Tuesday, April 30, 2013

PSALM 86 - Pastor Saeed Abedini, My Brother

O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set You before them. But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me and be gracious to me; give Your strength to Your servant and save the son of Your maidservant. Show me a sign of Your favor, that those who hate me may see and be put to shame because You, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.  (Verses 14-17)

Today Saeed Abedini sits in solitary confinement in an Iranian jail where he's been beaten for his faith in Jesus. Saeed is an American citizen who was involved in church building. Arrested in 2005, Saeed pledged he would not evangelize Iran again and was released. Last summer, Saeed left his wife and two children in Idaho to return to Iran and help build a state-run, secular orphanage. When authorities heard of his return, they yanked Saeed from a bus on which he was traveling and threw him, once again, into prison. He has been in prison for over two hundred days. Until recently, he's been held without any charges. In January Iran set his sentence at eight years. Though his family and a group of attorneys pressure the government for his release, things are getting much worse for this young man who is only thirty-seven years old.

In an effort to get Pastor Saeed to recant his faith, the prison has placed him in solitary confinement. He's already told relatives who were, until recently, allowed to visit him, that solitary is a horrific nightmare of beatings and soul-testing silence. His health is failing because the beatings have apparently left him with internal bleeding, especially from his kidneys. Of course, this treatment of the young Christian is in violation of international law, but it is Iran where he is imprisoned. They don't care.

I awoke this morning with a prayer for Saeed Abedini on my heart. Then I read this psalm. It is my prayer for him. Moved to care for his people in any way possible, Saeed was doing the things that are on God's heart--caring for widows and orphans. I am reading Nehemiah right now, and his story reminds me of the heart God gave to the cup bearer to Artaxerxes. As Nehemiah prayed for God's people from a place of relative ease--Susa, where the king vacationed--his heart broke and he knew he must go to Jerusalem and help them rebuild their lives. The effort was not without savage interference from Sanballat, Satan's pawn in the rebuilding process. There are times, though, when God calls us to go, and we must. Pastor Saeed went. And, for those of us who know Christ, we then went with him. Saeed is our brother. Straining against the beatings and blinded by the darkness, Saeed is losing strength. Visitors are no longer allowed so there is absolutely no accountability for the prison guards as they flay and brutalize him for his faith.

So let us pray, on our faces, with tears, for our brother! Show Saeed a sign of Your favor, O Lord, right now! In this moment give him supernatural grace and strength. Clear his mind. Bind his brokenness and visit him in jail in a miraculous and appropriate way. As You visited Paul. As you delivered Peter! O God, merciful and gracious, we pray as Nehemiah did: "Let You ear be attentive and Your eyes open, to hear the prayer of Your servant!"

 

Monday, April 29, 2013

PSALM 86 - I'm All Ears

Incline Your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly. Save Your servant, who trusts in You--You are my God. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to You do I cry all the day. Gladden the soul of Your servant, for to You, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.  (Verses 1-4)

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore, let your words be few. Solomon.  Ecclesiastes 5:1

Yesterday I sat in church listening to Vanessa lead worship. It is her gift. This leading people into the presence of God. Not only is her voice beautiful, her heart is, too. I breathed to my Father a familiar prayer: "When, Lord, will You allow her to sing full time for You?" My heart was weary as I asked. Because I've asked so many times before. But His answer was surprisingly clear: "I'm the One Who gave her these gifts. I know what I have in mind." Answering my sighing heart more than my actual question. Better to listen sometimes than to speak.

Isn't it awe inspiring to think the Lord of all would sit with us and talk? That yesterday in church He was hearing what I asked? Available to this flawed and hopeful woman He calls His? He is not my friend, my companion, my psychologist--He is my God. Ruler over all of me. King of my life. And I know sometimes I act as though He must do my bidding. Make life happen my way. Pathetic, I know. It is when I listen instead of speaking that I become most wise. When I read the Word and discover His heart, mind and soul, I am secure in His goodness, mercy and love. God tells me in His own words what He has for me. The Holy Spirit within me tells me what Jesus is saying to me. Jesus promised that in John 16: "When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take what is mine and declare it to you." Jesus speaks directly to us. We should be able to hear Him because He is always telling the Holy Spirit what He wants us to know. The miracle of that is staggering. That is how His sheep hear His voice (John 10). Are we listening? Or talking?

Have you ever been with a friend who just can't seem to hear you out when you are talking? One who constantly cuts in with something to say then doesn't remember where you left off? A good listener is very hard to find. We are so overstimulated and needy when we come before God that it's difficult to sit still and quiet before Him. But you know what? God has important things to impart. Jesus desires to declare it to us! I am encouraging myself today to incline my ear to Him. I already have God's attention. He wants mine! What are we missing out on because we vomit all our needs in prayer, brush our hands together and call it done for the day. Leave Jesus standing there with His mouth open, ready to guide us, when we are long gone.

Here's my prayer today, Jesus. I want to listen. You are in heaven and I, so small, on earth. Let me be taken up in spirit to soar with You on streets of gold today before I walk the pavement of this planet where my feet, oh, so temporarily, make their way on down the road.

Friday, April 26, 2013

PSALM 85 - Holier Than Thou? Nope.

Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps a way. (Verse 13)

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne. Steadfast love and faithfulness go before You. Blessed are the people who know the festal shout, who walk, O Lord, in the light of Your face, who exult in Your name all the day and in Your righteousness are exalted.  Psalm 89

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is as filthy rags. Isaiah 64

Righteousness is such a lofty word. Tied for so long with its cousin, self-righteousness, it has some ugly undertones. If you are righteous you must be like the Westboro Christians who hate monger with signs and spit outside of funerals. Or you kill abortion doctors and vote for the death penalty. With their noses in the air, the righteous live above the prostitute or adulterer, the thief or addict, the poor and destitute. To be righteous is to be proud. My stomach is already turning. But these were the very people Jesus railed against, calling them "white-washed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness." Matthew 23 is pretty much a diatribe by Christ on self-righteousness. So that can't be what it is that "goes before us to make our footsteps a way."

I am righteous. There. I've said it. I know. I know. When you look at my life, it ain't perfect! That isn't what I'm claiming. Because I know with Isaiah that all the good things I try to do in my flesh are worth about nothing. I'm not righteous because I'm so good. I'm righteous because He is good. That pretty much leaves out any boasting on my part. The rules of the Law served to show me (and the Pharisees) that we can't keep them. It just isn't in us. Not only are the Ten Commandments impossible, the Jewish leaders added hundreds more rules to them. Why? The more rules you claim to abide perfectly by, the more righteous you are. Right? Except pride becomes the tape worm of the heart, eating alive the very thing that could make us right. Our humble acknowledgment that we are nothing without Him. So, what makes me righteous today as I sit here? Not the sterling way in which I keep all the rules, never breaking them. Not the way I lord it over those whose missteps lead them to disgrace. Not that I can go to sleep at night with a clear conscience because, by golly, nothing was my fault yesterday!

