FIND A FIELD
18th Jul 2018
Are there times when you feel you have lost intimacy with Father God, when you are talking to Him about profound needs of others, and yet not acknowledging what’s going on in your own heart? When that happens, you need a “field”, a place apart, on your own where you can be as noisy as you like without others hearing; where you can pour out all that has been bottling up over the past weeks or months.
That’s what Isaac did in Genesis 24:63, “He went out into a field to meditate…” It sounds so gentle and quiet, but in Jewish culture meditation is not quiet or passive - rather the opposite - pouring out all that has disturbed you, disappointments, things you can’t understand, until everything is out in the open between you and God and you are in a position to find comfort and maybe answers.
Asaph records some of his own meditation in the Psalms, where we see him getting things off his chest and coming into a place of peace. Psalm 73:16-17 says, “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood…”
Take Isaac, nearly 40 years old, unmarried, waiting for a bride from his father’s relatives; his mother has recently died, his father is elderly. He is aware of God’s promises over his life, but in reality everything seems at a standstill. He goes to Beer Lahai Roi, the place where God revealed Himself to Hagar as “I have now seen the One who sees me” (Genesis 16:13-14), a place where there was a supernatural well of water, and there alone Isaac pours out his heart. When he has finished he sees camels in the distance bringing Rebecca.
The answer you are looking for may not come so quickly, but when God hears the heart cry of one of His beloved, He goes into action on their behalf.
So find your field - your place where you can be alone with God - and pour out your heart, let Him fill you up with supernatural resources, and wait and see what He will do.
by Joyce Sibthorpe
