Deep Blue Déjà vu

     I swear God is trying to communicate something to me. I just had one of those Déjà vu moments again. I just came across this thing recently. Or was it a while ago? It's like I’ve already had a conversation about this thing that I’ve never heard of before in my life and here I am, some amount of days later randomly coming across the same topic out of the blue. Or in this case the “Deep Blue.”

     I am referring to the computer IBM developed to play chess. I know. It’s completely random right? I don’t play or care about chess and yet I am coming across the mention of this thing again. I can’t even remember when the first time was. I want to say I was driving in the car with Wubs and somebody came on the radio and started talking about it. I wasn’t really paying attention other than catching the basics. A chess computer that beat a human who happened to be the current world champion in chess. Then I cracked open my “Things That Matter” book by Charles Krauthammer and read a chapter Titled “Be Afraid”. It happened to be all about the computer named "Deep Blue" and its ability to calculate every possible combination of Kasparov’s (the then human world champion of chess) available moves and beat him before Kasparov could beat it.

     I have never heard about this computer before. Why then this sudden dream like feeling of hearing all about it….again?

     I don’t believe in coincidences. When this kind of stuff happens I get hyper focused and lean into what God might be trying to say to me. Call me crazy. I don’t care. God is saying something. This morning I was listening to iBethel again and I am going to transcribe a message that was highlighted to me. I think it has a little to do with what God might be trying to communicate to me (us??).

     “I like to pay attention to the worship music that becomes really profound in different seasons because I feel like the Lord does movement through the church through what is happening in worship. Do you guys remember the song “Oh How He Loves Us”? How that was like an anthem for a season? It was like every week they sang that and you cried every time because the Lord was on it. And that season was the season where God was revealing Himself as Lover and His love being released and us having encounters with His love because that was what He was doing in that season and I’ve been watching and it feels like this last year “Oceans”... Do you guys know? Have you guys heard the “Oceans” song? It feels like the Lord’s been really on that and “You Make Me Brave”. It feels like the Lord’s really been on that too. And so I’ve just been watching that and been like, “Lord, what does this mean?” And “Oceans” is all about trust and asking God to take us deeper in trust and “You Make Me Brave” is about God making us brave. I always feel like God tricks us... and somebody gets tricked into writing a worship song and we get tricked into singing it because the Lord wants to accomplish something. So if God has been awakening our desire to trust Him more and to make us brave, that means He’s about to do something that is crazy and wild. He’s about to do something that you need to be brave for and that you need to have faith and trust in a greater capacity. He’s been preparing the church as a whole but you have to be ready.

     A year ago I went sky diving and it was a dream come true. I checked it off my list and honestly when I was up in the plane I thought...I have way too much peace for what is happening. But I felt like when I was up there God did a work in me about trust. Now. I picked the easiest way to sky dive. I picked the one where they just strap me onto someone and then that person does everything. So literally all I do is step onto the plane and then I sit there and then I step off the plane. And there’s someone else there and they have the little watch thing that tells them how high we are and how fast we’re flying and how much longer until I can’t breathe, and when to pull the cord and when to steer. So they know all this stuff and I just get to live in bliss. So we get down to the ground and we land and honestly it was so smooth. It was so easy. It was like he just told me, “And now we’re gonna do this and now we’re gonna do this” and all of a sudden I was just walking and there was a parachute behind me. And the Lord told me two things. The first one is that I could trust that I was not going to die because I knew that the person who was in charge of me had a great investment in that moment. It wasn’t ‘cause he loved me. It was ‘cause he didn’t want to die. He knew that if he crashed us then it was gonna crash both of us. Right? So I had so much faith that he was gonna do whatever it took to make sure that I could land. The Lord has an investment in you. He loves you. He wants to see you succeed. He wants to see you birth the dreams that He put inside of you before you were born. He wants to get you there. You know? I was looking in the Bible. I looked up loving kindness. And in the Old Testament...which is supposed to be the mean part... it talks about…I’m just kidding…I love the Old Testament…it’s my favorite because God’s really nice in it and people didn’t tell me that when I was younger. I’m like, “No, it proves He was always good.” In the Old Testament, 38 times it talks about the unfailing love of God. The Un-Failing Love of God. That means that if I jump out of a plane with the Lord a 100 times... 100 times His love will not fail me. This is probably an inappropriate joke but, God is safer than birth-control because 100 percent of the time His love will not fail you. (LOL) …And on that note I don’t know what I’m saying.

     Ok…His unfailing love. When I first got married me and my husband travelled around the US for six months in our truck. And it was glorious. We were together 24-7 and it was like one big inner healing counseling fight it out beautiful mess. Just get it all out. But when we got back we stayed with the guys that he lived with before he got married in a huge bachelor house. And when we get there I’m worried. Is he gonna act like he was before we were married? So we get there and I wake up in the morning and he’s gone. No text. No note. And I’m like, “Oh it only took less than twenty four hours and he’s already partying with the boys early in the morning and he’s forgotten that he has a wife that he needs to love.” He’s gone. He’s back to being one of the boys. And so I’m frustrated. I go out and I look in the car, the car is there. I look all around. There’s no notes. I look through the house I can’t find him. And I come back to the room and I’m like, “Grrrr…Grrrr”. And in walks my husband. And he’s like, “Could you close your eyes?” “Grrr…” And so he comes over and he puts this robe on me... Ok this is a bachelor pad. There is a Jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom and he spent all morning cleaning that sucker... ‘cause we all know it needed to be cleaned. He cleaned the Jacuzzi tub. He made a bubble bath. He got candles and filled the bathroom and lit candles everywhere. He made breakfast for me. He did this whole thing of love for me. And here I was jumping to the wrong conclusion. And God said to me in that moment, I’ve noticed that it’s so easy for you to jump to the wrong conclusion when you don’t know what I'm up to, to think the worst. When you can’t see what’s happening you often go to, “Oh He’s not loving me.” “Oh, He doesn’t have a plan.” “Oh He’s not actually gonna take me to the promise land. “Oh He’s not actually gonna fulfill the thing He said He was ‘cause I don’t see Him and I don’t know what He’s doing.