Relationship is why I can say Jesus prepares the Way in front of me. I deserve the death penalty for my sins. A holy God demands absolute perfection. On my best day, I am so far from perfection it's not even funny. If I count my thoughts along with my deeds, which God does, I am absolutely hopeless. I cannot work hard enough to purge my life of all that is unpleasing to Holiness. That is why I need Jesus. He was and is the penultimate. His sandals flapped on this dusty earth He spoke, as the Logos, into being to live the life I couldn't and die the death I now won't have to. If that sounds like an amazing story, it is! The proof of its validity isn't in the history that bears it out, but in the lives completely changed  by the Son of God Who now lives in me. That, by the Holy Spirit, Jesus could take this woman with a propensity for all the wrong things and make her want only to please Him is a miracle of miracles. Multiplied millions of times in others throughout the last two thousand years. If there is anything good in me, it comes as a result of my relationship with Christ Who died for me. How can I then look at anyone else from my ivory tower of purity and judge their way? Instead I look from a broken life, restored by the grace of Jesus, and pray for that same grace in others.

My righteousness is a gift. Really. Bestowed on me, free of charge...to me. Paid for in full at the expense of His life. There is no room for bragging about it. Great thankfulness is all I can come up with. It makes me follow the Way. Hand in hand, my path lighted by the favor of the Father I gained when I loved His Son, I walk on down the road following after His love, sustained by His faithfulness. You won't hear me shout about how great I am when He leads me aright. What you will hear is a shout of joy, though, because I will always know Jesus has brought me to a place I could never have found on my own!

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (made right) by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus!  (italics mine) Romans 3

Thursday, April 25, 2013

PSALM 85 - A Seedlíng's Ode

Faithfulness springs up from the ground, and righteousness looks down from the sky.Yes the Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its increase.  (Verses 11-12)

Your people shall all be righteous. They shall possess the land forever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be glorified. Isaiah 60

"...that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified." Isaiah 61

The day had been busy for Jesus. Most notably an argument with the Pharisees. They wanted to see signs from Hm that He was Messiah. While He was in a house speaking intensely with these men, the place became so crowded there wasn't even room to eat. The teachings of Jesus caused such a ruckus that his mother and brothers were concerned about His sanity. Came to the door. Knock. Knock. "We've come to seize Him." What?

"Your mom is at the door with Your brothers." This coming gossip-game style from the back of the house all the way to Jesus speaking up front.

"Who are my mother and my brothers?" Jesus knew. Those who'd grown up with Him thought He was loony-tunes. His ministry didn't look like it was going anywhere. And He kept offending the people in church with His radical ideas.

After the crowds left, Jesus went out in the late afternoon sunshine to sit by the sea. Take deep breaths and be with the Father. That didn't last long. People saw Him there and came in droves to hear Jesus speak. He stepped from shore to sit in a boat anchored close by and began teaching the people about seeds. Hmm. Consider His day. The sower sowed seeds that fell along the path and the birds ate them. Some landed on rocky ground where they sprang up for a minute then died because they had no root to nourish them when the scorching sun rose. A handful fell among thorns that grew up and choked the fragile plants. Ah, but some fell on good soil and sprang up to produce lots and lots of grain. The birds, or the evil one, snatch the word before it is understood. The seed on the rocky path springs up for a bit but doesn't have a deep enough root to endure. The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches chokes out the seed among the thorns. But, oh the joy of the seed planted to flourish. She hears the word and understands it! This little acorn gets to become a mighty oak.

A little later, in Matthew 15, Jesus says, "Every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted." If God hasn't planted us, we don't grow. He puts a tiny seed of faith--mustard seed small--into our hearts. If we are good ground, the kind that receives and understands the message, we take that seed and nurture it, small as it is at first. We water it with the Word and feed it with time in the Son. It sprouts little roots that entwine themselves into every part of us. Fed by the Vine (John 15), the plant endures troubles, resists the evils of riches and hubris, and even stays strong when the Vinedresser does some pruning that hurts in the moment but produces a huge crop of acorns later.

How do we know which soil we fell on? By our fruit. As we oaks of righteousness get bigger and bigger our faith growing up should be reaching His righteousness flowing down. In faith, the plant reaches higher and higher, yearning for more of the glory flowing from above. And on the horizon, one who looks at the oak from afar cannot distinguish between trust as it ascends and God's ways as they descend, for all they see is the glory of the tree at dusk.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

PSALM 85 - Kissing Peace

Steadfast love and faithfulness meet. Righteousness and peace kiss each other. (Verse 10)

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness.  Lamentations 3

And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.  Isaiah 32

I have been out there, like many of you, away from God. Pain pushed my buttons, but I moved my feet. I know in the scheme of things (and believe me, there was one) I found myself doubting the goodness of God. Some days, even His existence, because, well, life blew up around me. Part of said scheme was to cause my heart to wander from the assurance I was loved by a mighty, benevolent God. I lost my mother to cancer, my father to jail, and two of my lifelong friends to breast cancer within a short span of time. It seemed to me that God killed His children and abandoned those in pain. I couldn't think it correctly...and I had some help there, too. All this to say, my love for Jesus was predicated to some degree on my own ideas about what is fair and on the notion I could figure out what He is doing at all times. Life turned to crap and it didn't make sense. So I strolled into the dark to ponder and sin.

From that journey, though, I have learned a thing or two. Doing wrong doesn't feel good. Not when you already know Jesus. Righteousness is about doing what pleases Him because of all He has done for us. Not about Brownie points. When my heart was angry with God, it was easier to do what I wanted to because I could say He didn't care. That had been my only motivation before. Wandering off from those feelings of love for God left me with no real catalyst to be a Christian except I had been one for so long. I know the Holy Spirit lives in me. He doesn't go away. I can hide Him in the corner of my life somewhere, but when He can't shout, He will whisper...and whisper...and whisper. It is very uncomfortable. I could never get away from the faithful wooing of my God. How could I possibly have any peace, then? See what I mean? As Paul told Timothy, "if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself."

Why would Jesus keep on keeping on with us? Because He first loved us. Gave Himself up on our behalf. He is CRAZY about me! And you! Can you imagine climbing up on a cross to be murdered so I wouldn't have to pay for my own sins? Bet not. Jesus did! Before the foundations of the world God knew me. Watched me in my mother's womb. Wrote out my life before I was even a day old. (Psalm 139) He sings over me with joy (Zephaniah) and stands between my life and the evil one. God is jealous of my love for other gods. That's why when He finds us in a pit, He goes to hell and back to retrieve what belongs to Him.

Day and night, night and day, Jesus is thinking about us. Nothing we can do can make Him love us more...or less. Love, to Him, is love. Always meeting faithfulness head on. It's His love that makes Him take me for another day. To hang in there with me when I am hurt or just plain stupid. For I am sure that neither life nor death, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height not depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8) How absolutely out of the box amazing that Jesus decides He'll love me steadfastly, faithfully.

If you've wandered very far away from your first Love, you know He comes to get you. To kiss your wounds and bind up the heart you allowed, in your disobedience, to be broken. As He holds you, it is the caress of one you have betrayed, and that is what makes the sweetness of it almost too tender to bear. Forgiven and washed clean, made right by His grace, there is finally peace again. A peace you could just kiss you've missed it so much. I know I didn't want to move from His side after that. Did I still have questions about the train wreck that sent me packing? Yes. But they weren't accusations any longer. Questions are different. I understand His love so much better now and know He knows things I can't possibly understand. I John 4:20 became a life verse. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and He knows everything. 

