Find Hope Here with Teresa Whiting - Christian Women (Bible Study, Faith, Sexuality, Freedom from Shame)

A Summer Blessing For You

• Teresa Whiting

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When I was a kid, summer started on Memorial Day and lasted until Labor Day. We had 13 glorious weeks of summer break and I feel like schools have kind of rewritten the rules. They've rewritten the schedule, extending their school year and shortening the summer. Well, I'm going old school and I am taking a full summer break. From the podcast, as you can see if you're watching on YouTube, I'm kind of already in summer mode.

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But before I sign off, I thought what is the last thing I would want to tell you, kind of like the end of year, signing the school yearbooks. You know that was very dramatic when I was in junior high, but I was thinking what's the last thing I would want to say to you before things go quiet for a little while? And I decided I wanted to speak this beautiful blessing over you. It's kind of familiar because it's a popular song these days, but beyond just speaking this blessing, I want to stop and pause and unpack the beauty of these words. Hi, friend, you're listening to Find Hope. Here I'm your host, teresa Whiting.

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Author, speaker, ministry leader, friend and fellow struggler. This is a podcast about the messy, complicated, painful parts of life, but also the beautiful, joy-filled hope that Jesus promises. Each week, we dig deep into God's Word together and talk about how His truth impacts our everyday lives. I'm not going to ask you to sit with me and have coffee, because I seem to have my best conversations while I'm just doing life. So I'd love to hang out with you as you walk or fold laundry or drive to work. You're invited to join me in pursuing the hope God promises, no matter where you are or where you've been. I pray you always find hope here.

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Let's jump in to today's episode. I hope that as you hear this episode today, you will take it to heart and receive it as a blessing for yourself. I'm going to share with you Numbers, chapter 6, verses 24 to 26. You Numbers, chapter 6, verses 24 to 26. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

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Now, before we just think, oh, this is a very familiar passage, I know this blessing. I want to take some time to unpack these words and the first thing we notice is that every phrase begins with the Lord and that word Lord. If you're looking at the Bible, you'll notice it's in all caps this blessing is from the Lord, it's from Yahweh. That is the personal name of God. When the Israelites would hear this blessing, they would know this is a blessing from Yahweh, not some generic God out there, not just some deity that's floating around. No, it's the personal name of their God, the covenant keeper, the one who promises his presence to his people. He's not far off or distant, he's very close. Interestingly, the passage verse 27, ends with this so they will put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them. In other words, this blessing is meaningless without God's name attached to it, without the name of Yahweh attached to the blessing.

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In Exodus 33 and 34, moses is having a conversation with God and he says Now show me your glory. And the Lord answers with I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. And then it says the Lord came down in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, or Yahweh. Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. When the Israelites heard this blessing, that's the God they were thinking of, a God who is merciful and gracious and full of steadfast love and faithfulness, a God who keeps his covenant and meets out justice. The blessing without Yahweh behind it is meaningless. So the next phrase is the Lord bless you, and that word bless means to bestow divine favor or benefits. The blessing, again, is rooted in relationship.

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In Leviticus 26, god is giving the covenant to his people and he promises them blessing, and for them blessing was things like rain and produce and fruit and victory over their enemies, and also things that we're looking for, like security and God's presence. And this is what he says in Leviticus 26, 9 through 13. God says I will turn toward you and I will make my dwelling place among you and my soul will not despise you. I will walk among you and be your God and you will be my people. I am the Lord, your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord, your God. I am Yahweh who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians. I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk uprightly.

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Oh, I love that last part. Right there, I broke the bars of your yoke, your slavery, and enabled you to walk up. Rightly, god is reminding the people I'm the one who set you free. That's part of the blessing. But all of that blessing, did you hear the best part? I'm going to walk among you, I'm going to be with you. That's what God's heart is. It's always been to be with us, from the garden until the end of Revelation. You see God saying over and over again I'm going to dwell among you, I'm going to dwell with you, I'm going to be with you. Now, we who are believers have this Holy Spirit dwelling in us. God's blessing comes with his presence.

