Don’t Eat Your Rabbit, by Eve Gualtieri

I have an older sister. She’s amazing. I love her a lot. But when we were little things were a little different. If you know what I mean. She was the expert on everything. And I believed her.

Once, when I was in 2nd Grade, my sister told me that if I could find a ladder tall enough, I could touch the sky. I was amazed! I was out in the garage looking for a tall ladder. I was planning exactly where I would place the ladder to climb up and touch the sky. 

But I made a mistake. I went to school and at lunch I sat across from Faith. Now, Faith was perfect. Her hair was always neatly combed. She looked cute in her little uniform. She always helped the teacher. And she never, ever, cheated on her math test. She was perfect. I was not.

So sitting across from Faith, I thought I’d finally found something that would make me better than she was. And I said, “Did you know that if you could get a ladder tall enough, you could touch the sky?” To my surprise, she said, “No, you can’t.” So, I insisted, “Yes, you can.” She said, “No, you can’t.” I said, “Yes, you can.” “No, you can’t.” “Yes, you can.” “No, you can’t.” “Yes, you can.” 

Well, I got so frustrated that I picked up a handful of my mashed potatoes and threw them right in Faith’s face.

It was like the whole lunchroom gasped! —- Someone had touched Faith!!!   Nuns came running. Faith started crying. They led her away, whimpering.

And me? They made me sit at the lunch table until everyone went out for recess. Alone. While all the lunch ladies cleaned the cafeteria and clucked their tongues and shook their heads in disbelief at the girl who dared to throw mashed potatoes at Faith. Then, they brought my sister.  Now, she was supposed to say that she was wrong and that you could not touch the sky even if you had a tall ladder. But, what she really said was that I had misunderstood her. Well, I didn’t misunderstand anything. That is exactly what she had said.

But at that moment I realized that what I really needed was to have a credible and reliable source of information. Someone I could trust. Someone who actually knew the truth. And right then...it wasn’t my sister.

Many people spend a lot of time talking about self-confidence and believing in yourself. There’s a lot of emphasis on finding worth in yourself. One definition of confidence is “a feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities.” Let me tell you, looking for ‘self-assurance in appreciating one’s own abilities or qualities’ is like trying to find a ladder tall enough to touch the sky. No matter how smart you are. No matter how accomplished you are. No matter how high you rise in your profession. You will never find enough confidence in yourself to satisfy the longing in your soul. You will never have enough confidence in yourself to answer every question. You will never have enough confidence in yourself.

Scripture, however, paints a totally different picture. It points me to God. My confidence is in God. When my confidence is in God I can rest. There is great reward in having confidence in God.  Heb. 4:16 says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” We will never find grace and mercy in ourselves. We will never find help in time of need in ourselves. Strong’s defines confidence as ‘free and fearless confidence, cheerful courage, boldness, assurance’. Only in God can we find fearless confidence, cheerful courage, boldness and assurance.’ 

But when we find it, we must hold onto it. We are warned in Hebrews 3:6 “We are his house, IF we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope.” The devil constantly seeks to undermine our confidence in God and His Word. In Genesis, it’s the first thing we hear him say...’Did God really say???’ He interjects doubt. “Is the Bible really true?” He would be happy if we would just forsake our faith and ignore God. But if we don’t, His back-up plan is to let us mouth the Word of God without accessing the power of the Authority behind it. He’s ok with us saying a Bible verse, as long as we don’t mix any faith with it; as long as the Bible is relegated to a bunch of quaint little sayings that give you a warm feeling. The devil’s insidious plan is to strip us of our birthright that gives us dominion over him. He seeks to make us into sniveling wimps, unable to wield the weapons of our warfare. Well, it ain’t happening! We will hold onto our confidence and boast in our hope firm to the end!

Hebrews 10:19-25 says,  “Therefore, brothers (and sisters), since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

His faithfulness shows that he is a credible,... reliable source of information. Someone we can trust. Someone who knows the truth. Someone we can have confidence in.

Hebrews 10:35 says, “Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.”

