. How are we preparing and what is our anticipation about it?

But as you ponder that, there is something else to keep in focus.

Before now, before the history of the world, God was preparing for us. He was preparing the wonders of the earth and all its beauty for us to inhabit. He wanted to make humankind for fellowship with himself and knew we would be fallible so planned before to send a Savior to heal our brokenness and make a way for us where there would have been no way without such a perfect sacrifice. As God and perfect man, He experienced life as we do so He could know the weaknesses and yet not falter or fail.

As a perfect parent, He planned for each one of us knowing that we would live in a world tarnished by evil, filled with darkness and trouble, disease and loneliness, sorrow, and disappointment. And He planned for that by promising to be with us before He returns to set everything in order and take us to be with Him. Even now, before we are in that time, He is preparing for us there. While we wait, we can prepare, we can call on Him. He invites us to do that.

Tucked into Isaiah is a verse that I have read often and been blessed by as I live in the now and not yet, the now and the before.

“Before they call, I will answer;
    while they are yet speaking, I will hear.”

Isaiah 65:24 (ESV)

Our challenge with that verse is we have difficulty believing it unless God answers in the way we want and in the time we want. He knows the whole story and our part in it and sometimes those answers are not the ones He has for us. Reading through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation shows us that but also shows us his faithfulness to be with the worst of us and see us through whatever our role is. Even now before, He is with us. He wants us to be preparing to be with Him.

Has anyone ever asked you how well you know the Lord?

How did you answer? And how did you feel about your answer?

When we accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, we begin a journey with Him that is one that passes from this life into eternity. That journey is one of the means that helps us to become better acquainted with the Lord. The ups and downs and twists and turns of life on this earth give us more than one or two opportunities to be clear we are not in Eden.

If we are fortunate after that initial encounter with the Lord, we experience sound biblical teaching and discipleship to anchor our commitment to Him. That biblical teaching becomes the foundation and directly influences how we grow and what we believe about life with Him, and it is of critical importance.

Life will test us, tempt us, try us, and leave us spinning, absent a strong mooring in the truth of his Word.

His Word provides understanding, comfort, historical context and information, encouragement, hope, and more. Most of us know it is divided into an Old and New Testament.

The word testament refers to a person’s will, the part relating to personal property and something that serves as a sign or evidence of a specified fact, event, or quality according to the dictionary. Consider that as you pick up your own Bible and what He wants you to see that He has left for us.

When I recall the wills of my parents as an executrix following their deaths, I am aware the wills represented my inheritance and pointed direction to provision for my future. They addressed the tangible assets representing their life’s work (with interest). What they passed on was now my responsibility to steward.

His Word was meant in part at least to represent the same things and more in a much broader and bigger context. The Narrative books (sometimes called historical books) tell us where we came from and how our relationship with Him as mankind began and developed. (They tell us the story.) There is the Poetry portion that includes Psalms and other poetic books that communicate ideas, but especially express emotion and show us life in all its fullness. There are the books of Wisdom such as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes meant to shape our moral and ethical lives, and these cover many practical topics about our lives.

There is also a section of both Old and New Testament devoted to Prophecy that include what are known as major and minor prophets. They point to warnings to those people with whom God is in covenant and are meant to help us prepare for what lays ahead. These same passages reveal much about God’s mind and character.

The Gospels appear to be and are narrative, but additionally they serve as a proclamation of who Jesus is, his life and his teachings. The letters in the New Testament written to a specific person or specific group are known as Epistles. They provide encouragement and questions and guidance for the Christian life. One additional portion is known as the Apocalypse. This refers to Revelation and parts of the book of Daniel that are in some ways like other prophecies but employ a great deal of symbolic language.

Together they tell us much and round out the picture and understanding of who God is and the functioning of the Trinity and how we can connect with Him.

One passage often used to comfort our hearts (especially during times of sorrow) is found in John 14:1 (NIV). It’s a fitting passage because we see the words of Jesus spoken to his disciples just prior to his crucifixion. Read again John’s words in 14:1 (NIV):

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.”

When I read Jennifer Dukes Lee’s book, It’s All Under Control, she pointed out the significance of the original Greek for the word “believe” which is pisteuete.  She shared this insight that is important to include in our understanding:

“But pisteuete belief is more than being convinced of God’s existence – so much more. Pisteuete belief means to “have trust in.”

