God Gave Me Some New Resolutions

When I taught high school English, we always started the spring semester with goals.

"Your chance for a fresh start!" I'd tell the students.

They'd all groan, but I still made them fill out index cards with three specific resolutions. To be fair, I made goals and shared them, too.

But one goal I always kept to myself. I wanted to publish. Somehow this writing goal felt like a personal distraction. God had called me to teach. I couldn't imagine he would give me two callings, so I divided my heart. I taught for God and wrote for myself.

Worse, I often wrote out of dissatisfaction. I didn't want God's Spirit to bless my classroom. I wanted Him to bless my writing!

I even presumed to tell Him how to bless me. Publish this story. Make it happen. Bless this manuscript. Send me a royalty check. When God blessed my goals, prosperity and comfort would follow.

"Fill me with your Spirit," I demanded, "like Bezalel."

But God was stubborn. I studied Exodus again to remind Him which guy I was talking about.

"He's right here in chapter 31," I said.

"See the LORD has chosen Bezalel . . . and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts."

Choose me. Bless me. Fill me with your Spirit. I didn't care about skill in all kinds of crafts. That seemed greedy. "Lord, just give me the skill to write."

God is so patient. He sat me down and read with me.

"I remember Bezalel," He said. "Let Me tell you about him."

Bezalel made the pieces of God 's tabernacle. His work prefigured Christ himself. Flip to John 1:14, God said. (I think sometimes God talks to me through cross-references and footnotes.)

"My Word became flesh and I made my dwelling among you," God told me. In Greek God says he camped out on earth. He chose to live for a while in a tent shaped like a human body, a tabernacle named Jesus.

But God didn't stop there. Bezalel's skill didn't bring him glory and success, God told me. Bezalel didn't even finish the Tabernacle. When the pieces were ready, he and his team brought everything to Moses. Then Moses, not Bezalel, built the tabernacle. Of course, God's Tabernacle is not even about Moses.

God's Tabernacle is about God. After finishing the work Bezalel started, "Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle" (Ex. 40:35).

When God touches our work, it becomes dangerous. Bezalel himself could not touch the work of his hands—because his work had become holier than his hands.

Jesus set us free from this separation. He sent the Holy Spirit that now dwells in us. We are Christ's body, his Church, scattered throughout all the world, throughout all vocations.

Then God gave me new resolutions. Set aside your ambition. Do not tell Me what to do with your offerings. Instead, do everything just as I, the LORD, have commanded you.

I will love Him. I will love my neighbor. And I will love the work the LORD gives me.