Psalm63

Pesach and Hag HaMazot

2011-04-18T08:23:00.000-07:00

PASSOVER AND THE FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD

Beginning this evening April 18, 2011, at sundown, Jews throughout the world will come together to celebrate one of their most important Feasts—Pesach, Passover. This Jewish observance is the oldest continuously observed feast in evidence today, celebrated for some 3,500 years.

The name "Pesach" (PAY-sahch, with a "ch" as in the Scottich "loch") comes from the Hebrew root Peh-Samech-Chet meaning to pass through, to pass over, to exempt or to spare. It refers to the fact that God "passed over" the houses of the Jews when he was slaying the firstborn of Egypt. In English, the holiday is known as Passover. "Pesach" is also the name of the sacrificial offering (a lamb) that was made in the Temple on this holiday. The holiday is also referred to as Chag he-Aviv (the Spring Festival), Chag ha-Matzoth (the Festival of Matzahs), and Z'man Cherutenu (the Time of Our Freedom) (again, all with those Scottish "ch"s).

Passover carries a powerful message for today. This holiday forms the primary background for understanding the events of the Upper Room, the symbolism of the Lord’s Table and the meaning of the Messiah’s death. Passover was instituted in Exodus 11, the time of the tenth plague sent by God to Egypt’s Pharaoh when the Hebrews were instructed to select a one year old, unblemished lamb on the tenth day of Nisan and kept until the fourteenth day of Nisan which would allow time for each family member to observe the lamb and confirm that it was fit for a sacrifice. It also allowed time for each family member to become personally attached to their lamb so that it was not just a lamb, but it was their lamb. An innocent one was to die in their place. At sunset on the fourteenth day of the month, all of the people would take their lamb outside the camp and sacrifice it. Then each family was to individually apply the blood of their lamb to the doorposts of their own homes as a visible sign of their faith in the Lord (Ex. 12:13). At that moment, the innocent lamb became their substitute making it possible for the Lord’s judgment to “pass over” them. And so the Lord instituted Passover as “a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt” (Ex. 12:42). The shed blood of the unblemished lamb was the only thing that would save the Hebrews from the horror of the tenth plague in which every male in every household in Egypt, including the cattle, would be killed. Those inside the homes covered by the blood would be spared.

The Hebrews were instructed to eat three specific foods on that night—the lamb roasted with fire (fire portraying the judgment that was coming), unleavened bread (matzo, “leaven” or yeast represents sin (puffing up), and bitter herbs, the reminder of the suffering of the lamb.

I am constrained by time and space to detail all of the elements of the Passover meal (Called a “Seder”) which is observed to this day, but a few brief notes are in order. The Lamb of the Passover was integral to the Hebrews, shedding its blood was a reminder of the covering, or the “Pesach” of that night when they were spared the judgment and death after an innocent, pure, unblemished lamb took their punishment and suffered in their place. This lamb could not have had any broken bones. The matzo is made without yeast or leaven because leaven represents the puffing up of self that pride creates and which eventually permeates the entire loaf. The matzo is pierced and cooked in a way that leaves stripes. Three matzos, called “Afikomen” are at the Seder table. They are placed into a three-pouched cloth and at a certain point in the Seder dinner, the middle matzo is removed, broken in half, with one half wrapped in linen cloth and hidden until the host sends children out to find the hidden matzo and bring it back to the table. Each member is instructed to eat a piece of the broken bread. Four cups of wine are used during the feast. The first cup is held up by each person while the host recites the Kiddush, (prayer of sanctification). It would be this prayer that Jesus prayed in Luke 22:7. The second cup is poured after a hand washing ceremony and after other parts of the Seder have been taken. During the drinking of this cup, the Passover story is told, and a small drink is taken for each plague of the Egyptians, representing the sorrow felt for them. Before this cup is taken, the first half of the Hallel Psalms are sung (Psalm 113-118). Hallel means “praise” and these Psalms are Messianic.

The third cup of wine is called the Cup of Redemption. It is poured and sipped. It was here that Messiah instituted the Lord’s table. Luke 22:20 shows that this third Cup of Redemption would be a reminder of Jesus’ work on the cross. After the third cup, a child is sent to the front door to hopefully welcome Elijah who will usher in the Messiah as prophesied by Malachi.

The fourth cup is called the Cup of Acceptance or Praise. It was this cup that Jesus said that He would not take until He was able to drink this cup with the disciples in the Kingdom (Matt. 26:29). Knowing that His acceptance by His people, the Jews, would not happen until then, His joy would not be full until then. I believe that He will drink this cup with His Bride at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

The service closes with a hymn, likely the Hallel from Psalm 118, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Jesus spoke these words to the Jews in Matt. 23:29 “for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the LORD!'"

I don’t want to be a legalist here, but what we call Easter is a date set by some who were determined not to set the date of the death of Jesus Christ on the day that He really died—there was an awful thing which we call “anti-Semitism” involved in this, sadly. In fact, the date of Easter was set in cooperation with other pagan celebrations which have nothing whatsoever to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We don’t know the exact date that Jesus Christ was born, but we can know with certainty the date of His crucifixion and resurrection because Jews for thousands of years have celebrated this date both in anticipation of His death and resurrection and for two thousand years since then. His death and resurrection fall on Passover. Passover falls on the Hebrew calendar of Nisan; Nisan 14 to be exact. I celebrate Pesach as the true time when Jesus told us to remember this event. He actually didn’t tell the disciples to remember his birthday, or the day when He began His ministry at 30 years of age. He only told them to remember this day.

When the Jews welcomed Y’Shua into the city as He rode on a donkey, they were singing the Hallel songs (Psalm 113-118) and shouting “Hosanna,” which means “Save Now.” These Psalms were meant for the coming of Messiah and the religious leaders demanded that Jesus make them stop—this was blasphemy—hailing Jesus as Messiah! It was the first time in His public ministry that Jesus allowed Himself to be worshipped as the coming King. They got the picture. He made the amazing statement that if he told them to stop praising Him at that moment (the Lamb who would be slain four days later—the Lamb who had now become their own personal Lamb four days before the Passover), the very stones would cry out. This was a monumentous moment in history. The Lamb mounted the donkey and entered the city of Jerusalem four days before Passover. He was crucified on the first day of Passover. He was the fulfillment of the “Unleavened Bread” on the second day of Passover. He was resurrected on the “First Fruits” of Passover, three days and three nights after the first day of Passover. The last supper was the celebration of the Pesach feast.