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The next phrase is and keep you. The Lord bless you and keep you, and I immediately thought of Psalm 121. Oh, this is one of my favorite Psalms. It's eight verses long and you're going to hear the word keep six times in these. I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun shall not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forth and forever more.

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That word keep that we have just heard over and over is the Hebrew word shamar. It means to guard, protect, hedge about. You know, in Psalm 139, the psalmist says you hem me in behind and before. You have laid your hand upon me. In other words, god is like I'm surrounding you, I am with you when you go in, when you come out. I'm not going to sleep, I'm not going to slumber, I'm not going to fall asleep on the job. I think about the fact that so often at night, you know we're up, we're replaying things in our minds and God is saying you know what, teresa, you know what friend, go to sleep. I've got this. I'm not going to sleep. I'm here, I'm with you, I'm watching over you. I know about all of these situations that you're in turmoil over, and I'm your keeper. And so we can sleep, because God doesn't sleep. He's always on guard on our behalf. All right back to Numbers 6.

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The next phrase is the Lord, make his face shine on you. That word face is the Hebrew word panim. It means presence, relationship, favor. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they hid from his face, his presence. They didn't want to be with him and he came looking for them. When his face shines on us, it gives us light, it causes us to be illuminated. I love the sun. I love the warmth and the light and the security. I love living in Florida where the sun comes out every single day.

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I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but in Luke, chapter 1, zachariah is prophesying about his son, john the Baptist, and he says this and you, child, referring to John, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation to his people. Now, this is what refers to Jesus, in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. I love that Jesus is referred to as the sunrise that will visit us from on high. He is the light of the world. He came to give light to those who sit in darkness, in the shadow of death, and in his presence, before his face, this prayer is that his light will shine on you. And then it continues and be gracious to you.

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That word gracious means to bend, to stoop in kindness to an inferior, to bestow favor. It emphasizes the unmerited nature of God's grace. I don't understand grace I will admit that to you because I'm so steeped in a culture that's all about earning and striving and producing and accomplishing. But grace is unearnable. I don't know if that's a word, but it should be because we don't have to perform to get God's grace. As a matter of fact, it's there in spite of our inability to perform. And the theme of grace God's grace being poured out on us is just a reflection of his compassionate and merciful character. That's what he does. The whole narrative of scripture rides on the wings of grace. And then we get to verse 26 of number six, and it says the Lord turn his face toward you. Or in other translations, it says lift up his countenance upon you. This is my absolute favorite part of this blessing, because this is what God does he turns his face toward us.

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We have seen that over and over again in scripture and this is my prayer for you that when you're discouraged, when you're afraid, when you're lonely, you will see God looking at you. You'll see his face turned toward you, not in condemnation, but with delight, with invitation, saying come to me, here I am, I'm for you, I'm turned toward you, I'm with you, and I don't know what that means for you. Maybe you need to come clean with God in confession and repentance and restore things that have been broken between the two of you. Maybe you need to acknowledge his love and accept it for yourself, not just for those people out there, but for you. His face is turned towards you in love. Or maybe you've had people in your life that have turned their back on you. Maybe you've had people walk away or step out of your life. I especially want you to see God turning towards you saying I'm here, I'm never, ever going to walk away from you. I am still pursuing you with steadfast love and faithfulness.

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And the closing of this prayer says and give you peace. If there's anything I could wish for you, it's peace. That word peace is the Hebrew word shalom. Back when we still had our Airbnb, we had a woman stay with us who was Jewish and every time she would come in and go out she would say Shalom, teresa. And one time she stopped me and she said I want you to know Shalom, it's not just peace. She said, it means so much more and as I've dug into the word, I found it to mean completeness, soundness, welfare, safety, well-being, health. It is this rich, multifaceted word and it's again interwoven with his presence. Jesus himself is called the Prince of Peace. In that title we see Jesus as the one who reconciles us to God, who restores us to God, and not just to God but to one another.