When we pause to consider challenges on our faith journeys in trusting Him when ups and downs or twists and turns disrupt all we hold dear and love, I think it may reveal a great deal about our relationship with Him.

Our level of intimacy is deepened in any relationship by how well we know the person and at what level we have shared our deepest thoughts, ideas, and passions.

Our level of intimacy with the Lord impacts how well we trust Him, especially in those most difficult spots in our lives. That intimacy can only grow by spending time with Him, not only reading but also understanding his will, his testament to us, so that we recognize his heart.

When you consider your most intimate human relationships, what do they look like and how did they develop?

Should not our relationship with the Lord be even more intimate than those relationships?

Consider these words:

“We cannot always trace God’s hand, but we can always trust God’s heart.”

Charles Spurgeon

“Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”   

Corrie Ten Boom

“God won’t light your second step until you have taken the first one.”  

Woodrow Kroll

As children one of the games we learned to play may have been “Follow the Leader.” There was even a song that some sang about following the leader and it was one of those rare games where you didn’t need to have a special skill to take your turn being the one leading. (I was one of those.) One of the other bonuses was that it didn’t result in as much comparing ourselves with one another as so many others did. You could be silly, klutzy, overly serious, or the best athlete and everyone could just enjoy trying to follow whoever was leading.

Then it wasn’t long before categorizing started. There tended to be two groups – leaders and followers – and it seemed that leaders were the ones who were lauded the most for all the characteristics that resulted in the label. Many times, someone who was simply a “follower” could be seen as “less than” by some.

Those labels often shadowed us all through school and well into adulthood. Some would call a person “a natural born leader” and other times other descriptions would be used. I wonder which you identify with. As for me, I was seldom considered to be a leader so far as I know and usually preferred to follow someone else I thought knew more than I did. That may or may not have been true, the person may have not known more, but somehow the label influenced me and many others.

I think God might look at that differently. A quick scan of people whom God has used or is using includes many who would be considered “least likely” to be chosen to lead. No one would have suspected Rahab would be chosen to guide the spies from the children of Israel to safety. Yet she not only led, she is listed in the lineage that would result in the birth of King David and Jesus.

In all of this we can be tempted to get drawn down so many rabbit trails as believers when it comes to our view of “calling” and what that means or might look like in someone’s life. If we are not in some recognized leadership role, it can tempt us to question if we have a purpose or calling at all.

“Living in a God-speaks-greatness-into-everyone environment can lead to shadows of self-doubt when God isn’t speaking to you.”

From The Sacred Echo by Margaret Feinberg

When that happens, we forget what “calling” means and what it looked like when Jesus started “calling” people during his earthly ministry. When He “called” his disciples, do you hear a defined statement of what that “call” meant for each of them? We get some direction with Simon (a.k.a. Peter), but not the others.

“The call” was simple – “Follow me.”

How releasing to know it is that forthright and direct! But the catch for us is that it isn’t clearly mapped out. He is asking us to follow Him and trust Him with what that means, looks like, and where it takes us. That is a good time to recall the words of Isaiah:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.

 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8-9 (NIV)

A number of years ago I read a marvelous book entitled The Divine Embrace by Ken Gire. He begins the book using a metaphor of a dance to describe our relationship with the Lord. He describes what it would be like to be in a ballroom and have the Lord come and invite us to dance, noting we would be unsure of ourselves, wishing we had dance lessons to feel as if we could accept his invitation. That is a good image of what it can feel like to be chosen by Him, called by Him.

“There are places he wants to take us on the dance floor, things he wants to show us, feelings he wants to share with us, words he wants to whisper in our ear. This is what the divine embrace is – an invitation to a more intimate relationship with Christ, one exhilarating, ennobling, uncertain step at a time.”

From The Divine Embrace by Ken Gire.

Perhaps if we look at who we are following or trying to determine what our “calling” is, we need to go back to the basics and first accept his invitation: “Follow me.”

“Don’t be distracted by what others are doing. Don’t worry about the speed, productivity, or efficiency of others. Don’t be concerned with people who look like they’re running in circles. Stay the course. They have their lane and you have yours.”

From The Sacred Echo by Margaret Feinberg

The first disciples chose to follow a man from Nazareth, not someone who looked like the king they expected.

What will you do when he simply says, “Follow me“?

Your answer, my answer, will make all the difference in his call on our lives.