The Afikomen (the three Matzos, one which was broken and buried), part of Passover celebrated today was not instituted as part of the Passover until later by Rabbinic tradition. The lamb was the traditional meat, the “lamb that was slain” and shed its blood. However, since the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, the sacrificial system ended and the Afikomen came to represent the Lamb, and everyone must eat of it. The name “Afikomen” is not a Hebrew name and there has been much debate as to the origin of this name. It is the only Greek word in the Passover Seder, everything else is Hebrew. It is the second aorist form of the Greek verb ikneomai. The translation is stunning—it simply means—He Came.

Since the Afikomen was unleavened, pierced and striped and the middle matzo was broken, half put into a linen pouch, hidden (buried) and later found (resurrected), it echoes perfectly Isaiah 53, the most powerful passage of Scripture which describes the events of the suffering Messiah. The three loaves of unleavened bread represent the Father (first Matzo) the Son (middle Matzo) and the Holy Spirit (third Matzo). Unbelieving Jews today still celebrate this feast, not knowing that it has been fulfilled by Jesus the Messiah or that the beloved Afikomen means, “He came.”

But not for long! The veil is being removed from their eyes (Romans 11). Blindness “in part” is being removed even as I write and when the “fullness of the Gentiles” has come in, all Israel will be saved. My celebration of this beloved Feast Day includes fasting and prayer for this prophecy of Romans 11 to be fulfilled! Amen.

KATHY UNPLUGGED PART II

2011-04-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

My first day without TV was a bit panicky to be honest.

I wondered what I would do during those long evening hours without the sounds of the evening news in the background.

I needn't have wondered. My first day without TV was so filled with activity that time flew past and before I knew it, it was time for bed. Is it my imagination, or does TV actually cause time to go slower? It wasn't that I had more to do that day; it was that I got more done without having to sit down on occasion (or for an entire afternoon, I am ashamed to say), to watch news/weather/NCIS reruns. You know, just to take a little break?

I learned that once the TV goes on, my brain checks out.

I learned that once the TV goes on, I am too tired to read in the evening.

I learned that the real reason I don't read as often as I once did (on average of two books a week), is because my mind is too numb from TV.

As evidence of this--I finished two books that I had started awhile back and started on a third, which I am halfway through. In addition to several periodicals and magazine articles.

So, is it my imagination, or does TV cause the brain to check out?

I will continue my research and keep you posted.

Kathy Unplugged

2011-03-20T19:38:00.000-07:00

I did a wild and crazy thing today.

I unplugged my cable TV.

It feels like I stopped drinking cold turkey or stopped smoking cold turkey--honestly.

It's not that I watched all that much TV--mostly news and NCIS and old movies. But it is there and it is a comfort zone and a place to veg out and let my mind go blank. As a widow, I grew accustomed to just having it on--a noise in the background. I controlled it. Then one day, it was controlling me.

I have been talking to Jesus about my need to spend more time at His feet lately, lamenting that I once spent whole days and even nights in prayer and study. I told Him I wanted to return to that "Mary" ministry--sitting at His feet, breaking the alabaster box.

He, in His typical, "still small voice" fashion, seemed to be saying one word: TV. Turn off the TV.

I would promise that I would definitely do that tomorrow, and then a new Middle East crisis would occur, or the huge earthquake--sending me to nearly 24/7 viewing, as the cable channels love to hear--and after all, doesn't all of this tie in to prophecy fulfillment? So I had to keep abreast of the latest world events, didn't I?

Well, actually, no. I didn't. I could check the latest news on my computer, without getting pulled into an all day vigil.

So, this morning I actually pulled the little black box out, turned it around and unscrewed the cable.

It is now 8:35 PM and I have gone an entire day with no TV. There were some panicky moments when I didn't know what I should be doing, but overall, I feel very peaceful right now.

Stay tuned--this could get interesting.

INTO THE MIST: JOURNEY INTO DEMENTIA

2011-03-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

My book is here!

I told my writer friend Nikki that I felt a certain thing, something like post-partum depression--like giving birth and suddenly holding in your arms this baby and realizing that you know nothing at all about raising children.

I know nothing at all about being a published author. I never thought about being an author. I am not what one would consider a "writer." Not in the sense that writers think of themselves. Writers write--they can't not write. They love to write. Nikki can't not write--she writes on her blog nearly every day, if not every day.

I journal. I have always journaled because journaling puts the wild and crazy thoughts vying for attention in my mind, onto paper and as I put them onto paper, they seem to sort themselves out and I am able to see things clearly. Most importantly I am able to see Jesus in them, as he sorts them out. I asked Him to do this while John was sick; please Jesus, sort through this for me--it is way beyond me. He did. He does. Beth Moore humorously asks the question of her husband, pointing to her head, "Do you know what it is like to live in here!!!" That is how I feel sometimes. Believe me, you don't want to live in here.

So while John was sick I journaled everything because his dementia invaded my house, my soul, and turned everything into a maze of confusion. It invaded his soul; it took his soul into a netherland of long dark alleyways; places I could not go. I could only hide in Jesus during that journey, and found that He was enough--He was all I needed. You never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.

Now that season of my life is out there ("live" as the publisher calls it) and everyone will see that I am a mess, that I don't have it all together. They will see that even though I may speak to women's groups, teach Bible studies and do conferences in Honduras, I am still a mess. But my strong desire with this book is that I will fade into the background with all of my fear, panic and hysteria and people who read this book will see Jesus, standing calm, undisturbed, patient, as He carries this messed up little lamb in His strong and capable arms, and that indeed, somewhere in the midst of it all, His strength is being made perfect in my weakness.

DIVIDE THE PLUNDER!