We would think of Billy Graham as being bold and outspoken about his faith. We would never think that Billy Graham would be someone who would throw away his confidence. But in 1949, he was deeply troubled. He was at a crossroad. For decades, theological arguments had been questioning the truthfulness of the Bible. The publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in the 1800s had introduced Evolution and seemed to write God out of the picture. Two World Wars had critically damaged the faith of most people. And Billy Graham felt confused. He actually doubted the accuracy of the Bible. In fact, he thought he saw contradictions in the scripture. His preaching lacked conviction and there were few conversions in his meetings.

In August of that year he was invited to spend some time at a conference center in the mountains outside of Los Angeles. As he walked down one of the trails, he said he wrestled with God and dueled with his doubts. But finally, he gave in. He knelt and prayed, “God, your Word says ‘the just shall live by faith.’ Here and now, by faith, I accept the Bible as Your Word. I take it all.” He made his decision. The Bible was the true Word of God and he would no longer entertain any doubts. He stood ready to proclaim the Word of God with authority.

Six weeks later he began his Los Angeles crusade. In that crusade, he said he kept hearing himself say, ‘The Bible says... The Bible says...’ He said it was as though he was opening his mouth but the Holy Spirit was speaking through him. The crusade was supposed to last for 3 weeks, but was extended for 8 weeks. The authority that he had discovered in the Word caused faith to grow in the listeners. Thousands came to Christ. And that crusade has been put down in the history books as one of the most important Christian campaigns.

Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, repeats the truth again and again, that God’s Word is true. “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I may not sin against thee.” “Thou art my hiding place and my shield: I hope in thy word.” “Thy word is true from the beginning:and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.” “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.”

We must arrive at the same conclusion...and we must hold on to our confidence that the scripture is the true and living Word of God. Satan will come and whisper in our ears —‘Did God really say???’ “Is the Bible really true? Satan is a master of insinuation and crafty argument. He sounds reasonable. But we have put our confidence in God Himself. Hebrew 6:18 says,  “We who have fled for refuge have a strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of our soul.”

God’s Word is True! That fact is sure. It is our hope. The Word of God is the anchor of our souls.

I’m really particular about the music I listen to. I blame it on Pandora. You know, thumbs up, thumbs down. You hear a song you like - thumbs up. You hear a song you don’t like - thumbs down. I figure they’ve got about 10-15 seconds to impress me or it’s thumbs down. I was listening the other day - to a Christian station - and the song begins “When all hope is gone...” And I think, “When is that?” When is all hope gone? Let me see, I just read, “hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.” And “hold fast to our confidence and boast in our hope.” And Heb. 6,  “We have this hope as an anchor of our soul, both sure and stedfast.” When is all hope gone?  And then the next line of the song said, “ When your word is all I have.”  What??? What else do I need but the Word of God?? Thumbs down on that one!

Our core beliefs steer the course of our lives. What we really believe determines the path we take. It’s just like thumbs up, thumbs down. We make choices every minute of every day based on —not what we SAY we believe, but what we REALLY believe.

Peter Freuchen was 20 years old when he sailed for Greenland to be part of a scientific exploration. It was 1907. He and two companions set out to explore and map northeast Greenland. Instead of taking dogs they pulled their own sledges. A cache of food had been left for them in a certain place, but when they got there a bear gotten there before them and eaten and destroyed everything. The next cache of food was at least 3 days away. There was nothing else to do but to start walking. After 5 days of no food they made camp. And Peter went out to hunt, although they had seen no game for days. He walked uphill and down, uphill and down, until he saw a rabbit. He shot the rabbit. The rabbit was about 8 pounds and he thought what a wonderful stew they would make of him. But on the way back to camp he was so weak that he had to stop to rest. And he thought about eating the rabbit. He got up and started to walk again. But the rabbit was heavy slung over his shoulder. He sat down again. And he thought, ‘Because I killed the rabbit I’m entitled to half of it. If I eat my half now I’ll have more energy and it won’t be so heavy.’ But then he thought if he started to eat the rabbit he wouldn’t be able to stop until he had eaten it all. So he got up and walked again. 