Who is loved like God loves us? No one. Unique to Him is His faithfulness and steadfast love. I want to be right with Him. Not always right. Vast difference. To please Him is my highest aim and my easiest burden for I am yoked together in this life by His Holy Spirit to live in the righteousness that results in peace, quietness and trust forever. I never want to break His heart again.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

PSALM 85 - The Devil Never Gave Me Anything Good

Let me hear what God, the Lord, will speak, for He will speak peace to His people, to his saints. But let them not turn back to folly. Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him, that glory may dwell in our land.  (Verses 8-9)

But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way.  Philippians 3

No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back if fit for the kingdom of God.  Jesus

I watched "Anna Karenina" last night with Bill. The sobering story depicting the verse in Proverbs: "There is a way that seems right to a man (woman), but the end thereof is death." Choosing her lover over her husband and children over and over again then abandoned by the one in whom she had "put all her happiness." Anna's death was literal. But the story is a sobering picture of what the ruler of this present darkness has in store for all of us who would be enticed into his realm. Complete destruction is his plan of choice. With many little deaths along the way. Satan has never given me anything good...or remotely good. Nothing I want to look back on and wish I were still in the claws of. I have been extricated, believe me. I understand the subtle journey into blackness. I never want to go there again.

Our addictions and attachments in this world come from a place of dissatisfaction with life. A desire for more. More thrills, more adventure, more peace. An extraction of pain, or at least, a numbing of it. The joke is on us, though, for in trying to find ease, we increase pain. Add another deeply throbbing ache to a life already wrenched. On our knees we find salvation. Cry out to be saved from not only our situation, but from ourselves. Our Christ, Whose steadfast love can be counted upon, reaches into our pit and grabs us up, walks us out, bring us peace we never dreamed possible because our hearts are made for Him. Then some of us jump right back into the mire! We are still loved. But we are not fit for the kingdom. Not ready for the life ahead. If we can't leave the past behind and move on. Proverbs 26 describes such a thing this way: "The dog returns to its vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire." Not a lovely picture.

How does one become fit? For many believers, the pit is all they've known until they find Christ. Pit dwelling is a way of life. If I might be practical, we all need the "washing of the water of the Word." The Bible is God's mind and heart chronicled across the pages for the ages. It is God's way of speaking a broad word for all and a personal word to each. It is the beginning to keeping fit. Conversations with Him are as rich as our knowledge of our Father. Prayer keeps us on our toes. Our victories are exponentially dependent upon our relationship with the General. Our ability to be awed by God is dependent upon what we see Him do, and prayer is the beginning of that wonder. If we can't control our urges, we must practice. Especially in this world today which is a carnival of hedonism where every booth offers some new pleasure sure to change our lives. And, boy, do they! The oven is hot and we should be prepared not to touch it...or even go near it. Folly is so yesterday. And if we engage again we will be even more miserable because we now know what real peace looks like. If we are looking back on sin as something we miss--the way it made us feel--we are unusable and unhappy.

So forget what's back there. Yes, we have all made mistakes. Stuff we could recount ad nauseum. And each time we talk about what's back there, we either get titillated or depressed. Dance instead in the freedom and joy of now. For there is glory involved in dwelling where God lives. Peace is poured out on the saints who decide to walk with the Way. The deeper the relationship with our Father the less we want anything to do with the father of lies. We have switched families. From paupers to princesses. Walking the streets and begging for bread shouldn't compare to living in the courts of the King of Kings. How could any of us in our right minds go back to the slums when we have lived in the Presence of real glory? It is why, if we do turn again to our folly, we aren't fit for royal courts. We don't think we deserve it, we aren't used to it or we don't trust it will deliver all we will lose in the streets. None are good reasons to go back to vomit--to lay with the pigs. That is what should be hard to forget! That God pulled us up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set our feet upon a rock and put a new song in our mouths, a song of praise even unto our God (Psalm 40). Does it make sense then that we miss the pit?

May we turn our heads around and look forward at all God has promised us. May we live right now, today, in the light of His glory, remembering our salvation! And if we think at all of the days gone by, may we only be thankful to our toes that we are no longer snared by the devil. Let those of us who are mature think this way.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who revere Him, on those who hope in His steadfast love, that He may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. For our heart is glad in Him, because we trust His holy name. Let Your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in You. (italics mine) Psalm33






 

Monday, April 22, 2013

PSALM 85 - It's Getting Hard to Breathe Here

Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away Your indignation toward us! Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again, that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your steadfast love, O God, and grant us Your salvation.  (Verses 4-7)

Revive.  To restore to life or consciousness. Ew, boy. You are revived when you are out cold and need air in your lungs and oxygen to the brain. So, when we are spiritually dead, we need a good resuscitation. The logic of it is this. If our benevolent God is mad at us, we have done something/s wrong. We have moved away from what pleases Him and into what doesn't. God isn't indignant and angry because we are such great kids! That's hilarious! Our Father has a set of standards that are for His glory and our good. Like any sterling parent. How long has He put up with our rebellion to get to the point that it feels like He'll be angry forever? A looong time.

I received a call many years ago from a friend who is more like a sister to me. With terrible grief in her heart and with trembling voice, she told me of having to tell her teenage son to leave the house. Long battles over drugs and other addictive behavior had forced the issue. He was sleeping somewhere in his car. And she wasn't sleeping at all. But the boy left my friend and her husband no recourse but to remove him from their presence for a time. Scary as it was, the process led to the unloading of guilt and shame the son had thrown onto his back. Today he has his doctorate. Because God is gracious and my friends, wise.

I don't think that picture is far from what happens with us and God. Read the parable of the prodigal son. You can't need more reviving than he did, slopping the pigs and wishing for their food in his belly. In need of more than a good bath. A cleansing of heart and soul. An understanding of what the Father's heart has been all along. But there is the other brother in the story. Mad, mad, mad! Who does the brother think he is to come home and expect love and security. He took his inheritance and spent it in the worst way. Prostitutes, gambling and alcohol. Homeless, then, and smelling to high heaven when Dad sees him afar and runs to him. Can't get more co-dependent than that! No way is this older brother going to any party that has to do with the pariah "little brother" has become. Worked all these years for his own share of the inheritance! The Father never gave him a party! Not for being faithful. Guess you have to be bad before He notices you. And out spills the blackness of his self-righteous heart. "I'm the good one."

"All I have is yours,"says the Father. Actually, that is literally correct. He will inherit what is left because the younger brother took all of his when he wished his Father already dead and split. "You could've had a party with your friends any time!" Too busy working this darn farm!  Me, me, me. "Rejoice with me that your brother was lost and is now found!" The Father is just so happy to see his kid alive and repentant!