2010-12-28T07:27:00.000-08:00

The Lord gives the word and a great army [host of women] brings the good news. Enemy kings and their armies flee, while the women of Israel divide the plunder (Psalm 68:11-12 NLT).

After recently writing of taking the plunder, I was encouraged this morning as once again, reading through the Psalms for the 100th time, I saw this verse and realized the confirmation was from Him. The great army in the Hebrew of this passage, is a “host of women.” And these women divide the plunder.

Amazing, this God we serve, and the more we know Him, the more we love serving Him. The more we long to know Him, the more He will reveal Himself to us.

It is not the serving that we long to do, it is the knowing Him. Sitting quietly in His presence before sunrise, opening His word, hearing Him speak ever so gently to us, comforting us, correcting us, instructing us, teaching us, discipling us; this can never be substituted with serving, going to Church, or even witnessing to others.

This morning, as I read this Psalm again in the New Living Translation, it was amazing to me that this phrase “great army” was translated as“host of women.” I looked it up in other translations and found that only the NASB translated it the same way. “The women who proclaim the [good] tidings are a great host.” All other translations I read translate it as a “company” or "army." Strongs identifies it as the gathering of an army, although the word “tsaba” for “company” is in the feminine.

I will go with the idea that the great army or company spoken of in this passage was indeed a host of women, or at the very least, included women, which of course, it does. And “she” divides the spoil, or plunder.

Regardless, God spoke to me this morning, and confirmed that He indeed is calling us to take plunder from the enemy attacks that are coming fast and furious against us.

I feel I have been in a war this past year, and at times I became so weary that others had to carry me off the battlefield. The war increased immediately after my last writing of taking the spoils, as though the enemy wanted to taunt me and remind me that this war was far from over, he had yet one more scheme up his sleeve.

Yet in the cacophony of the war noise, I heard Jesus. He reminded me that He is in my son and that “Christ in you, the hope of Glory” (Col. 1:27), is a living Word (Hebrews 4:12), a fact, not merely a promise for the future. It is for now, this moment. And Christ in my son is the hope of God’s glory. It is not hope based on wishful thinking; it is hope that knows truth—that where God dwells, there will be glory. God, not my son, will bring glory to Himself, even through this time of war over his mind, will and emotions (soul). God will glorify Himself in it.

This truth is the plunder. And I shall divide the plunder.

Taking the Spoils

2010-12-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

After a long, bitter year, filled with such inconsolable sorrow that I felt I may drown in my tears over the separation of my son and his wife, I found myself once again faced with the holidays and feeling the pain of so many losses. I cried out to Jesus that I felt I was not recovering from this loss as I had with the loss of John. Or, with the other losses I have experienced since 2000, beginning with my Dad's cancer and death, then two years later the death of my niece Jennifer, then two years later with Adam’s divorce and a few months after that the discovery of John’s dementia, and then four years after that, John’s death. With each of those losses, I seemed to grow into Jesus through it. With this loss only one and a half years after John's death, I was growing away from Him, my feelings were hurt; I just didn’t want to hurt anymore and I no longer cared about anything.

A few days ago, on December 10, 2010, I wrote the following:

“I have not taken the spoils from this trial. I have wasted this pain. I have not plundered the enemy. I haven’t written of it or learned from it, nor poured out of it into the lives of others hurting in the same way.”

I wrote this after re-reading from my book, and after writing of what the publisher had said to me when he read the manuscript: “Thank you for not wasting your pain.”

Beth Moore speaks of the children of Israel coming out from Egypt and the instruction from God to plunder the Egyptians; take all of the gold, silver and valuables of the Egyptians with them when they escaped. Taking plunder from the years of suffering the Egyptians had inflicted upon them was His way of giving them their reward for the suffering. It can be seen in every war in the Bible—plunder the enemy. God later asked the children of Israel to bring that same plunder and offer it for the building of the tabernacle. They were to give it all back to Him. And He used it in the construction of the most holy place in the tabernacle. (By contrast, they had also used some of this plunder to make a golden calf to worship before He built the tabernacle.)

When we suffer through some difficult and painful trial in our lives, God will take it all and sort the precious from the vile and we are to take this plunder—the precious things He taught us about Himself in the midst of the suffering—and bring it out with us when He delivers us from the bondage of our time in Egypt. Egypt is not simply a representation of our lives of sin; it is a representation of our lives in bondage to some difficult trial or time of suffering. When He brings us out of our Egypt and we bring out the plunder, He will then take those spoils of victory and use it to build into His tabernacle where He dwells. What is His tabernacle today? It is His body of believers—the building of the temple, made up of His living stones—us. If we keep the precious things to ourselves, we will miss out on the very purpose of our time of suffering—we will waste it. But, when we bring it to that place where He is building the most holy place in His tabernacle, and allow Him to take those painful experiences to build into the life of some bedraggled pilgrim who is suffering along the way, to offer them hope and comfort and encouragement, then the suffering will not be wasted; it will be poured like living water into another life for the glory of God.

Many of us prefer to hide our personal Egypt away and “handle it” without letting on that we are also poor and needy and desperate believers. We do this, I think, because we are taught to keep up that appearance that everything is good—after all, we are Christians and we are expected to live in victory, peace and rest. Or, we do it because we are too proud to let others see what a mess we really are; that we don’t really “have it all together.” Others invite everyone into the process, exposing the underside of the abundant life—the underside where the cost of the abundant life is exposed, where everything is not good, and doesn’t feel good. Hopefully as this pilgrim invites everyone along to witness their failings of faith, their struggles through the process, there will be some poor soul who has felt ashamed that their faith was not as great as those who never seem to suffer emotional pain, whose lives seem to never drown under waves of sorrow, or who never struggle with their faith along the way. Hopefully these struggling believers will be nourished by this underside view of a believer’s life and urged along into the top side of the abundant life—where the victory is obvious.

When I wrote that I had not taken the spoils of this trial and plundered the enemy, I wrote out of utter defeat because I wasn't recovering from it, but from that defeat, God seemed to be bringing me out into a place where He would begin the process of building the pain into the tabernacle. I felt the first glimmer of peace and hope that I have felt in a long while.

