Not now, Lord

Pulling the carpet back, I knew we were in trouble. My parents installed that carpet before I was born - golden shag over beautiful oak floors. After my parents’ divorce, my dad never upgraded the house. At 92 and needing memory care, Dad left me with the task. The carpet wasn’t the problem. Padding that used to be a soft spongy cushion was now just brick. It clung to the wood beneath. And it wasn’t coming up! After scraping for hours, I finally called Frank, my floor expert, to tell him the tragic news. “No worries,” he said. “I can do it.” I thought he would have some super-quick floor guy trick. He sent me a video a few days later of his process. Sharpen chisel. Scrape this way. Scrape that way. All the while, brick red shards fly through the air. Clear away shards. Do the next little section. On his hands and knees, with just a little chisel, he painstakingly scraped away all of the padding. I thought for sure he would be frustrated and annoyed, but he is an artist at heart. When it was finished, we talked. Frank said, “It took a while, but I enjoyed the process. These are beautiful floors.” The Lord used this hardened padding to reveal some things about my current struggle. Have you ever had something the Lord has nudged you to do, and yet you keep putting Him off? That’s me. All. The. Time. Sometimes I question: “Is that you Lord, or am I making this up?” Sometimes I rationalize: “Oh that doesn’t make any sense.” Sometimes I refuse: “Not now. I’ll do this other thing first.” But as time moves forward, my opportunity is gone. God’s nudges often have expiration dates, and immediate obedience is hard for me. In my struggle, the Lord led me to Hebrews 3:7: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, as in the day of trial in the wilderness. . .” If you hear His voice. . . I know I’ve heard His voice. Do not harden your hearts . . . Is that what I’m doing when I put God off with my “Not now” response? Later in Hebrews 3 we learn that a hardened heart comes from the deceitfulness of sin and from unbelief. I am challenged by this. What am I not believing the Lord for? Through prayer and the word, I realized that unbelief is a root that bears the fruit of disobedience. There are many branches that stem from unbelief, but fear is often the branch that grows from my unbelief and ripens into disobedience. Fear of my future. Fear that bad things will happen. Fear of the unknown. My dad, the keeper of the golden shag carpet, instilled in me the demanding sense to stick with what is safe, stick with what you know. But, my Father in heaven does not follow that principle. He often calls us out into the unknown, into places where we’ll be challenged, into new places that He will show us, but maybe not right now. He asks us to obey anyway. If we hold fast to Christ, we will get to that new place, but that requires faith in God. What is faith? First, we must believe Him. Then, we must obey. Believing + obeying = faith. There was a whole generation of Israelites who didn’t believe the Lord, even though they saw His glory and His miracles. Their unbelief led to fear and their fear ripened into disobedience. Their lack of faith hardened their hearts to God’s voice, and they died in the wilderness, never receiving their promised land. Their “not now” closed the door of opportunity the Lord was holding open for them on that day. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want a hard heart. “Lord, help my unbelief!” is my cry. And my sweet savior brings me hope: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh . . .” (Ezekiel 36:26). Did you hear that? Like Frank scraping off the hardened padding to reveal beautiful oak floors that are clean and fresh, our Lord can remove our hardened hearts. The calluses built from years of “Not now, Lord” can be stripped clean and ready for what’s new. At creation, God looked over each day’s work and thought, “It is good.” I imagine Him looking back at us, His workmanship, after scraping away the hardened places in our hearts, and making us clean and beautiful and thinking, “It is very good!” This process requires believing and often immediate obedience, but our faith pleases the Lord. One day, we’ll get to stand with Him and look back over His work in our life, and together we’ll exclaim, “Isn’t it beautiful!” and our soft hearts will swell with joy at His glory shining over us. Lord, let it be!