An Ace in the Pocket
The Leaning Bride
Part #2 of:  The Spotless Bride
By:  Tiffany Lewis

Can I be so bold as to say that sometimes we think we are leaning on the Lord when we’re not leaning at all?  Continuing in the book of Daniel, let's take a look at someone who did just that, King Nebuchadnezzar.  We learned last month that in the kingdom there were high-ranking officials that counseled the king.  They were wise men, astrologers, enchanters, magicians, and then there was Daniel—a servant of the Most High God, Yahweh.  In chapter 2 the king had a dream and so he calls on his “special guys” to tell him what the dream meant.  Only one of them could interpret the dream—Daniel.  This taught the king that Daniel’s God, Yahweh was supreme.  The king was beginning to learn how to, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding...”  (Prov. 3:5) 

Chapter 4 starts out with the king praising God and wanting to tell everyone the signs and wonders that God had worked personally for him.  He has seen miracles and believed the Word of the Lord and he wants everyone to know.  Then the testing comes.  The king has another dream.  The dream scares him and what does he do?  Instead of calling on Daniel and the Most High God, he pulls out the ace in his pocket and calls once again on the astrologers and magicians.  He returns back to his own understanding, revealing that he isn’t trusting God with all his heart.  Daniel’s advice to the king was to break off your sins of thinking you’re all that and a bag of chips.  The mindset that this kingdom was somehow established by the knowledge and power you have.  Know that God alone rules or else everything in the dream is going to happen to you. (vs. 26-31, my interpretation). 

Not following Daniel’s advice, the king remains holding his aces.  He chooses to trust/lean on what he knows based on past experiences, i.e. his own understanding.  The moment he does, the wilderness that was predicted in the dream comes upon him…bummer!  (vs. 31)

Did God do these things to punish the king?  No.  Daniel predicted that the king was going to be in this state until he came to know that God rules. (vs. 26)  God already knows He’s God, it’s us who need to be convinced.  God has a plan that seems harsh to our minds that will cause us to lean on Him and Him alone….it’s called the wilderness.  He desires to be GOD in all areas of our lives.  The big areas where we know that we need Him as well as the small areas where we think we shouldn’t bother Him and just do it ourselves.  He draws us to the wilderness where our understanding, our abilities, our skills, our gifts no longer get the job done.

When the going gets tough we spring into survival mode, into self-preservation.  Being worried or distressed we naturally formulate ‘plan B’.  We pray of coarse, ask God to bless it and so that feels like leaning, but it’s not.  It’s not being still and knowing that He is God, trusting Him and the plans He has for our lives even when we don’t understand them.  It’s only ‘Plan B’, just another ace in the pocket.

Be still and know that I am God.  (Ps. 46:10)  The knowing that’s spoken of here is a knowing by experience, a knowing that we are acquainted with.  It’s not head knowledge.  I know in my head that He is God, duh, but my actions of worrying, striving, and planning are speaking louder than my words, revealing my lack of an intimate knowledge of God.

Everything is tested in the wilderness.  Our hearts, our motives, our devotion, our faith, our relationships, even our relationship with God.  In the wilderness we will be stripped of everything we could possibly lean on, every ace that we have in our pocket.  We will learn to lean on Him and Him alone.

In both Hosea 2 and Ezekiel 16, we see a bride who is being drawn into this type of wilderness, to be stripped of the aces in her pockets, so that she would return to her first love.  Our Bridegroom God is a jealous God that wants us loving as well as leaning on Him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength.  In all things, not just when they get rough.  Unfortunately we are easily deceived and come up with alternate views on what all things mean.  (Ex. 20:5/Deut. 6:5)

In the wilderness we will learn to let go and let God, to let go of the aces in our pocket.  God isn’t punishing us by forcing us there; He’s leading us there because He wants to be the only Ace in our pocket.  The wilderness is a place where God will blow our minds revealing just a taste of the width and length and depth and heights of what His love really is.  We will witness the power of believing that He is more committed to us than we are to Him and learn to lean on that.  

We go into the wilderness much like King Nebuchadnezzar leaning on the ace in our pocket, our knowledge, skill, finances, sometimes even on our gifting.  But we come out leaning on Him.  When the king lifted his eyes to heaven his understanding returned to him.  He knew.  King Nebuchadnezzar came walking out of the wilderness praising and blessing the Most High God. (vs. 34)

Tune in next month for part #3 in this series “Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her Beloved?” The Unrecognizable Bride