March 3/D62: Preparation, Positioning and Obedience (Esther 1-4)

0:00It's about obeying in the preparation, being faithful in the positioning, and being obedient in the call. Welcome to Rinse Reflect Repeat, the daily podcast inspired by my action-driven devotional and guide to reading the Bible through in a year, alphabetically. I'm Anita Cordell, and each day we'll walk through the Bible, discovering how even books like Leviticus and Numbers speak to our daily lives. These short devotional are here to cleanse our hearts and transform our perspectives. So grab your Bible, open your heart, and let's journey through the living water together. It's time to rinse, reflect, and repeat. Today is so exciting for me because we are starting Esther, and I love the story of Esther. There's just so much to glean from her and her life. Today's devotion, I titled Preparation, Positioning, and Obedience.

1:02We are on March 3rd, and we're on day 62 of 365 days of reading the Bible through in a year, and today's morning rinse is Esther 1 through 4. Go ahead and read Esther 1 through 4. I hope you love the book as much as I do. So come on back after you read it or listen to it on your audio app. So the featured verse today is Esther 2-12, and I love this verse. Now when the turn of each young lady came to go into King Ahasorus, after the end of her 12 months under the regulations for the women, for the days of their beautification were completed as follows, six months with oil of mer, and six months with spices and the cosmetics for women. So we often hear about Mordekai stating that popular phrase or those popular words to Esther that she may have received royalty status for such a time as this.

2:08I'm sure that you know exactly what we are talking about because we as Christ followers hear this phrase a lot. While it is popular and powerful to read how God set up this situation of her saving her people, it can be easy to forget the lifelong choices that Esther made prior to her such a time as this. So just as Esther prepared, we must also prepare for our personal purpose. Just simply put, we prepare by allowing God to create in us a pure heart towards Him, which is really the foundation of the positioning and the formula for obedience. So choosing to be obedient and devoted to authority on this earth as well as being devoted

3:08to God is a lifetime of internal work which Esther, in my opinion, literally had mastered. She was key to her destiny coming to life. So Esther's parents had died leaving her and orphan and her father was Mordekai's uncle making them cousins. So when this tragedy occurred or the tragedy of her parents dying, Mordekai took her in as his own daughter. And Esther made the decision to commit to submitting to Him as her new authority. Literally she trusted, she listened to Him. This was a heart decision. And this heart decision allowed God to position her for whatever lay ahead. And in this positioning, she ultimately found favor with man, bringing yet another facet

4:12to her whole entire purpose. I mean, she not only had favor with a hegey who oversaw all of the maidens when they were preparing themselves to meet the king, but she found favor with pretty much everyone who saw her, including the king when he crowned her queen. I mean, this story, it's such a beautiful example of preparing through obedience. So one can be positioned for purpose. So remember as well, the preparation can take time. I mean, even when Esther was positioned with the maidens to meet the king, there was yet more time that was needed in her preparation. Before every maiden would even meet the king, it took a full year of daily dosages of oils and spices and makeup applications.

5:13Imagine this whole entire scene. This whole entire scene is just one particular part of her story is I mean, could we have seen movies and cartoons and things about Esther, but I think what we forget to talk about is how pure of heart she was and how the tragedy of both of her parents dying and her becoming in the submission of somebody else and purely giving her heart and trust to Mordecai. I would like to think that they had a relationship already because she fully trusted and somehow she knew that this was her position or her lot in life. God wants us to prepare our hearts for his position and he wants us to obey him and Esther did exactly that and ultimately we know that she saved a nation from death.

6:16It is about obeying in the preparation and being faithful in the positioning and being obedient in the call. And when we obey in the preparation, I mean, isn't that what the Bible is all about? I mean, God gives us His word. He gives us the things that we are to live by. He gives us that formula, basically, yesterday we talked about the armor of God and putting the armor of God on, well, don't you believe that Esther put her armor of God on? You know, she didn't even know what an armor of God was and yet how the Bible links everything together if we just look for it. If we just look for God to link it all together for us, if we just look in the Word, He will do that. And if we are obedient in the preparation by obeying the Word of God and then once we get

7:20positioned and we know that God's positioning us for the call, then be faithful in that positioning. I mean, Esther was faithful in the positioning. You know, she knew she was getting ready to meet the King and there was a year of preparation for that. She was faithful in it. She was so faithful that she found favor within the people there. She was faithful, not even knowing what was happening, not even knowing, you know, what all this was about, not even knowing, but trusting the preparation and trusting the positioning and trusting the authority over her. And then she was obedient in the call. We read in the story about Esther and she was obedient even to the point where she could die. She was obedient. It's about obeying in the preparation, being faithful in the positioning and being obedient in the call. So today's challenge to dig deeper is to ask yourself the question, are you willing

8:22to go through the preparation and allow yourself to be positioned and then obey God and your Godly authority? One example could be, you know, a work force. So I had a corporate position and my boss was not saved and he never asked me to do anything immoral, but there were things that he did that just would frustrate me at times. I felt a little held back and it was frustrating. And yet I knew that God was having me obey him for whatever is positioned in the future of that. And I think that we all have stories like this where we are positioned and we are put in a situation just like Esther didn't know what was going on and probably a little bit scared and probably a little frustrated at times.

9:25And yet that's where she was called to be at. Are you willing, like Esther, to go through the preparation? And that's simply, are you willing to continually keep learning and gleaning and loving God through the Word, allowing yourself to be positioned for whatever God has for you? You don't know what that is. Maybe some of you do, but yes, I think if you're listening to this podcast, the answer is yes. You are willing to go through and allow yourself to go through the preparation, allow yourself to be positioned and then ultimately obey God and whatever Godly authority you have in your life, your pastors, your leaders, whoever that is. So ask God if you need to make changes in any of these three areas. If you are in the beginning stages of preparation, is there any tweaks that you need to make? Anything that can sharpen yourself as you prepare.

10:25Maybe you are fully prepared or you've been really doing good at preparation and now you're looking at positioning and getting positioned in a little bit different light. Maybe God's positioning you and really honing in on your purpose and your call. Or maybe it's that obedience section of it all, that you're walking in the call and you're walking out your purpose and yet every once in a while, it's kind of hard to obey. I don't know. I don't know where you're at, but ask God if you need to make any changes to any of these areas. And then as you reflect on it and as you walk throughout your day, write down what God showed you regarding your preparation, your positioning and your obedience. I love the book of Esther and I hope that you were inspired by her life and I hope that you enjoyed reading the beginning of it. Again, this next month we have two short books which we finished yesterday, Ephesians.

11:31Today we begin Esther and it's also a short book, but then we go into two longer ones and we will see how all of this is linked together because the living word of God is exactly that. It's living and breathing and sharper than any two-digit sword, piercing even to the dividing center of soul and spirit. So as we learn and use the word of God together, that helps each of us grow each other too. And that's what Esther was all about, I believe. And tell tomorrow, keep rinsing, reflecting and repeating. God bless you.