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Shalom encompasses living in right relationship with God, with others and even with creation. Interestingly, when you get to the New Testament, the New Testament word that's equivalent to shalom or peace in the Old Testament is peace in the New Testament, and that Greek word is arene and it literally means wholeness. It's like this, it's like everything is together as it should be, which is the exact opposite of the word anxiety, which means divided, pulled apart, distracted, worried. It literally means to go to pieces, and I laugh because I'm like. Oh, I know what that feels like. And in this prayer it says the Lord or Yahweh give you peace. In Judges 6.24, it says Gideon built an altar to the Lord and named it Yahweh Shalom, which means the Lord is peace.

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We can do all kinds of things to try to get to a place of peace. We can do deep breathing exercises, we can regulate our nervous systems, and I highly recommend those things, and actually I think we should do that together right. Actually, I think we should do that together right now. I think we should do one of the physical things that God has given to us breath breathing to bring a sense of peace. So we're going to practice our box breathing and this is a great reminder for summer. I would encourage you to start your days with this practice, to end your days with this and maybe even in the middle of the day, when you feel yourself getting dysregulated or stressed out, take a minute and do this box breathing, and what we do is we take four long, deep breaths in, we hold it for four seconds and then we do a long, slow exhale. So let's do that together, shall we Inhale?

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Hold it. Give a long slow exhale Inhale. Hold Inhale. Long slow exhale. Okay, a long inhale Inhale. Hold. Long slow exhale Inhale last time. Hold and a long slow exhale.

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I don't know about you, but I feel my shoulders relaxing, I feel my jaw unclenching when I do that box breathing. But all the box breathing in the world is nothing without the presence of the one who is the source of peace. And that is my prayer is that as you inhale, you will inhale the breath of God, the peace of God, and you will exhale your anxiety. That when you do that box breathing, you will take God's peace, his presence, and bring it to the forefront of your mind, that you will remember that the Lord is peace. So that is my prayer for you this summer. Now that we've dug a little deeper into this passage, I think we have a greater understanding of what the blessing is. Now I'm going to give you a little Bible study tip, and that is when you come to scripture. I really encourage you, like in a passage like this, to read the whole thing. It like in a passage like this, to read the whole thing. It's like surveying the forest. Right, we look at all the trees, we get the big picture and then we zoom in and we dig deep. That's when we study the words. We say what does this word mean? What did it mean originally? How do these words fit together. That's like studying the leaves and the bark and the moss. We're getting a real close-up view of the trees, right. But then we want to zoom back out and we want to look at the forest again and I promise when you do that you see it with different eyes, because now you have a deeper understanding of what those trees are doing down there, what that looks like. And with scripture, when you zoom in and you get real deep into it, I always encourage you to zoom back out and see the passage with fresh eyes. This practice has changed the way I see scripture. It's changed my understanding of scripture. So now that we've zoomed in and we've looked closely at what all these words mean, I want to pull back out. I want to zoom out and read this blessing over you one more time and I want to encourage you to take it in. Like, if you're not driving or ironing, like, close your eyes. I mean wait, who even irons anymore? Okay, just had to put that out there. If you're not doing something that requires your eyes to be open, I want to encourage you to close your eyes and take this in as a blessing for you, for your own. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.

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Now, before I sign off for the summer, there are a few last reminders I want to give. First of all, if you are not yet following Find Hope here, you want to press that little plus sign or the follow button in the top right corner of your screen. That way you'll know when I come back in the fall and you won't miss anything of this awesome new series that's coming. Anything of this awesome new series that's coming. And, as I mentioned last week, this summer Sabbath is freeing me up to write my next Bible study and I'm inviting you to be an insider. I'm looking for prayer warriors and beta readers. I need a team of people to walk through this process with me. This is going to give you the opportunity to get the inside scoop as the study takes shape. I'm going to put a link in the show notes for you to become an insider. I would love to have you on this journey with me.

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Shalom friends, thanks for listening to Find Hope here. To find anything I mentioned on the episode, go to TeresaWhitingcom slash listen, which is where you can find all the show notes. Also, if you haven't left a five-star rating and review yet, would you do that today? It takes just a minute and it helps others to find the show. Thank you so much. In closing, I want to leave you with this prayer from Romans 15,13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.