The Wiggins Family Blog

So often I find myself SO focused on the things I don’t have or my biggest needs that I miss God in the smallest details.  One of the things God has really been showing me in my life recently is that NOTHING is coincedence.  God misses nothing and forgets no detail.  Nothing about where I am, what I am doing, who I am surrounded by or what I am learning about Him is an accident, nothing!

Recently while re-reading a very well known story about Jesus feeding the 5,000 I noticed something I have never noticed before (this is one of the things I have come to LOVE about scripture and God’s timing- those things that have been hidden to you until God is ready for you to notice them- praise the Lord that He knows us so well and can speak fresh things to us through His Word.  It is life-changing, but that is another blog for another time).  In John 6:1-15 is the whole story, but one verse jumped off the page for me this time.  Verse 10. 

“Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was plenty of grass in that place. So the men sat down, about 5,000 in number.”

So often I get so caught up in what I don’t have that I fail to see what God has provided without me even having to ask.  Jesus had provided exactly what they needed to hear His message – space.  And because they were hungry he threw in the food.  Why? I believe He loved them and cared about their needs, but even more He had a message and He needed their full attention to hear what He was going to say.  How many times am I getting caught up in my comforts without realizing what God has provided right in front of me.  Another cool detail is that most scholars believe that 5,000 is just the number of men and when you add women and children that the number could have been up to 20,000.  It is no accident that they place they walked into that day was enough space for every single person there to hear Jesus’s message.  Praise God for seeing and caring about every detail.  Even though we don’t always see everything we know that our God provides so well, better then we could ever provide for ourselves.  He knows the “big” picture because He is the WHOLE picture and He works out every detail so we can know it too!

My heart is so heavy this morning as I read the blog of a family who are losing their little girl.  If you can check out their website and pray for this family that would be great.  The blog site is www.howcantheyhear.org.  Their openess in the midst of their grief is so amazing to me and it reminded me of the verse below.

One of my goals for this year was to memorize 24 scriptures (2 a month).  Yes, I make resolutions because I know myself well enough to know that I need to.  I try not to make resolutions that are unattainable and 2 verses a month is a good start.  I choose verses that mean something to me and generally as I am doing my quiet time I will find the next verse I want to memorize.  My verse for this week is this:

“No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sounds of weeping, because the people made so much noise.  And the sound was heard from far away.” Ezra 3:13

In this verse the Jews have just come back from exile and are starting to rebuild the temple.  Just a few verses prior to this we see that they are weeping/shouting for joy over the foundation being laid.  This verse spoke so much to me in my life.  There are days I just am about to jump out of my skin with joy and excitment and then there are days where I am holding back the tears.  It is not always to that extreme but I think in the world we live in we struggle to find balance.  There are so many things in this world that are painful, corrupt and ugly and yet as a Christian, wife and mom I have so much joy, happiness and hope that I sometimes feel guilty.  This verse encourages me in a weird way to feel how I feel in each moment and lift it up as a praise song to my Lord.  I want my life to sing a song of his praise and I can’t do that if I hold every emotion or thought inside.  I want the people around me to hear the ’noise’ of my life and this verse encourages me to that.  One of my prayers is that people everywhere will hear our shouts/crying  from far away and know that Jesus Christ is Lord.

One thing that I love to do is read.  It didn’t make it on my list because it is not something I have done a lot of over the past few years.  This year, besides the Bible, the only books I read were Crazy Love by Francis Chan and The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis.  That is pretty sad for a person who loves to read.  Oh well, this is just a stage (example of how I use this phrase so often).

I was the kid in Middle school and some of High school who pulled out a book at the end of every class.  I seriously was the definition of a bookworm.  This Christmas David got me a new book – Heaven by Randy Alcorn.  I love thinking and talking about what heaven will be like (another thing to add to my list), so this book is perfect for me.  Although, besides funerals, it just isn’t something you hear that much talk about.  Anyway I am only 30 pages in and already have a few passages to share.  So here goes…

“Satan need not convince us that Heaven doesn’t exist.  He need only convince us that Heaven is a place of boring, unearthly existence.  If we believe that lie, we’ll be robbed of our joy and anticipation, we’ll set our minds on this life and not the next, and we won’t be motivated to share our faith.  Why should we share the ‘good news’ that people can spend eternity in a boring, ghostly place that even we’re not looking forward to?”

“God has given us glimpses of Heaven in the Bible- to fire up our imagination and kindle a desire for Heaven in our hearts.”

“you don’t need to look up at the clouds; you simply need to look around you and imagine what all this would be like without sin and death and suffering and corruption.”

And since I am pulling lines out without a lot of explanation I would like to add to the last one that I think a lot of times we have a pretty easy time imagining all that, but there is one thing that we can’t forget…JESUS! I heard John Piper pose a question in a sermon recently, “Are you okay with imagining a Heaven with no Jesus?” Basically he said if you are then maybe you need to examine your heart and find out if you really love Jesus (Hey, these aren’t my words, but I think the guy had a point).

Heaven seems to be one of those topics that we are kind of afraid to talk about.  David recently had a teenager ask him if it was okay to pray for Jesus to return soon.  I mean besides the fact that it is in the Lord’s prayer…YES.  It is perfectly okay and I personally think we should do more of it.   2 Peter 3: 12 says “As you look forward to the day and speed its coming.” (that is NIV; the ESV says ”waiting for and hastening the coming of God”) This passage suggests that by living in the righteousness of Jesus we can not only look forward to it, but hasten its coming.  That is crazy.  It just makes sense that God would want us to long for Him and what He has for us.  He wants His people to love Him enough that we pray daily to be with Him!  It gives us hope and I know we serve a God who is into giving us the hope we need to continue on.  Because HE above everyone knows what we go through.  He lived and died on this earth and has given us the greatest hope of all – Eternity with Him in His Glory.  Now that sounds like Heaven.