     I was reading a book, a trilogy, and it was about this girl and this prince and she always thinks he’s being mean and a bad king and he’s always being really awesome and they end up showing that he did something really kind over and over and over again. So I get to the third book and I want to wrangle this girl. Because I am like, “If I have to read one more time of you deciding that the prince is bad because he’s not showing you love well enough... after the entire first two books that’s all he’s been doing…I am going to shut the book.” That’s what I thought. And the Lord came in that moment and said the same thing that happened when I was first married, and He said "Abi, that girl is you". It’s so easy when you don’t see what I’m doing to forget the history of My unfailing love and goodness. To trust the Lord in the way that He’s asking us to trust Him we have to know that He loves us. He love us. His love is unfailing. He’s working behind the scenes for you. He’s up to something even when you can’t see it. He’s doing something beyond what you know. He’s preparing something for you. He’s bringing the right things together. When you can’t see it His love is still working. I love the story of Elijah and his servant standing there and there’s an army against them. And Elijah’s pretty cool ‘cause he knows the Lord really well. But the servant is like, “Oh my gosh, what do we do?” That’s in my head that’s not in the Bible. So Elijah’s like, “There’s more for us than against us. You don’t have to be afraid.” Then he prays, “Open His eyes that he may see.” And all of a sudden the army of the Lord is shown to him. And I just want to suggest to you that when you don’t see what’s happening. When you cannot see what’s going on behind the scenes. There is an unseen realm and God is doing what you need. He is on your side. He’s fighting on your behalf to do what He said He would do. He is faithful. He will not let His word fall void.

     The second point is, it’s not your job to know the how. When Elijah was standing there and the servant was looking at the army, he literally was thinking, “How? How are we gonna do this? This is a huge army. It’s coming against me. I don’t know how to overcome. And then all of a sudden the Lord unveiled His plan... but behind the scenes He was taking care of it. Often times in our lives we don’t dream the dreams of God because we get stuck at the question of how. I also have noticed in my own life that if I look at the how for too long hope deferred sinks in. And discouragement and defeat. Because we were never meant to carry the how. Before Jesus died on the cross and we didn’t know He loved us we weren’t meant to know the how to get to God. He always wanted to take care of the how. He always wanted to make the plan to get to us to do what He had in mind. He’s so good at the how. Let me tell you this... If you have a how in your life, like “I don’t know how I’m gonna get there.” “I don’t know how the money’s gonna come in.” “I don’t know how I’m gonna find this job.” “I don’t know how anything”… That is the breeding ground for the miraculous. That is where the power of God comes into play. You have to face a how to see God do the impossible. So when you face the how you need to remember, “hey, this is not actually my responsibility.” Let’s take this back to the parachute. I didn’t even know the how. Let’s just say that my instructor got knocked out. I mean there was no how involved for me. If he was gone I would have been gone too because I was trusting that someone else knew the how.

     One time, it was my husband’s and my dream to go to Hawaii. I had never gone to Hawaii. We got a piggy bank and we were like, “We’re gonna save for Hawaii.” So we put all our spare change in the piggy bank. So after a month we were like, “The piggy banks almost full.” So we cash it in and it was only $20. I thought, “Well this might take a while.” That month my husband got a call from someone who offered him a job and the bonus for the job was an all expenses paid trip for two to Hawaii. And here’s what it showed me. I don’t have to know the how. God puts a dream in my heart and I just give it up to Him and He knows how to fulfill what he promised. He knows how. There is a movement of God coming and you have to be in unity with the body and what God is doing and you have to trust that God is for you that He is parachute connected, clipped on to you. He does not want you to fail. It is in His best interest. He’s invested in you. He does not want you to fail. And he wants to take care of the how. He wants to break through in ways that you couldn’t have come up with. It’s His favorite thing to do. You know, He thinks higher than we think. He thinks different than we think and He really likes showing up in ways that we couldn’t have imagined.

     I always think about Peter when he was walking on the water towards Jesus and his eyes are locked on Jesus. And then the winds starts to blow and he starts to realize, oh, this is stormy…and then he looks down and he starts to sink. And I just think in this season where God is releasing something wild and crazy and He’s asking you to step out onto the water into territory you’ve never owned before. He wants your eyes locked on Him not on the how. So I’m gonna just read to you a few scriptures.

    Isaiah 43:19 “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

     Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

     Psalm 147:11 “The LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.”

     Romans 4:17 “He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed--the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.”

     Ok…all that was someone else’s sermon (Abi Stumvoll BSSM pastor at Bethel church in Redding CA) and it will up the creep factor if she ever reads this blog but I just thought it was SOOO good and sort of explained the reappearance of Deep Blue today. At least it did to me. Walter Krauthammer talks about Deep Blue this way:

     “What is Deep Blue’s secret? Grandmaster Yasser Seirwan put it most succinctly: “The machine has no fear.” He did not just mean the obvious, that silicon cannot quake. He meant something deeper: Because of its fantastic capacity to see all possible combinations some distance into the future, the machine, once it determines that its own position is safe, can take the kind of attacking chances no human would. The omniscient have no fear.”

     And that's just about a computer. What about a God that can see all the way into our future?