Which child gets resuscitated? Only the one who knows he needs it. The older brother gets the rest of the farm. He deserves it. But the younger brother gets His Father. Is covered in kisses and clothed in clean linen. Never gets to give the speech he'd prepared as he trudged the miles of dusty roads back home: "Father, I have sinned against you and am no longer worthy to be called your son." Over and over again. Couldn't wait to get the words out of his mouth. To spill his guts. To fall on his face. "Make me as one of your hired hands." I just want to be home. The kid is filthy. Matted hair, dirty teeth and rancid clothing. But the Father threw his arms around him, kissed his pig-slopped face! Oh, revival!

When we know our need for God again! When we see that our plans lead to the sty. Or when our eyes are opened to the depths of darkness in which we live when we push God away because He isn't impressed with our self-righteousness. When we recognize that religion can't replace a relationship with the Father. We will never know the heart of our God until we see that ours are rebellious and empty without Him. Christians are having a hard time breathing these days. Caught up in the miasma of cultural pollution that mesmerizes our minds and compromises our beliefs. All the while, the Father waits. For His children to understand the depths of His love as it reaches out to the pew or the sty. Revive us again, dear Father! We are losing air.


 

Friday, April 19, 2013

PSALM 84 - This Little Light's Not Mine

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in You.  (Verses 11-12)

"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." Jesus.  John 8

 It's been dark lately. Noticed? Kermit Gosnell has been murdering women and children in his clinic for several years. Two brothers from Russia blew up the Boston marathon, killing and maiming. A deaf kid from Texas planned for quite some time how he would slash other students with a knife to make them bleed out his own sense of being an outcast. Thirty-six people were killed by a bomb blast in a busy Bagdad cafe yesterday. And the beat goes on. Night has fallen on our minds and lives. And we need the light.

Jesus said there is only one Source of it. Him. Period. "I am the Light of the world." That would explain a great deal. For He wasn't speaking of the physical sun in that context, although He is the source of that, too. And God said, "Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light was good. And God separated the light from darkness."  Jesus was the Logos Who spoke it into being--everything. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him was nothing made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines out in darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1) And Jesus isn't just a small lamp or a match lit at midnight. He is the SUN! Lighting up everything. Parsing good from evil in the brilliant daylight of truth. There is darkness where He is not. The blackout of thought, will and action. For we are either thinking like He thinks or we are living our lives in the darkest hours of the night. Struggling to walk through life like one blind, feeling our way along a path we cannot see, fearing all that is around us, paranoid and unsure.

What did Jesus mean by saying He is the light of the world? Such a huge statement. Without Him there isn't light. Physical or spiritual. Of course, when the Triune God said, "Let us make man in our image," Jesus and the Holy Spirit were part of the process. Our sun was thrown into the heavens by the power of the Trinity. So it only makes sense the One Who created us and lit our way on Earth is the only One Who can truly shine clarity into our minds and hearts. He made them like His. Understands them in a way we can only pretend to. If we want wisdom, we must go to the One Who knows. It is with great hubris we follow a lesser light. Rejecting the fullness with which we could see clearly. It is with great humility we follow the Sun Himself, for we then acknowledge we are without purpose and direction, wandering blind, without Jesus. And His Word. Our roadmap, guide and itinerary.

It's a scary world these days. Women, children, college students, runners and relatives just stood around glibly waiting on a breezy Boston afternoon when darkness walked among them and reared its ugly head. It is evil in its nightmarish ambitions. Left death and destruction in its wake. But it will not forever overcome the light. Though it lurks, it will one day be no more. Just as it seemed to destroy the very One Who spoke light into being, when the skies turned ebony at midday and the earth quaked, and it looked like death swallowed the sun, we could despair in our world. But dark cannot prevail in God's domain. That's not what He has in mind. Blessed are those who trust in Him, for Jesus pushed the rock away from the inky confines of the burial tomb and light flooded in to show that it was empty.

And we who know Him? To us He said: "You are the salt of the earth...You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father Who is in heaven." Italics mine. Matthew 5  Little stars, we are. Reflecting the greater glory of the Sun. It's the only way to illuminate the darkness. Wherever we find ourselves to remember there are those who don't understand what light means and are upset by its glare, the way it stings their eyes and makes them cower. Or makes them mad because now there is no place to hide while they are about the business of a night without a moon. The favor of brightness is that it shields us from the deeds of the devil. It lights up his shenanigans. Protects us from the path our enemy would have us go blindly down because we can see the end. Wisdom is a shield of protection. And it shows we have the favor that only a lighted path can provide.

So, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine. Many days imperfectly. I blew it yesterday, even. But thank Jesus for light even on that. He quickly made me "see"my mistake and make it right. Oh, Jesus, may we reflect Your glory to a miserable and dying world. And if we die doing it, may we be assured we will live forever in the "city that has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb." May we salt the earth with your Word, O Jesus, and light it with Your fire, until You come again!


 

Thursday, April 18, 2013

PSALM 84 - There's Nothing Better Than This!

O Lord, God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob! Behold our shield, O God. Look on the face of Your anointed! For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.  (Verses 8-10)

But You, O God, are a shield about me, my glory and the lifter of my head. Psalm 3

Have you ever had lunch with a friend, thinking it was going to be a nice time together, and the friend, instead, has invited you to eat while they told you off? This has happened to me more than once. Clearly I need to be told off too often, but please don't make me pay for lunch while you do it! I reference these times in order to describe what I did afterward. I ran home (or drove) feeling I would burst if I didn't get on the floor, face down, with my God. It was to Him I wanted to flee in order to find clarity and peace. There was the night a trusted employee and friend of the family railed against me for a couple of hours on the phone while Bill sat beside, listening, saying: "Hang up, Kay. That's enough." The call became such a personal vendetta against me that my heart was literally fractured. I was up all night with Christian music blaring in my earphones as I sought my God for what I was to keep of what was said and what I should throw out. I had been wrong and apologized. That was clear. But I'd been unaware of all the other person had stored up against me in terms of perceived offenses. Only God could clear up the mess left in the wake of the conversation. I only wanted Him. To be in His courts. Shamed and unsure of what was truth and what wasn't, I needed to be in my Father's house more than life. Couldn't lift my head to look at Him because of the burden of guilt heaped upon me in the conversation. In the wee hours of the morning, it seemed the Lord put His hand under my chin and lifted my face to look at Him. Yes, I'd been wrong. Asked forgiveness. But what lay past that was His to judge. No one else could've brought me to peace in such a way. I love my God.

Beauty has driven me there, too--to His house. A heart so thankful it bursts. When all I want to do is jump up and down with the joy of the moment. Like when I found out I was pregnant (all three times), or when jobs came through, or illness was healed, or when God did some unexpected and always undeserved miracle like sending a check in the mail. I remember the night I saw "The Passion" the first time. I was with friends who wanted to go out to eat afterward while my heart was bursting to go home and be alone, in His courts, and just overflow with thanksgiving for the death and resurrection of Christ that gained me entrance in the first place. Jesus was waiting for me in my room that night as I sat in silent reverence, just loving Him.There is no high that compares to the presence of Jesus in a room. I remember leading a young woman to Jesus several years ago, and her response still rings in my ears. "That was quite a rush!" Indeed.