This morning, reading from Streams in the Desert, after hearing this truth from Jesus, I was amazed to see the affirmation from Jesus that He is up to something again in my life:

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loves us (Romans 8:37).

"… He wants us to be ‘more than conquerors,’ turning storm clouds into chariots of victory. It is obvious when an army becomes ‘more than conquerors,’ for it drives its enemies from the battlefield and confiscates their food and supplies. This is exactly what this Scripture passage means. There are spoils to be taken!

Dear believer, after experiencing the terrible valley of suffering, did you depart with the spoils? When you were struck with an injury and you thought you had lost everything, did you trust in God to the point that you came out richer than you were before? Being ‘more than [a] conqueror’ means taking the spoils from the enemy and appropriating them for yourself. What your enemy had planned to use for your defeat, you can confiscate for your own use."

I am beginning to understand why God uses illustrations from war and battlefields so often in the Bible. War is not a good thing—it is bloody, it leaves wounded lying in pools of blood, it ravages the landscape and ravages the landscape of lives. It is not pretty to look at; we cannot paint war in rosy pictures of positive thinking. The point is not to deny that a war is going on, but in the war, to see the end result. Someone has to win and someone has to lose the war. I don’t know where the paths of 2011will take me, but I know Who is taking me and because He is more than a conqueror, I will also be more than a conqueror in Him, even if I sometimes stumble and falter along the way.

“Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place” (2 Cor. 2:14).

Thanks to every soldier on the battlefield who, though wounded and bleeding themselves, came back to help me up.

Suffering!

2010-10-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

This can’t be right, we think. Either there is no God or God is mad at me. He can’t be with me or this wouldn’t be happening.

Timothy Keller writes eloquently of suffering. His gentle perspective helps me to make sense of the things my mind refuses to understand. Here is an excerpt from his sermon "Christian Hope and Suffering."

Suffering: The Servant of Our Joy

Timothy Keller

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.

2 Corinthians 4:16-17

We live in a unique culture. Every other society before ours has been more reconciled to the reality that life is full of sorrow. If you read the journals of people who lived before us, it is obvious they understood this, and that they were not surprised by suffering. We are the first culture to be surprised by suffering. When Paul writes to the people of his day, “We do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away,” he speaks of suffering as a given.

Greek scholars will tell you Paul was not just talking about the body as wasting away, but about life in this visible world. He was saying that everything in this world is wearing away. Everything is steadily, irreversibly falling apart.

Our bodies are wearing away. Our hearts are like wind-up clocks with a finite number of clicks that are clicking away. Our physical appearance and attractiveness are wearing away, and we can’t stop it. Our relationships are wearing away. Get a group of friends around you, and time and circumstance will eventually pull you apart. Our families are wearing away, dying off one at a time. Our skills are wearing away. You can’t stay on top of your game forever. Everything is like a wave on the sand. You can’t pin it down; it starts to recede from you.

Paul writes about “wasting away” to a group of people who have suggested that he can’t be trusted, that God is obviously not with him. One reason Paul can’t be trusted they suggest, is that he has experienced an inordinate number of tragedies and difficulties. And, in fact, Paul makes a list of them in 2 Corinthians 11:24-28.

The people in Corinth were saying, How can God be with a man when all that stuff happens to him? Surely when God’s with you he protects you. When God is with you, you prosper. I’ve been traveling the Mediterranean all my life and I’ve never been shipwrecked, and this guy has been shipwrecked three times?

It’s similar to the thinking of Job’s friends had about Job’s suffering. Job’s friends said If God is with you, this wouldn’t happen. God can’t be with you. If he was, he’d protect you.

And we ask ourselves the same thing, don’t we, when one thing after another goes wrong, when we’ve reached the bottom and find out there’s lower to go?

This can’t be right, we think. Either there is no God or God is mad at me. He can’t be with me or this wouldn’t be happening.

How does Paul respond to this premise? Paul doesn’t just say God is with him. He goes further. He says that the suffering and hardship he has experienced is not a denial of the gospel, but a confirmation of the gospel.

He writes, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (2 Cor. 4:8-12).

Paul is saying that the way of the gospel is death leading to resurrection, weakness resulting in triumphant exaltation. Paul is saying that the way the gospel works in Jesus’ life is the way it is working in his life. He’s saying that just as Jesus’ suffering and death led to greater life, he is finding that the same thing is happening in his life. “My deaths seem to lead to greater life,” he’s saying.

The suffering he experiences because he is trying to minister lead to greater life in other people’s lives, as they hear the gospel and experience spiritual life.

And this doesn’t just happen in the lives of people in professional ministry. I know a number of people—doctors and lawyers and the like, who, rather than stepping onto the ladder of professional and financial upward mobility, have decided to serve under-served people. They’ve given their lives to working with the poor in places off the beaten path. And when a person does that, they fall out of the structure of their profession. They kind of go off the radar, and find they can’t advance. But they also find that their career death produces greater life.

When we suffer for doing the right thing, when we choose to live unselfishly, we find that our “death” leads to greater life for those around us.

But is it not only people around us who experience greater life when we suffer. In Romans 5:3-5 Paul says, “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perservance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”

Now what is he saying there? He’s saying, “My suffering not only leads to greater life in those around me, but in me.”

It’s like what happens to an acorn. Do you know how much power there is in an acorn? An entire huge tree can come out of a small little acorn. And out of that tree can come innumerable other trees. One acorn has the power to fill a continent with wood.

But only if it dies. Only if it “falls to the ground and dies” (John 12:24) is that enormous power released.

Every human soul in the image of God has infinitely more life potential than an acorn. Every soul as the capacity for compassion, beauty, greatness, composure, and character—but it will not be released until there is a death, the death that comes through suffering and trials.

Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it cannot bear life. Suffering leads to life, but that seed has to fall to the ground.

What God said to Jesus and to Paul, and what he says to us is, “My power always comes to perfection through weakness. My power can only explode into your life through your weakness.”

Death in us will work life in us and in others around us. That’s our hope.