But after only walking a little way he became so hungry, he told himself, ‘I’ll just take a leg and chew on it. And the ears. Nobody will want the ears. I’ll eat those.’ But he kept on walking. Finally the voice of his stomach was so loud that he decided he would eat the whole rabbit and just tell the others that he hadn’t caught anything. He decided when he got to the top of the next hill that he would sit down and eat it.

When he got to the top of the hill he said to himself, ‘No, I’ll wait till I get to the top of the next hill.’ At the top of every hill he told his stomach the same thing. “I’ll wait till I get to the top of the next hill.” And he kept walking. Until finally he reached a hill from which he could see the tent in the valley. His friends were sitting around a fire waiting for him to come back with something to eat. He ended his story by saying, “ Character and an iron will are frequently demanded of a man in the north. Bravery is taken for granted. I have learned that no man should go into the Arctic before he is sure of himself. As for me, I was lucky. I saw the tent in time.”

I would say that character and bravery are what is demanded for a walk of faith. No person should start on this journey until they are sure of their God, until we have established our confidence in God, knowing that He is faithful and true; until we have made a decision that the Bible is the Word of God, convinced of it’s authority. Those are the things needed for a real walk of faith. 

But, maybe there have been times when you’ve felt like a starving man carrying an 8 pound rabbit on your shoulder. And you’ve thought, this walk of faith is not for wimps. Ps. 31:23, 24 says, “The Lord preserves the faithful...Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord!”

In 2 Peter 1, Peter talks about the power of God which has been given to us and he encourages the believers to make every effort to increase their faith. He talks about self-control, godliness, brotherly love. He’s telling us how to build ourselves up. Then he says, “Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have. I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder.” That’s the attitude I want to have. I want to be the reminder, the encourager. The one who stirs up others to keep going. I love how he says, ‘I know you already know these things, but I think it’s right that I remind you of all the promises of God.’ We should all be that for those in our circle of influence. Spur others on to persevere through adversity. At the top of one of these hills, you’re going to look down and see your tent. Take courage! Breakthrough is coming!

Two years ago, we were finishing up two weeks of ministry in Mexico when our son and daughter-in-law called to say that our 6 year old granddaughter was being taken to the hospital by ambulance. That was the year that so many children died from the flu. Every time you listened to the news, it seemed that another child had died. And now our granddaughter had the flu. But not only that. She had pneumonia, a stomach virus and another infection. Finally, she developed sepsis. That night the doctors told our son that she might not make it through the night. We went to war for her life. She made it through the night. We left Mexico as soon as we could to be with them. She spent two weeks in intensive care but she made a full recovery and was soon back in school.

One day her mother came in the room and saw Emery sitting on the floor with a marker. Now, if you know kids, you know that when a child has a marker, paper is optional. They’ll draw on the walls, the rug, your shoes...anything. So her mother came closer to see what she was doing and she saw that Emery had been writing on her arm. She had written “So loved”. She asked Emery why she had written that and Emery said, “Oh, Mommy, because I am so loved by God. So loved by God.”

I haven’t told you anything you don’t know in this article. I’ve told you that our confidence is in God and not ourselves. I’ve reminded you that God’s Word is true. I’ve pointed out that sometimes you have to persevere through adversity. But the crux of the matter is that the devil would like us to forget these simple things. He’d like us to lead good lives without the substance of an vital faith, just mouthing the Word without filling our mouths with faith; He’d like us to be easily deterred when life gets hard. But I want to remind you of the glue that sticks it all together. Nobody loves you like Jesus. For God ‘so loved’ the world that He sent Jesus. For God ‘so loved’ you that He snatched you out of the pit of sin and made you an heir to His promises. 

We need to be reminded of the simple things. So, REMEMBER these things: 1. Don’t throw away your confidence...2.The Word of God is a sure and steadfast anchor for our souls...3.Don’t eat your rabbit until you see the tent...and 4. You are so loved by God.