That I could go into the house of the Father, lift my face to Him and talk for awhile is a miracle. I sat the other night for a few minutes in a comedy club where the talk was sexually grotesque and low. My friend and I left, of course, but it dawns on me as I write this that most in the crowd have no idea what it's like to be with God. If they did, they couldn't endure what they were hearing at the restaurant. That isn't a judgment on them. They just don't know. To be one moment in His presence is better than to be anywhere else. To be a servant in His house better than to be king in a place where He is not. The miracle is this. God has provided access to Himself. I don't deserve to be before the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, to spill my guts or spew my praise. I get to go there because He wants to see the face of His anointed, me. Because it is His joy to lift my head and speak truth to my heart and mind. The miracle is I am His child, chosen before the foundations of the world (Ephesians 1) to be His. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23)!
 

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

PSALM 84 - Turning the Bitter to Sweet

Blessed are those whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. As they go through the Valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rains cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength; each one appears before the God of Zion. (Verses 5-7)

For I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.  Philippians 4:13

I used to think that life is a straight line. We walk from childhood into our teenage years then graduate from high school and life finally happens. College. Jobs. Family. Retirement. Death. I was just as surprised as the next girl that it's just not like that at all. I was whiplashed several times in the mighty turnabouts life has dealt me. I am incapable of the journey without a map...and a plan. Only, I have neither without the One Who decided my itinerary here on planet Earth. I am a hobo on a locomotive going nowhere in particular if I'm not on my way eventually to Zion. The way there is charted in my heart--the highway to heaven. The Way, the Truth and the Life now lives in me by the power of the Holy Spirit leading me on and strengthening me for all that lies ahead.

My life is supposed to sweeten the pot, so to speak. The Valley of Baca was a dry and barren place. Maybe sickness, death, abandonment--think of all the hard things we go through. In my most dire hour, because of the strength of purpose given to me by my God, I am to bring water to thirst. To make tragedy a place of springs and pooling water. Because? I'm on my way to Zion with a heartmap that makes the twists and turns down here, where life is an illusion of the real, lovelier because I passed through. Can I do this on my own? Absolutely not! Devastation is devastating. It is Christ in me, the strength of my heart, Who can let me even imagine a crucible of pain turned into joy. But He did it! Cringed naked on the cross of our affliction, crying out to the Father for our forgiveness. Sweetening the horror with purpose and power. Then came roaring from a tomb, pushing aside the mammoth stone that tried to hold Him back. And He lives in me. To the same purpose. To shower the desert that is this life with living water, pooling up in the midst of panic and pain. To honey this life because I know the Way to heaven.

What does it mean that Christ strengthens me? Glad you asked. It means when you understand you can't live the Christian life on your own steam, that Christ in you is your hope. You get a dynamite powered engine (Holy Spirit) that makes living for God finally possible. The mystery of God within us through the death and resurrection of Christ is the secret of our strength. Like Samson's hair made him strong. Our faith is our power, and even that faith comes from Him (Ephesians 2:8-9). The Christian life isn't hard--it's impossible, without Jesus living in us. But, oh, when He moves in! We are able to go from strength to strength because we know the Way. Imagine the map, the driver and the destination all living in me! Showing me purpose in all things. For I am here to neutralize the bitter waters with my life. Not because I have any natural ability to do so. I don't. But He does. Blessed am I when I understand where my strength comes from! Blessed am I when I'm not trying on my own to be a blessing. Blessed am I when my eyes are on the prize and I can say with Paul, in Philippians 3: I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have suffered the loss of all things for His sake and count them rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. Blessed am I when I am salt and light and don't even know it because it is the overflow of my life in Him. Blessed am I when I know that when I am weak, then I am strong, for His strength is made perfect in my weakness. When life is impossible for us, yet we do it and do it with joy and purpose? That is God in us. Pouring out His character from the pores of our pain.

On our way to Zion, may the world find it a sweeter place for our having been here. But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.    2 Corinthians 2
 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

PSALM 84 - Boston and Little Birds

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at Your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, ever singing Your praise.  (Verses 3-4)

The afternoons are getting warmer here at the beach in Southern California. With daylight saving's time, there is a little more time to sit on the porch on the second story off our master suite and watch hummingbirds flit around in the treetops close to our faces. While doing just that last week, I noticed one who kept going to the roof, so I turned my chair to watch. She was building a nest in the safety of the arch of our concrete shingles. In her busyness, I was only a boring part of the landscape. The little bird found a secure home for her kids and was wasting no time in plumping it with random grasses.

While I know the sons of Korah meant this psalm to refer to the earthly temple where birds safely make their nests in its eaves, it speaks to me of more today. Like my hummingbird boarder, we are all looking for safety. A home for our hearts. We are looking for love and hopefully not "in all the wrong places." God is our refuge, our strong tower, the One Who covers us with His feathers and hides us in His shadow. He alone can put us in a safe place, away from the "snare of the fowler (Psalm 91)." 

Yesterday was a nightmare for America once again. On a sparkling cool day in Boston, thousands of people gathered to either run or watch the oldest marathon in the United States. Relatives and friends crowded around the finish line for the runners who had started at 10:30 A.M. waiting to cheer as they crossed the line. Then BOOM! Out of nowhere. The day turned dark and sinister as spectators and runners lost legs and life. Evil planted evil in a trash can, perhaps. And we were reminded once again, that there is no safe place anymore. We do have enemies lurking about waiting to kill us in a movie theater, an elementary school or a college campus. We have met the enemy and they are us.

It is not our guns that kill us. It is our hearts. Perhaps we will find a foreign enemy ripped our flesh and tore our hearts out yesterday. We aren't safely harbored in this world, though. If we are Christians, the day to day of life has taken a bizarre twist and we are recognizing with each passing hour this is not our home. We are strangers with weird ideas of a loving God Who has set standards for our life and death. Christians are more and more castigated for drawing lines of right and wrong. That is politically incorrect. We are judging. Intolerant. Ridiculed for believing antiquated messages from a worn out religion.

As I've been contemplating Psalms in these blogs, there have been many days I struggle to write them because so many speak about the enemy and burying or slaughtering him or them. It's resonating with me more now, though. The world is a bloody, unforgiving sphere on which people fight and survive or die. So I must live intentionally while I'm away from home on this battlefield, Earth. Ready in prayer, equipped with the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6). At any moment the arrow could fly my way and take my physical life. Tear me limb from limb. A terrifying thought. But there is something it can never steal from me. I am safely harbored in God. I am not my tent, temporary and destructible. If that were all, I would live in panic. Afraid to go out of the house.

Jesus preached a sermon about how we should live our lives in the book of Matthew. "Sufficient for today is its own troubles," He declared. Don't worry about what we eat or drink or what we will wear. Okay, then, that's about all the people I know concern themselves with in this economy. We are falling behind His expectations already. "Isn't your life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" He asked. "Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you more valuable than they?"

The upshot of the sermon? "Don't be anxious. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you." We cannot live in fear. We don't know what today will bring on this crazy planet away from home. For Christ, it meant death, as it did for those to whom He preached that famous sermon. Our faith must become white hot. Sure of our God and His ultimate plans for His children--warriors. Like Esther, we declare, "If I perish, I perish." Our lives, both physical and eternal are kept in Him. Jesus made a promise to the Father, clearly, and in His prayer before His death, this is what Jesus said: "I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom You have given me, for they are Yours. All mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are One. While I was with them, I kept them in Your name, which You have given Me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction.