A God of Judgment Can't be a God of Love

2010-09-14T00:20:00.000-07:00

Reading a book called "The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism," by Timothy Keller. It is a mind-waker-upper (if there is such a phrase). An excerpt grabbed my tired mind as I was laying in bed reading and kept such hold on my thoughts that I had to get up and write it.

A God of Judgment Can't be a God of Love. "I always start my response by pointing out that all loving persons are sometimes filled with wrath, not just despite of but because of their love. If you love a person and you see someone ruining them—even they themselves—you get angry. As Becky Pippert puts it in her book Hope Has Its Reasons:

'Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it.…Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.…God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer …which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.'"

Under the subtitle "A Loving God Would Not Allow Hell," He writes:

"A common image of hell in the Bible is that of fire. Fire disintegrates. Even in this life we can see the kind of soul disintegration that self-centeredness creates. We know how selfishness and self-absorption leads to piercing bitterness, nauseating envy, paralyzing anxiety, paranoid thoughts, and the mental denials and distortions that accompany them. Now ask the question: 'What if when we die we don’t end, but spiritually our life extends into eternity?' Hell, then, is the trajectory of a soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever.…What is astonishing [referencing Luke 16:24-31, Lazarus and the rich man], is that though their statuses have been reversed, the rich man seems to be blind to what has happened. He still expects Lazarus to be his servant and treats him as his water boy. He does not ask to get out of hell, yet strongly implies that God never gave him and his family enough information about the afterlife. Commentators have noted the astonishing amount of denial, blame-shifting, and spiritual blindness in this soul in hell. They have also noted that the rich man, unlike Lazarus, is never given a personal name. He is only called a “Rich Man,” strongly hinting that since he had built his identity on his wealth rather than on God, once he lost his wealth he lost his sense of a self.

"In short, hell is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity. We see this process “writ small” in addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, and pornography. First, there is disintegration, because as time goes on you need more and more of the addictive substance to get an equal kick, which leads to less and less satisfaction. Second, there is the isolation, as increasingly you blame others and circumstances in order to justify your behavior. “No one understands! Everyone is against me!” is muttered in greater and greater self-pity and self-absorption. When we build our lives on anything but God, that thing—though a good thing—becomes an enslaving addiction, something we have to have to be happy. Personal disintegration happens on a broader scale. In eternity, this disintegration goes on forever. There is increasing isolation, denial, delusion, and self-absorption. When you lose all humility you are out of touch with reality. No one ever asks to leave hell. The very idea of heaven seems to them a sham."

SUMMER!

2010-08-22T20:12:00.000-07:00

August 22, 2010: Sitting on my deck

A humid, balmy, late afternoon with ever so slight a breeze to brush past damp skin and hair. Clouds pinkish underneath and the cicada drowning out the noise from the street below. In the distance the sounds of a street basketball game—thump, thump, boys voices shouting, thump, thump. Air conditioners on the houses below cycling on and off in a chorus of hums.

Summer! How I love summer.

LESSONS FROM SAILING

2010-07-03T08:27:00.000-07:00

Years ago I was fortunate to experience the wonder of sailing. My brother-in-law was a master sailor, having sailed in Americas Cup, Southern Ocean Circuit and English Channel regattas. He worked for a crusty boat builder in Rye, New York and from time to time we were to experience the privilege of taking out a sailing vessel for a test run. We sailed on everything from small blue jays to 47 foot yawls. I fondly remember one outing with a couple who had sailed over from Australia. True sailors these, and the accents—“Coming about mate” (also known as "tacking"), or “Man the helm mate,” certainly enhanced the romance of the experience.

I recall especially one weekend outing on a 47 foot yawl named Caroline, newly decked out in teak and holly, with new bright work in the galley. She was magnificent, all wood hull and streamlined. We met before sunset at the boatyard and I watched, always amazed, as my husband and brother-in-law worked almost as a choreographed dance, adjusting rigging, and the multitudes of details required before setting sail. As we motored out of the boatyard, into the open water, there was a magic moment when the motor shut down and the only sound was a buoy off in the distance gently clanging a melancholy melody. I moved to the bow of the boat, clear to the end and sat as the sun set and the motion of the sea rocked me back and forth. The solitude was breathtaking.

Suddenly, the crew of two set the sails and in a swift motion, the 60 foot high mast became alive with dancing white canvas and as the wind caught the canvas it cracked and lifted the vessel up and away like a kite barely touching water on the tops of the swells. There is nothing like it in all the world.

The following day my brother-in-law began instructing me in navigation. I wasn't a believer at that time, but the lessons seemed to have embedded themselves into my memory to be retrieved later, when I would very much need them. He stood behind me at the helm as I steered and talked seaman language which I did not understand—tacking, leeward, windward, etc., (most of which I can't remember), but when I asked him how to know, in that vast ocean, which direction to steer, he showed me a tiny light on the horizon—a distant light on shore—which he had found when setting the course of our trip, and he said that I must keep my eyes on that light, focusing only on that and steering only towards the light. He had set the course by compass, as it matched that light. He then left me alone as I attempted to steer the vessel. The light bobbed in the distance, barely visible and at times it seemed to disappear altogether. When the light disappeared, I looked at the compass and could see that even though I could not see the light, I could tell that we were still on course and then the light would reappear and I felt safe again.

Tacking involved swiftly changing the direction of the sails from one side of the craft to the other, throwing the boom across the boat to the other side and you ducked or you were thrown off the boat. And then, you must find the light again, because the wind has shifted, but you must stay the course.

Keeping eyes fixed on the light. When the light disappears, check the compass to make sure you are still on course. When the wind shifts, duck and stay the course.

Isaiah 26:3 tells us that "He will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is fixed on Him because he trusts in Him." Keeping your eyes on the light equals perfect peace. Keeping your eyes fixed on the water, or the boat, or anything else means you lose your peace.

When the light seems to have gone behind a swell, check the compass—the Word of God—to regain your bearings and to remind you that you are on course even during the storm—even when it feels like your whole life just turned upside down.

When the wind shifts, hunker down because things are going to shift and everything will seem confused for a time. But the light never moves and the compass is always accurate. Those things are absolute. Even in a squall which rises suddenly from seemingly nowhere, tossing you to and fro, those things are absolute.

