I learned a great Hebrew word in my quiet time recently- Hineni.
Hineni means “I’m ready, Lord; I’ll go if you send me; I’m listening, Lord, tell me what you would have me to know.” It is the word Abraham used when God called to him and asked him to sacrifice Isaac; it is the word Moses used as he stood before the burning bush, and it is the word that young Samuel used in the temple when he heard a voice calling to him in the night.
It’s a powerful word. A word that brought life- changing events for each of the people who spoke it. And I bet not one of them would take it back. Not one of them regrets grappling with the fear, but giving in to the will of the God who is Good, who has plans to prosper and not to harm us.
The hard part comes for those of us who are a little more seasoned in life and have seen that God’s ways are
not our ways, and that our lives are not always going the way we think He should have them mapped out. His plans to prosper us and not harm us may be in the next life, and not right now. So, to conquer our fears we need an eternal perspective, a reminder that this life is but a blip on the screen of time. God sees it all, and He has a great call and plan for each of us, both in this life and the next.
Since we are but temporal creatures, our job is to be willing, just for today. We are not called to know what God has in store for us in the next life, or even next year or next week. We are called to take one step at a time to seek God’s plan and to follow it with conviction.
Wrestle with the fear, and beat it down if you must. But, if you truly seek God’s call on your life, then offer to Him these words:
“Hineni, Adonai. Here I am.”
Thank you Lisa. These are exactly the words I needed to hear. He has a plan I need to be content with tomorrow.
The day this was republished on BlogNosh was the day I watched a small baby die at work, a baby we’d been caring for for the past month. I came back home after dealing with all that and opened up my reader and cried so incredibly hard. “Wrestle with fear, and beat it down if you must…” That’s exactly what we’ve all been going through in the days leading up to his death, the fear that we were going to lose him, the fear that God’s plan wasn’t going to be what we wanted.
I led a debriefing session with the nurses today, and I quoted your blog and we all sat around and cried, because it’s exactly what we wanted the strength to say. Hineni, Adonai.