We are kept by God. Safe eternally under the eaves of His tabernacle. Our lives are temporary here. Our hearts and minds continue forever and He still watches over us. There is coming a day when Jesus will present us to the Father, and He will say before God and the angels, "This one belongs to Me." Revelation 3. For me, today, a kind of mantra is whispering its truth to my spirit: "Jesus, I belong to You." Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus, Come.

Monday, April 15, 2013

PSALM 84 - Home

How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord. My heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.  (Verses 1-2)

Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you?  Jesus. John 14

Home. It's where the lights are on when you drive up. Where the smell of food wafts from the kitchen to your nostrils when you open the door after a long day of work. I remember when I was a kid driving up the driveway to our house after a late afternoon Brownie meeting and seeing my mother through the picture window as she stirred something over the stove. The early evening pinkness of the skies as the sun disappeared for the day drenched the rooftop in metallic sparkles. The light was on over the stove. I could smell the bacon frying. Hoped we were having baked potatoes with onions, butter, cheese and...that bacon.

Of course, later, home was where Bill and my children are. I, in charge of dinner--of rounding us all up at the end of the day to chatter excitedly about our lives. To laugh or cry or, sometimes, argue. (I'm not going to lie here. If you know my kids, you know we argued every meal.) Prayed over, tucked into bed, walked with, celebrated with and counseled. My kids know when they walk in the door these days, when they are grown and often far flung, they have entered the safety zone where they are completely loved, free to argue and eat, to cry and laugh. And perhaps even to be challenged. Home.

Maybe that's why at dinner the night He was betrayed, Jesus promised home to his disciples. He'd just redressed after having taken off His outer garments in order to kneel at the feet of each disciple to cleanse them from the dirt of the day's journey. Intimate in its vulnerability, the foot washing was the last time He'd touch them before His death. Judas, the betrayer of Jesus, slipped from the room, leaving the Son with the eleven. "I am going away someplace you can't follow right now,"Jesus said. "Love each other, guys. Love each other. I command it."

Peter, appalled, demanded to know, "Where are You going?"

"Where I'm going you can't follow now, but you will later." Then Jesus told them about home. He was going home. Where His Father and ours waits amidst the many mansions for His children to appear. "The Father Himself loves you because you have loved me," Jesus assures them in this intimate last conversation with His beloved friends. And perhaps their hearts understood the strange homesickness always stirring in them. Whenever the sunset blazed in glory setting the Jerusalem skies on fire. Or when their son or daughter, fresh from the womb, grabbed with the exuberance of new life a proffered finger and squeezed its newborn wonder round the circumference. Maybe when the Torah was read, God at once powerful and beautiful. Conjuring up in them the knowledge we are made for more. We don't live where we came from. And we will be going back there someday, too.

How lovely must that dwelling place be!  And He carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates were twelve angels...the wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel...and the streets of the city were pure gold, clear as glass. (Revelation 21) Pretty fancy. Over the top. Jesus lives now in the splendor He promises us.

But we all know a house without love, no matter how magnificent, is not home. Home is where family is. Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with mankind and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. (Revelation 21) For those of us who know His Son, believe Him to be our Savior, our Jesus becomes our brother Who will one day open the door to the Father's house and bid us come in. How lovely, how unfathomably lovely, is that, our home. For He is there, and that is all that matters.

Precious to the Lord is the death of His faithful ones.  Psalm 116:15
 

Friday, April 12, 2013

PSALM 83 - Gosnell. God Have Mercy

Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever. Let them perish in disgrace, that they may know that You alone, Whose name is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth. (Verses 17-18)

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women burdened with sins and led astray by various passions.  2 Timothy 3

"This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy--and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors." This is from the grand jury report concerning the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell now being played out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At the trial, an unlicensed medical school grad described the process by which the spinal cords of babies were snipped--a literal beheading. Another employee described the screaming of the last trimester babies as they were murdered. Dozens of jars of severed baby feet lined office walls of the man who provided abortions for cash to pregnant women who had passed the twenty-four week cutoff legal for abortions in  Pennsylvania.

The FBI raided the clinic, Women's Medical Society, on February 18, 2010, late in the evening. Expecting only to find evidence of illegal drug prescriptions, the agents were overwhelmed by the understanding that something way more sinister was happening behind the closed doors of the clinic. Blood covered the floors, a cat wandered around, leaving its feces on the stairway and beyond, semi-conscious women were moaning in the waiting area as they rested on filthy recliners and were covered with bloody blankets. The women had been sedated by unlicensed staff. Of course, now we know at least two women had recently died as a result of services there. Babies, and their remains, were stored in desultory fashion in bags, milk jugs, orange juice cartons and cat food containers. Gosnell's clinic "insured fetal demise." One child whose demise was imminent was a baby boy born at 30 weeks. "This kid could walk me to the bus stop,"quipped Gosnell right before he snipped the baby dead. Accidents on the abortion table that left women convulsing in pain, with tears in their uteruses and bladder, were unreported as Gosnell wouldn't allow ambulances to help. At least one young woman had to have a hysterectomy because the companion who brought her to the clinic wasn't allowed to call for help. Babies were typically born over the toilet bowl. And it goes on and on. His own little Auschwitz exterminating people born alive and viable for monetary gain because, for whatever reason, women carrying third trimester babies decide they don't want them, either.

The media isn't carrying this story. I understand the sordid nature of it, but what did we expect? Abortion on demand, without parental consent, has hardened us to the fact that women carry precious life when we are pregnant. Mother Teresa gave a speech at the national prayer breakfast in 1994 and said, "But I feel the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child--a direct killing of the innocent child--murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?" The real murderer at Women's Medical Society is the mother who has felt her baby kicking and rolling in her womb for months by the time she decides to "insure demise." What is wrong with us? Really! The child has no idea its mother, and perhaps father, daily discuss what to do with him or her. It is an "it" to be disposed of out of lack of discretion in the beginning and lack of pity at the end.

The villain is us. We have become a society drained of natural affection and imbued with a sense of our own entitlement. I know there are arguments on every side of the abortion issue and it's not my purpose to argue that. It's the heart I'm concerned with. Mine and yours. As we become desensitized to the horrors of the abortion mill. To actually legislate morality so that women have the right to choose to kill their children. And we have. 52 million of them. Laid to rest in trash cans or flushed with aplomb, as if they were the pet goldfish, into the toilet of our ease. Christ must vomit when He sees us in our hubris.

Our semantics have brought us to such evil in our day. Not just late term abortionists and mothers killing their children, but the malaise and creepiness of life as usual. Newton shooter killing children their parents wanted to keep. Molestations in mainstream churches and civic organizations. People growing up, as Paul states in Romans 1, "without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful." But if we call babies fetuses in order to separate the fact that the mother is "eating for two," we can distance what is going on in a woman's body so that she can, like the man with whom she wants equality, possess his same sexual freedom. That's how it all began. I know. I was there during the sexual revolution. Fifty-two million "fetuses" later, now close to 3500 per day. We are naive to think their blood doesn't cry out to God. "If you harm one of these, my little ones, it would be better for you that you have a millstone tied around your neck and be thrown into the bottom of the sea." Jesus, Luke 17.