I loved sailing. It seemed to put everything into perspective.

Shekinah

2010-06-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Shekinah (Shawkanaw) Hebrew root “Shakan” = to reside or permanently stay; abide, continue; dwell; have habitation, inhabit, lay, place, (cause to) remain, rest, set (up).

In a recent article in Zion’s Fire, by Kevin Howard, I was riveted as I read about the Shekinah glory as it is described in Scripture. I have read similar things before, but this time a fresh revelation of it seemed to penetrate my Spirit (dividing between the “soul” and the “spirit” as described in Hebrews 4:12).

I believe for many of us who are followers of Jesus, this longing for Heaven is being felt more keenly in the midst of a world turning rapidly toward evil. It may be my age. With much of my life behind me, this thing called “eternity” which is engraved upon my heart, is becoming more pronounced. But I hear this same longing in those much younger than I. I believe we are nearing that time and as Hebrews 10:25 tells us, we must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together to encourage and edify one another “especially as the day draws near.” That last line is not just tagged on—it carries great weight. We need each other. Please hear this: We Need Each Other! We are fellow sojourners in a foreign land and we are coming to a time when we will find comfort and support in our fellow sojourners.

This passage of scripture, using the original Greek meanings of the words may read more like:

“Let us not leave behind in some place, desert or forsake the complete collection of the body of Christ—meeting for worship and gathering together for the purpose of calling near, inviting, invoking, beseeching, comforting, intreating and praying for each other, and more and more as the period of the age of judgment is approaching.”

As this picture of bedraggled saints clinging to one another as darkness approached, was painted vividly before my eyes, I was drawn deeper into a place of holy awe as the image of the Shekinah began to sketch itself out onto a canvas before me. Artists begin a canvas with a rough sketch and then paint in areas in patches of color, leaving the details for last. On this canvas, the sketches that God painted through the writings of Old Testament prophets and poets and through the little "pictures" of Himself through events and people, were but line drawings of what was to come. Perhaps it is time we gaze at the painting again to see what fresh insights He has for us “as the day draws near.”

King David passionately exclaimed , “Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house and the place where thine honour (His glory) dwelleth” (Ps. 26:8). He was referring to the holy Temple, the place of God’s glory. The Temple stands alone. God’s glory sanctified the Temple, made it holy, and set it apart from all other buildings in history.

The meaning in Hebrew of the word “glory” is Kavod. It is related to the Hebrew word which means “Heavy.” The word is used hundreds of times in Scripture. His glory is His weight. It is everything about Him which impresses His creatures, and gives Him influence and honor with them. The Bible commands us to glorify or give glory to God. The psalmist equated this to worship, “Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Ps. 29:2). When used as a verb, glorify means "to assign weight to something. To give honor, respect or praise or to recount what impresses a person." Glorifying God is the very heart of worship. It is telling God what is weighty and impressive about Him and why He is so worthy of devotion and praise. “The word ‘worship’ has lost its clarity, but the word from the Old English was ‘worthship.’ Some would define worship in man-centered terms; whether they sensed God speak, felt a heightened sense of emotion, or utilized a certain music style or posture. But Biblical worship by definition always focuses on God’s worthiness. This is Biblical worship. The Westminister Confession of Faith states: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Man was created to glorify God.”

Throughout the Scriptures, God manifested His glory in the form of fire, described as a glory-fire column of both fire and smoke. As fire, it radiated light. As a dense cloud of smoke, it was dark and billowed with movement. God was in both." Thus, in times when I have experienced the radiant light of Jesus, felt His presence and heard from Him, I have been in that column of light; glory-fire. However, and more importantly, when I have experienced a time of dark billowing smoke, not hearing from Him, not feeling His presence, and feeling He was not hearing me, I was still in the presence of the glory fire, the column of smoke—it just looked and felt different, but the light and the dark are the same to Him. (If you don’t believe me, check out Ps. 18:11 “He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies”; Ps 88:6 “Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps”; Ps 88:18 “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness”; Ps 97:2 “Clouds and darkness are round about him: righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne”; Ps 139:12 “Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.”).

Darkness and light are both alike to Him. He is in both. God is in this. He is in the good times, the times of blessing and refreshing; and He is in the times of shadow and storm.

“The glory of the Lord blazed with fire. Its fire was enfolding, drawing tightly back into itself instead of fanning out. This swirling, fiery cloud flashed with interior bursts of lightning. It was surrounded by a brilliant halo of light which lit up the sky.” Ezekiel saw God’s glory approaching and saw more of its terrifying detail with winged beings, “lightning and fire flashing between them above a bed of red-hot coals and the light source at the cloud’s core—the Lord, in the form of both man and fire, sitting on a stunning sapphire-blue throne, brilliant light emanating from Him and a bright rainbow encircling His throne.” Ezekiel fell to the ground at the sight. “Shakah”, the true meaning of worship—“fall face down.”

"The glory-fire was a living person. It was more than elemental fire or smoke. The glory-fire was divine in nature. The glory-fire was a separate person of the Godhead. The glory-fire was the visible sign of God’s presence.

“The meaning of the glory-fire was so evident that post-biblical rabbis simply called it the Shekinah (dwelling) glory. That is, the Shekinah glory indicated the dwelling of God’s presence in their midst. Shekinah is derived from the root verb “shakan” (to dwell, abide, rest upon) and is related to the Hebrew word for Tabernacle (mishkan), dwelling place. Literally, the Dwelling Glory (Shekinah) dwelt (shakan) in the Dwelling Place (mishkan) or Tabernacle. The Shekinah always signified the dwelling of God’s presence. The Targum Onkelos, an ancient Aramaic translation of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, substituted the word Shekinah everywhere the term ‘my name’ occurred in Scripture.

“In Numbers 6, God gave Aaron and his sons a benediction by which they were to bless Israel. In this blessing, He alluded to His Shekinah glory: ‘The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord cause His face to shine upon you’ (Numbers 6:24-25). This shining of God’s face is seen elsewhere in Scripture as well. 'Presence' and 'Face' are the same word in the Hebrew (panim). To be in one’s presence is to be before his face. The Shekinah glory was God’s face upon Israel.”

