The Year of Jubilee 2019

I have officially entered my "year of Jubilee".  I've written about the signficance of numbers in the Bible before.  The number "40" carried a lot of significance for me when I turned 40, 10 years ago.  It was amazing to see all the instances of that number in the Bible and all the times people, including Jesus, went through a period of 40 years of 40 days, for some kind of ministry that lay ahead for them.  I packed a LOT of life in the last years years, including 2 babies, a house build, a farm rebuild, a host of children raised into adulthood, a host of children half-raised, friendships formed, new and old.....so much life. 

The number "50" is also significant in the Bible.  It represents the "year of Jubilee" which is considered the end of seven cycles of seven.  Seven is also considered signficant as that is the year a slave owner lets his slaves free in the Bible as well.  According to something I read online about it, it is called the "Year of Release" and one website said it "deals largely with land, property and property rights.  According to Leviticus, slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the merices of the God would be particularly manifest."  Wow - that's what I want in my "Year of Jubilee"!  Freedom from slavery!  All debts forgiven!  The mercies of God manifest in my life.  Amen.

It is actually the most amazing chapter to read.  God writes out some really specific commands about this 50th year.  Leviticus 25 :8-13 says this "‘Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. 9 Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. 10 Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. 11 The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. 12 For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields.

As I did with my 40th year, I am committing my 50th year in a really particular way, consecrating it in a way.  I love how the Bible has it written, "Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you."  There's my life verse for this year.  By faith, I'm proclaiming freedom and liberty throughout our land, our home, my children.  This is my prayer, what I long for.

Of course, I am not Jewish and so I'm not exactly planning to set aside this whole year and not sow or reap, but the Jews, on the other hand were commanded to do that.  It's interesting to read the Lord's command to not sow or reap because He then imagines what they would wonder after such a command and in verse 20 says, "You may ask, 'What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?'"  His response is what I appreciate the most, verse 21, "I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yeild enough for three years."  The principle in these verses that I take away is the importance of obedience and faith.  God has called us to pursue Him in all aspects of our life, not just being 100% debt-free.  He then knows that we want to know how life will look if we do everything He asks of us..."you may ask"....Yes, I "may ask" for sure!  I want to know will we have the freedom we long for?  Will we be taken care of always?  Is following Christ worth the cost?!  "Of course," I can almost hear the Lord speaking to me.  "I will send you such a blessing......"  It doesn't mean it will be wiping away my mortgage.  I actually don't know what it will look like, but I know following Christ and His commands will always bring spritiual blessings that cannot be counted.

This gets restated in vs. 18, "Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land. 19 Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety."

That would be a great blessing, to "life safely in the land" and that the "land will yield its fruit" and that we will be abel to life here and "eat your fill".  Interesting to note that it is supposed to be in this next year that we should see our first crop from the vines.  Anyway, I won't stop praying for freedom and I never will.  I know freedom is impossible with man's way of thinking.  The phrase in verse 41 is my favourite, "Then they and their children are to be released...."

39 “‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. 40 They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you; they are to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41 Then they and their children are to be released, and they will go back to their own clans and to the property of their ancestors. 42 Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. 43 Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.

I am committed to freedom and the entire reason I started this blog in the first place.  The last 5 five years have been challenging in the pursuit of that goal.  We had 2 years of almost no work, followed by the miracle of a job, followed by the hours in that job increasing to almost levels we couldn't handle.  As I've written before, all the work helped make up for the years of no income, but we weren't making fantastic progress on the debt side of things.  Now that things have settled down and the hours are more manageable we are well on our way again to being super agressive.  We are living below our means very purposefully in order to be so aggressive.  I actually really prefer this way of living.  I was reminded of the phrase Dave Ramsey says all the time, "Live like no one else, so that you can live like no one else."  That's what I want, so we are currently living like no one else with that great goal in mind.  

I do not know what this year will hold.  It may end up looking like just another regular year, I don't know.  But, I'm asking God, by faith as I stated before, that it could be the most amazing year, a true "Year of Jubilee", a year of freedom, a year of release, of His safety, of "such a blessing",  of His mercies in new ways.  That may sound pretty bold, I admit.  I think God can handle it.