There is pure evil. Gosnell is the face of it, as are the weak women who went to him--paid him--to destroy their near full term children. He isn't alone in his culpability. May he have to wear his shame. And may God have mercy on him and on our souls, for He is the Lord, the Most High over all the earth. He loves His creation--all of it--and He will not be silent forever.
 

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

PSALM 83 - Have You No Shame?

O my God, make them like whirling dust, like chaff before the wind.  As fire consumes the forest, as the flame sets the mountains ablaze, so may you pursue them with your tempest and terrify them with your hurricane!  Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.  (Verses 13-16)   italics mine

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.  "Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other.  For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."  Jesus...Luke 18

I don't believe I've ever prayed for someone in quite this way.  But it makes sense to me as I meditate on it this morning. There are several people I love who don't know Jesus, and I have often wondered what it would take for them to seek Him. Perhaps experiencing God's terrifying pursuit of their hearts would bring them to a place of prostrate contrition. It is the safest place in the world, I have found.  Face down. Seeking Him. Covered in the shame of our own ridiculous hubris and the consequences of our haughty life choices. Knowing we are helpless before the hurricane--whirling dust signifying nothing. Consumed with our burning desires, yet left by them to be a heap of ashes. There is no phoenix flying high out of our misery. There is only God Who takes the ash heap and breathes His new birth into it. What I know is:  That miracle is worth the shame preceding it.

Shame. A painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming or impropriety. It is a necessary component of repentance. Acknowledgment of guilt. Knowing we fall short. It can become the motivation for all kinds of sin, though. In fact, I think it is the root of addiction, and Satan uses it to keep us from God. Remember Adam and Eve after their disobedience. They knew they were naked and were ashamed. That shame made them hide from God. How could they let Him see them vulnerable? The very thing that should've driven them to God's feet in repentance made them hide instead. But God pursued them. Drew them out. Addressed their need.

The parable of the publican and the sinner from Luke 18 twists the paradigm. It is the religious zealot who should be ashamed and not the tax collector who knows his need. Brought to his knees by the knowledge that without God he is nothing, the IRS agent went home clean. Covered in pride, arms lifted and phylactery in place, the religious leader is brought to his feet by the knowledge that God is nothing without him. He has no shame. No real knowledge that he is capable of anything evil without Christ. Doing good, good, good because...well...because it makes him oh, so, right. Not recognizing, as Jesus did, that at the core of pride in our humility is an ash heap...or dead men's bones. When looking at a sinner makes us feel better about ourselves, we are pretty messed up.

It was shame that brought the woman taken in adultery to the feet of Jesus, the Samaritan woman to faith in Christ, the lepers to cry out for mercy, the thief on the cross to repentance. Jesus running after us to finally catch us from behind, breathless, and fall on top of us as He takes us down. Like a mother running after a child, tackling her before the oncoming train can run her child over. Mad at Mommy at first because the fall hurt. Then the train whistles by and she knows she's been saved.

So Lord send the hurricane, the fire or the flood and chase us down. All of us. For those lost in self-righteousness or tangled in sin. We all need to bring our shame before You so that we can seek Your face. Then leave it there. Where it belongs. Covered in Your blood so we can live clean and forgiven, thankful that we are no longer either self-righteous or oppressed but safely harbored in the family of God, our Father.


 

Monday, April 8, 2013

PSALM 83 - Get Up!

They say, "Come, let us wipe them out as a nation. Let the name of Israel be remembered no more!" For they conspire in one accord; against You they make a covenant.....Do to them as You did to Midian, as to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon, who were destroyed at En-dor, who became dung for the ground.  Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna who said, "Let us take possession for ourselves of the pastures of God." (Verses 4-5;9-12)

Two pretty unlikely heroes are noted in this passage as conquerors over the enemies of Israel.  A woman and a farmer.  Deborah and Gideon.  Let's start with Deborah.  One of the only female judges of Israel that we know about.  Israel was under the control of Jabin, king of Canaan, at the time, and the commander of his army was Sisera.  For twenty years this man cruelly oppressed the children of God, using his army of nine hundred iron chariots to fight against their less superior forces.  While sitting under the palm of Deborah one day speaking the will of God over those who came to her for wisdom, the prophetess summoned Barak in order to give him a message from God:  "Hasn't the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded you to gather your men at Mount Tabor?  There He will draw Sisera out and give him into your hand."

Barak, unsure, won't go into battle unless Deborah goes, too.  "I'll go, but be warned.  The road you've decided to take won't lead to your glory, for the Lord will give Sisera into the hands of a woman."  No matter.  Barak wanted a hand to hold instead of trusting with courage in the word of the Lord to him. 

When Sisera heard of the armies of Israel gathering, he assembled his own army with its chariots and trained soldiers and headed to Mount Tabor.  Barak, still cowed, was, it seems, still reticent to pick up his arms and lead his men into battle.  "Get up!" cried Deborah.  (Can't you just hear her.)  "This is the day Sisera is delivered into your hands."  I think he was still whining a bit...you know, Sisera has all these chariots...all these men...and he's won again and again for twenty years now.  Deborah exhorts Barak one more time.  "The Lord has gone out before you!"

Of course the armies of Sisera were routed and killed.  Only Sisera escaped and found himself in the desert community of Kedesh.  There, a woman named Jael was surprised when the mighty warrior came rushing past her tent.  "Come on in here," she wooed.  "You're safe with me." And she covered Sisera with a rug and led him into her tent.  The sight of this cruel leader must've made her heart beat faster and her face flush.  Thinking what to do in the moment.  Not knowing the outcome of hiding him there.  A bigger plan hatching as she opened the tent flap and pushed Sisera into her home.

"Give me some water, please," he groaned.  "I'm so thirsty."  She gave him some milk instead then covered him up like a baby so he could sleep.  "Watch the opening of the tent so no one discovers me," he commanded right before he fell under the spell of his own weariness and the milk and began to snore loudly, dead asleep.

Jael had taken a hammer and a pretty long nail to the door with her.  The steady sounds of the general breathing, snoring, was her cue.  Before she could think about it too long, she took the nail, set it at Sisera's temple and hammered it through his head and into the ground beneath. 

Not long afterward, Barak came along.  Looking for his enemy.  "He's in here!" cried Jael.  Sure enough.  Sisera was dead.  Killed by a woman who was unafraid of the Hitler of her day.  She grasped the opportunity God gave her to stand up to the enemy, believing Sisera was in her tent because God brought him there.  It was the beginning of Israel's freedom from Jabin the king of Canaan. 

Excited by the conquest, Barak and Deborah actually wrote a song.  A long one.  It extols victories, but ends with an ode to Jael and her bravery:
Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk.  She brought him curds in a noble's bowl.
She sent her hand to the tent peg and her right hand to the workmen's mallet.
She struck Sisera.  She crushed his head.  She shattered and pierced his temple.
Between her feet he sank, he fell, he lay still.
Between her feet he sank, he fell.  Where he sank, there he fell -- dead.
Perhaps the song would've been sung about Barak since God called him first to the task of victory.  He gave his moment to another and missed the rush of knowing his God more intimately.