The Shekinah was manifested at the birth of Messiah in the announcement to the Shepherds and the star of the wisemen. The star was the Shekinah, not some alignment of planets—it moved and led them as they traveled. The Shekinah was seen in the transfiguration as Jesus changed in appearance so that He radiated as the sun. God spoke from a bright cloud (the Shekinah) at the same time. The meaning of this was not lost on the Gospel writers; John wrote “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt (tabernacled) among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). After His resurrection, as He overlooked the Temple from the Mount of Olives, a “cloud received Him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9). The cloud was the Shekinah.

Ten days after Jesus ascended in the Shekinah, after He had instructed the disciples to go back to Jerusalem and “wait,” the Shekinah fell upon them in tongues of fire. It not only fell on them, it entered into them. The New Covenant, promised—sketched out upon the canvas as a rough sketch to Ezekiel and Jeremiah and others--that one day through the indwelling of His Spirit, God would put His law “in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” so that a future generation would be indwelt and empowered for righteousness by the Spirit of the Living God dwelling within them. The Shekinah—the Glory Fire—the Tabernacle—would now be in us.

Does this not bring to life Colossians 1:26-27 “… the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in [in=fixed position in place, time or state] you, the hope of glory.”

The Shekinah is in me. He is in me in a fixed position in place, time and state and I am in Him in the very same way. There is no separation between us. Romans 8:38-39 are true—there is nothing that can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus—not even I myself can separate Him from me or me from Him.

The painting was near completion, all the drawings, sketches and color samplings ended up to be the Shekinah hanging on a cross—but the real completion—the unveiling of the finished product—was the Shekinah bursting out in that light energy from the depths of hell and then descending upon a bedraggled group of frightened believers who had no idea what was to become of them, but who obediently sat waiting as their Messiah had instructed. The Shekinah fell onto them and entered into them, coming in waves and waves of radiant flashing, fiery light to a “fixed position in place, time and state.”

What is our response to such things? Christ, the Shekinah of Old Testament mystery, dwelling in me! I fall face down in worship. I give up my right to have things my way in this temporal place on this fallen planet. I volunteer to walk in the Heavenly places in Christ Jesus agreeing with His will for my life and my plans and my future (even the areas of ministry and service I thought He had called me into). I agree to “abide in Him and He in me” (John 15:4). That is all, really: To worship who he really is; to agree with Him and surrender; and to abide in Him.

Really! That is the Life. He is the Life. His Life is in me. His “glory-fire” is in me. His glory-fire will shine out and emanate from within me.

Imagine that, meditate on it and most of all—believe it! And then remember Hebrews 10:25 and realize the connection between this little bedraggled band of Christians huddled together as the world grows dark and the original little band of Christians huddled together in that upper room waiting for something they knew not and remember, that the same Shekinah glory that entered into them is now in us. Jesus had “breathed” on them and given them the Holy Spirit before He ascended into Heaven. They had the Holy Spirit. Now they were going to be transformed from the inside out by the indwelling Shekinah, the glory-fire of the Holy Spirit. Our instructions are the same:

Ro 8:25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

Ga 5:5 For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.

Joh 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.

Jas 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

Wait.

"IN THE LAST DAYS PEOPLE WILL . . "

2010-05-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

IN THE LAST DAYS PEOPLE WILL …

Beth Moore does it again. Using one of my favorite verses, 2 Cor. 10:5, she emphasizes that we have divine power (are “mighty through God” according to the NKJV), to demolish strongholds. The weapons we are fighting with are not carnal, or natural, they are supernatural. Why do we need supernatural weapons? Because we fight a supernatural, other-worldly, evil, enemy. Our weapons are divinely powerful for this fight. We are Mighty Through God to tear down the strongholds of the enemy.

Again, in 2 Tim. 3:1-5, Beth cuts through the “prophecy-info fatigue” (my description), of the subject of the last days and presents 2 Tim. 3 in an entirely new light. “In the last days, people will …” “Other prophecies refer to natural disasters in the last days. This verse refers to people.” This verse defines the times as ‘terrible’ and will be a social phenomena rather than natural or environmental. We will fear people more than the natural disasters because of the condition of the people during this time.

“Seventeen characteristics fall between two profoundly purposeful bookends. ‘People will be lovers of themselves…rather than lovers of God.’ Bookends. Lovers of self means ‘friends of self;’ lovers of God means ‘friends of God.’

“It is the great war between the great I AM and the little ‘i am.’”

Have you noticed the frequency of the “i” in almost every item on the market? i-pod, i-pad, i-phone, i-touch, etc. etc. The little “i am” is everywhere it seems. What I wrote in yesterday’s blog about the real battle—between my glory and God’s glory—is evident in these verses.

Beth dissects the words found in 2 Tim. 3:1-5:

“Abusive—a word in Greek that especially emphasizes speech.” The growing phenomena of abusive speech. I know for a fact that abusive speech is a product of the baby-boomer generation because my Dad was constantly dismayed at the movies from the 60s on because they portrayed the military of the WWII years as using foul language, such as had become the norm in the 60s. He said they didn’t talk like that when he was in the war. Imagine, going through the horrors of WWII and not hearing that kind of abusive speech, at least not having every sentence peppered with the “f-bomb”. Yet today, it is a second language, you can’t escape it. You hear it wherever you go and it has become an acceptable norm. But it wasn’t always so. This phenemona began in the cultural revolution of the 1960s. I can attest to it; I was there.

“Without Love (Greek astorgoi)—hard-hearted toward kindred.” This phrase is referring to a specific type of love—that of love toward family; family love. This, according to the passage is something that will intensify as the return of Christ draws close. The abortion tragedy shows itself in this second generation since the Roe v Wade ruling. Children are subconsciously conditioned now to believe that their lives were worth very little if their parent could have opted to kill them before they were born. Life has lost its value because of the abortion tragedy. People feel less valued, so they value others less. This passage of scripture defines a lack of even the normal compassion linking families together.

