Hand over the Spoiled Milk

The Lord has a unique way of teaching “adults” the reality of who they are through watching children. We often forget that we are mere infants, and if we happen to be “mature” we are still only children in the eyes of God. The fact that we are children is not only our reality, but also a command! “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus said it, Matthew 18:3 We are children, and called to have a childlike faith.

Back in February I found myself babysitting a little boy named, Sawyer. He was in that precious and hyperactive stage of his life where he happened to be two years old. I happened to be twenty and looking for some extra money and that is how our paths crossed.  I suppose looking back it was more divine of an appointment than I expected.

It was my first time watching Sawyer, I got to the house, introduced myself to the parents, you know the typical stuff. They told me if they needed anything to just call. Easy enough. I wasn’t expecting anything strange or abnormal to happen, and especially not for the Lord to drop a truth bomb on me that night. But it is what it is!

So I was watching this two year old boy, and he had grabbed a bottle off the counter that had milk in it. I didn’t know how old the milk was or when it had been poured that morning so I figured I would simply ask him to give me the bottle and I would just fill it up with some fresh milk! I mean sounds good right? Who likes drinking lukewarm, or possibly sour milk anyway!? I was just trying to make his little life better, like any good babysitter would.

I maturely and calmly ask for his bottle that way I can fill it up. The response I got was “mine.”

Alright, I can handle this, kids always do this. I will just tell him the milk is bad and I want to give him something better.

“Sawyer, give me the bottle, I am going to get you some new milk”

He responds again with some kind of “my” answer and we go into the drawn out ordeal of me getting the bottle away from him. You can imagine for yourself what that looked like haha.

As I am in the process of trying to get this bottle of milk away from Sawyer, the Lord so clearly began to speak to me. I heard myself saying, “give it to me, it’s not good for you. “ “Trust me, I have something better.” “I want to give you something new.”

The same words I was telling Sawyer I could hear the Lord speaking to me. The Lord’s gentle voice, “do you trust me?” “You know that isn’t good for you.” “I have something new.”

It was so profound. Right as I was speaking, God was speaking. Is this making sense? It was that moment of revelation where you are taken back, and you just KNOW God is in your midst. It made me cry a little too, or at least made my eyes tear up! The Lord was asking me some very important questions and challenging me to let go of some things I held dearly to my heart. It was hard, but I felt the heart of the father. I knew his motives were to protect me and give me something better.

So I want to break down this “Battle of the Bottle” in more detail.

Sawyer’s first mistake was thinking the bottle was his. It actually wasn’t his it belonged to his Parents. He didn’t pour the milk he was holding onto himself. His Mom or Dad poured the milk earlier that day, and the milk was good for a while but now it is bad. The point is Sawyer did not provide it for himself. It did not belong to him, so when he said “mine” he was mistaken. That bottle did not belong to him it belonged to his father. Sawyer should have been willing to hand over the bottle, because it was not actually his.

THE LORD IS OUR PROVIDER.  Nothing we possess is our own. (The blessedness of possessing nothing, it’s a gift to not possess anything but God) We do not own, or have rights to anything. The blessings we receive from God are still HIS. He gives things to us, but it is still his and The Lord has full rights to revoke things that we may begin to idolize or hold too closely to our hearts.

Don’t believe me? Look at Abraham and Isaac.

The Lord can give us things, that are good, but they can go bad. They can be good for a season, for a time. Just like Sawyers milk was good and healthy for a time, but then it went bad and would make him sick if he held onto it.  (This has MUCH more to do with our fallen human nature than the Lords faithfulness. God is not an Indian giver, if it is good, and glorifies him, you can keep it, but if it starts to get manipulated and you idolize the blessing the lord will be QUICK to strip it away. I am not trying to challenge the character of God with this point) We cannot hold onto things too tightly. We cannot begin to worship the “blessing” in place of worship for God. We cannot hold onto the blessing more than we cling to God. Does that make sense? Yes we may “love” the blessings God gives us, but we LOVE the father.  It is all about The Lord. When the Lord asks us to surrender/sacrifice something we should be quick and willing to do so because chances are, it wasn’t ours in the first place. We possess nothing but the Father.