Gideon was a farmer with no experience of war.  He was gleaning wheat in a winepress when a mighty angel appeared and declared:  "The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor!"

His response?  If God is with us why are all these bad things happening?  Why doesn't God do the awesome deeds He used to do to get us out of these terrible times? 

"You go in this might of yours and save Israel?"  The angel challenged the whining of Gideon.

Wha...?  "Uh, you can't mean me! I got nothing.  Our family is the weakest of our clan and I'm the weakest of them!"

"Precisely.  And I will be with you when you go out to save Israel."

The angel of the Lord had to prove he'd be with Gideon, but the runt of the family of Joash the Abiezrite became the mighty warrior he was proclaimed by the angel to be.  He let God define him not by his own natural abilities but by God's purposes for him in the moment.  Gideon won battles not because he was strong, but because he was willing.

It still angers God when the enemy of our souls wants to pasture in lands that belong to Him.  How long will His children allow the overthrow of their lives?  Twenty years, as they did under the tyranny of Sisera?  God would say to us as Deborah said to Barak, "Get up!  It's you God wants to use!"  The mighty angel of the Lord would meet us in our dens, watching television or playing video games, and say:  "The Lord is with you, O mighty child of valor."  There's a work for us to do, daily.  We are called out to be vigilant over our souls, our lives, and our nation.  I don't want to be caught up in self-doubt, like Barak and Gideon, to such a degree that I miss out on the victory.  I doubt anyone will write a song about me.  Jael will be remembered forever.  She was the reason the name of Israel wasn't wiped out as Sisera wanted.  One woman doing the will of God.  Gideon believed what God said about him instead of what he knew of himself and toppled mighty kings.  But what if I'm only victorious in crushing the enemy who wants to rob from me, kill me and utterly destroy my life?  All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Christ...and He has given that to me.  I want to stand fully armed - helmet, breastplate, belt, shoes, shield and sword - and resist the destroyer of all that is mine in Christ.  Put a nail through his head when he even comes near my tent.

Remember, this is who God says you are:  A living stone being built into a vast spiritual house, part of the royal priesthood, a people of God's own possession, a chosen race, beloved and rejoiced over, a  people formed for Himself that we might declare His praise.  We are mighty warriors, princesses and princes, joint heirs with Christ and His precious bride.  Created for God's pleasure and given the Spirit of His dear Son.  So let's get up!!


 

Friday, April 5, 2013

PSALM 83 - The King and I

O God, do not keep silence.  Do not hold Your peace or be still, O God!  For behold, Your enemies make an uproar.  Those who hate You have raised their heads.  They lay crafty plans against Your people.  They consult against Your treasured ones.  (Verses 1-3)

Samuel, the prophet of God, was aging and his sons showed no promise as prophets to replace their father.  The Israelites were tired of the uncertainty of trusting in God day-to-day.  They wanted a king like other nations had.  Of course, they weren't like other nations.  The Lord God had been their king - the sovereign over their political and private lives.  Samuel was offended, not only for himself, but for his God.  When the prophet spoke to the Lord concerning the nation's request, God's response was:  "Obey the voice of the people in all they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me from being king over them.  According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you." I Samuel 8.

The God Who led His people out of bondage was always too hard to follow.  Too capricious.  Every day the people had to look to Him for everything.  A king would make things so much easier.  There would be this place to go to - this person to bow before - in real time.  Besides, they were tired of being the only nation without a sovereign.  It is clear why this hurt the heart of God.  He was not good enough.  So He chose a tall handsome man.  Samuel anointed Saul as king.  And there were kings for a while.  But it was never God's best.  And He was always king over the kings.  Israel paid a price for this desire, though.  The Lord told them the consequences of having an earthly ruler:  Your children will go to war, conscripted into the army.  You will be taken to plow his grounds and build his weapons.  Your daughters will work in his perfumeries and bakeries (virtual slaves).  The king will take the best of your fields from you and give them to his own servants.  He will take the best of everything you have and a tenth of all your crops.  You shall be his slaves.  "And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day."  (I Samuel 8)

I couldn't help but think of this scenario during Easter this year.  The plea in this psalm is for God to be a king.  To come against armies that come up against us, His treasured ones, for we are now His chosen people along with Israel.  Just as nations plot against Israel even today, hating them and wanting their demise as a nation, so we are prey for the enemy of our souls.  The Jews interpreted Scripture to believe Messiah would come as an earthly king.  Set up a kingdom and rule them.  The King of the Jews.

 "Are you the king of the Jews?" Pilate asked. 

"My kingdom is not of this world.  If My kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.  But My kingdom is not from the world," Jesus replied. 

Jesus was beaten almost beyond recognition as a man, made to carry His own cross to Golgotha, then brutally crucified beneath a sign that read:  The King of the Jews.  Seemingly powerless.  Dying in shame.  Bereft of all his friends except John.  Jesus couldn't be Messiah.  No king there.  And though the sky turned black in the middle of the day, the earth shook with the violence of man's rejection of their king once more, and the veil of the temple tore miraculously in two, the ones who should have recognized Him most, understood Him least.  But God could not be silent.  Nor still.  The body of Jesus lay in the tomb for one quiet day while all who followed the Rabbi mourned not only His physical death, but also the death of their dreams for His kingship.  Sitting to His right and left.  Wielding power, crushing Rome.  Desperation and disappointment for those who thought Jesus to be Messiah.  Justification and righteousness for those who knew He couldn't possibly be.  He was no king.

But God...never wanted an earthly king, you know.  Messiah's death became the death of that dream.  For God doesn't rule over mere men, but over everything.  The kingdom of earth is too small a thing for the one Who conceived it and created it to be the exclusive master of.  The triune God is sovereign.  Even over death.  For the tomb on Sunday morning was emptied of its contents.  Jesus got Himself up and went back to the Father to sit at His right side, ruling and reigning forever.  Fully in charge of future events.  The Lamb now King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  The title written on His thigh and on His robe.  Certainly the Lamb's kingdom was not of this world.  It would've played out like all earthly wars, with His band of zealots fighting a physical fight.  But Jesus knew, our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6)  This battle takes a different kind of king.  One Who sees past the illusions of power on this earth and understands the real enemy whose desire it is to rob, kill and destroy us (John 10).  Someone Who knows the beginning and the end of all things, not just the things with which I struggle right now. 

Little kings set up their realms and would lord over us, taking what is rightfully ours and using it for themselves.  Principalities and powers as well as rulers of this present darkness.  God has not sat silently by nor kept still.  He has set His foot on planet earth to show us what the kingdom of God is like.  It transcends mere pomp and circumstance, outlasts the human aging of a mortal.  The kingdom not of this world - as it is in heaven - is ruled and willed by the King of Kings.  Our God at last establishing on earth the kingdom about which He dreamed.  Telling those who belong to Him to die to the hopes of a puny earthly king in order to embrace the risen Lord of Lords.  All hail, King Jesus!