What is THE LORDS that you are claiming to be YOURS?

Sawyer’s second mistake, not trusting me! I had just met sawyer probably a few hours before this “Battle of the Bottle” began. I mean I guess I can’t blame him, he had the right to be a little skeptical, I suppose. Why? He didn’t KNOW me. Sawyer is like, “who is this random girl who is trying to take my bottle from me?”  Sawyer didn’t know my character. He may have been having a hard time trusting me. If he had known my character, or we had a relationship longer than a few hours of knowing each other he might have been a little more willing to hand the bottle over. Sawyer needed to trust me that I had good intentions for him. 

Do you know the CHARACTER of God? If you don’t know that God is good isn’t it going to be hard to trust him? If you haven’t spent time with Him, building a relationship with Him, and learned that his character is kind, and loving, it might be hard for you surrender to him. Please, take time to get to know the creator of the universe! Read the bible, pray, spend time in his presence, I promise he won’t disappoint you.

He is a GOOD father! In fact he is the perfect Father.

Matthew 6:26 “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” 

Matthew 6:28 “See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?”

If the God of the ages cares for the Sparrow, and clothes the lilies and grasses in splendor, how much does he love you? How much more does our good father in heaven care about you?

Matthew 7:9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

Do you have faith that God is good? At the center of what you believe about God what do you think of? Do you believe he has the best intentions for you, even when it is hard to give things up? Do you trust he will give you something better? 

It all came down to it in that moment Sawyer handed me the bottle. He had resolved in his heart that I was good and I was going to give him something better in return. Through Sawyer’s action of surrender it revealed what he believed in his heart. Sawyer trusted me and decided I was good. The lord wants us to be willing to do the same. To trust him. Even when it hurts. Resolve in your heart that God is a good Father.

Sawyer’s third issue. He couldn’t understand me. I was trying to tell him, give me the bottle and I will get you more milk, again, super simple right? It would have been simple if we had the same level of intelligence! But I was trying to communicate with a two year old. It didn’t work.

Picture telling him, alright you give me the bottle, I’m going to open it, you have to unscrew the lid, careful not to spill the milk that’s already in, pour it out. Then I am going to go to the fridge and get the milk out. I determine how much milk is in the gallon, and how quickly or slowly to pour it. Blah, blah blah.. 

Sawyer would not understand EVEN if I explained to him all the steps and how I was going to put some new milk in his bottle and give it back to him.  Why? Because my ways were higher than Sawyer’s ways, my thoughts were higher than Sawyer’s thoughts. Sound familiar? It’s biblical.

Isaiah 55:9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

The Lord’s thoughts and ways are infinitely higher than ours. The way The Lord is orchestrating our lives, is beyond all comprehension or understanding. We can never fully understand what God is doing, and that is why he is God. He is the Lord who stretched out the skies and he holds our lives in the palm of his hand. He is the perfect God, who is holy and lovely. Even when you don’t understand what he is doing, or asking you to do you, your response is to trust Him. 

John 3:12 “I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” This verse is so revealing. Half of the time we don’t even understand earthly things! How can we even begin to comprehend the heavenly realms!? We are incapable. We need a renewed mind by The Spirit of God! We need to be transformed to have the mind of Christ, to gain a heavenly perspective of the true realities around us. There is a war waging, and our eyes need to long to gaze on Christ, so we may begin to understand our current reality. We do not seek to understand this world, we seek to understand the kingdom of God. We must learn to trust God.

The Lord is not looking for a people who can figure him out. He isn’t looking for a people who always have to understand “why.” He is looking for a people who are obedient. That when he asks us to do something, we willingly say, “yes”. Why is our “yes” easy? Why is saying “yes” to God easy, even when the world thinks you are crazy for giving up seemingly good things? Why is saying “yes” to God easy when they say “you are being too radical”? Why is saying “yes” easy even when we don’t understand?

We say “yes” because we know we have a good father. 

Reflection Questions:

What is the Lords that he wants you to give back to him?

What does the Lord want you to surrender so he can refine and make better /renewed?

Or do you even trust God? (Not in a condemning way, you just haven’t experienced the goodness of the Father yet. God wants to reveal his goodness to you.)