“Unforgiving—irreconcilable … without treaty. To the degree that we are selfish and self-centered we will be unforgiving. The bigger we are to ourselves, the more unforgiving we will be.” I believe that if I could name one core stronghold that holds more Christians in bondage than any other thing it would be unforgiveness. In discipleship of Christian women, it is almost always necessary to work through the process of Godly forgiveness before any other issues can be dealt with and healed. Unforgiveness not only holds the unforgiving person in terrible bondage, it holds the unforgiven person in bondage. Until the ties that connect them are severed, both suffer in the “above-the-line” and in the “temporal” realm.

“Slanderous—diabolos—accusatory (see also Titus 2:3). When we slander people, we are doing the devil’s work”, for he is the accuser of the brethren. When we accuse and criticize others, we are co-workers with Satan himself. The same word is used in Titus 2:3 when referring to the older women teaching the younger women. They are not to be slanderous, which could also translate “she-devil.”

“Brutal—untamed. Translated from the Greek which implies animal life. Base, natural instincts, loveless sex, lack of manners, rude.

“Treacherous—traitors, ready to betray their friends. Selfish people are betrayers of friendships.” When they have got what they need from a friendship and their needs are no longer being met by you, they will leave you behind without any regret. Combine this with being “hard-hearted toward kindred” and you have the recipe for most of the break-ups of marriages. Add in “without treaty” and you can see why it has become so easy for the “treaty” or “covenant” of marriage vows to be so easily broken in today’s culture. It wasn’t always so. This is a “last days” phenomena, which also began in our culture during the 60s revolution.

“Conceited—swollen with self-importance” Beth paints this in descriptive language “A Big, Bloated ME.” When we are driven by “ME,” we are bloated, swollen.

“Interestingly, 11 out of 18 vices begin with something in Greek called an ‘alpha-privation,’ an ‘a’ at the beginning of a word corresponding with our English ‘un’” It is the “un” of everything we were designed by God to do and be. Unloving, unforgiving, un-humane, un-loyal, etc.

People will argue that these things have always been around, that nothing which we see happening today is any different than any other time period in history. Yet, speaking as one who was growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s, I can say with absolute certainty, that the world I live in today is not the same as the world I lived in then. I seemed to have been aware, even at the time when I was 17 years old in 1967, that something terribly wrong was happening. There was a sense for many of us that a cultural shift had taken place. All of the norms and more`s were changing before our eyes. I recall how slowly and progressively, young people who had never used the “F” word, were trying it out, embarrassed and awkward at first, but gradually it became a part of their vocabulary.

So, it seems that, as I have always believed, since the 1960s and specifically since the 1967 six-day war for Jerusalem (since Israel is God’s time-clock for prophetic happenings), the last of the “last days” may be upon us and if this is true, then this generation, this peculiar description of culture gone wrong listed in the 2 Tim. 3:1-5 passage, is evidence of this.

But, we are “Mighty through God” Write that on the tablet of your heart—it is the truth that will get you through these times.

That I May Know You

2010-05-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

"You are my witnesses," declares the LORD, "and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me” (Is. 43:10).

“The best grapes are those which have been held in a delicate balance between life and death. Stress produces the best wine.” (Wells)

“The true test of faith is not how much we believed for and received from God, but by how long we have waited while receiving nothing.” (Wells)

Beth Moore lists five benefits of our covenant relationship with God based on the book of Isaiah: 1) To know God and believe Him; 2) To glorify God; 3) To find satisfaction in God; 4) To experience God’s peace; 5) To enjoy God’s presence.

“Any benefit missing in our individual lives for any length of time is an indicator of a stronghold, an area of defeat.” (Moore)

“The first benefit of our covenant relationship with God is to know God and believe Him. Isaiah states the primary purpose of a witness: ‘Let them bring in their witnesses to prove they were right, so that others may hear and say, ‘"It is true."’

“We are never more beautiful portrayals of mortals who know and believe God than when others can look at our lives, hear our testimonies, and say ‘It is true.’” (Moore)

Beth asks in the workbook that we list someone who helped authenticate some part of God’s Word as a witness to us. I thought long and hard and was surprised to realize that those who have helped authenticate some part of God’s word as a witness to me were those who had suffered yet still believed God. There is a quality about this that haunts my mind, the radiant faces of those who have suffered loss, sometimes loss after loss, yet because they “knew their God” they believed Him and waited patiently for Him. They allowed the cruel irons to become a part of them and the pain became their healing; the pain burned off the dross of the self-life. (Speaking of Joseph, the psalmist writes, "His feet they hurt with fetters; he was laid in iron" (KJV). The Greek translation of this verse renders a different view of this Scripture: "Joseph’s soul entered into iron—entered, whole and entire in its resolve to obey God, into the cruel torture.") Those who have embraced having their souls enter into the iron, radiate the face of Jesus in their countenance. They know Him. They don’t love Him because of what He may do for them. They love Him because they know Him.

“. . . that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. . .” (Phil. 3:10 NKJV).

I emphasize “that I may know Him” and “the fellowship of His sufferings” in this verse because most of us desire with all of our heart, mind and strength to know the “power of His resurrection.” We desire to see Him operate in powerful and miraculous ways—we want to prove to the world how powerful our God is and we mistakenly believe this is accomplished by demonstrations of the power of His resurrection; “Look! Look what God has done. He paid my bills. He got me this amazing job. He healed my child. He helped me to become a success in my business!”

Yet, it is really the two bookends of this verse that have all the power for life. Bookend number one, chief and foremost “that I may know Him.”

When I came back to Him after wandering away for eight years, bitter over a failed marriage and lots of unanswered prayers, that was my only request of Him. "I have to Know You! I don’t want to know about other’s experiences of You. I don’t want to hear another sermon about You. I don’t want to read another book about You. I have to know YOU.”

He sat me down, handed me only the Bible and said to me, “You will find me here.”

And I began to read. I sat for three years, only reading His word. I read it through new eyes, not eyes desiring to find arguments for my case or to back up my theology and doctrines or even to find comfort and guidance. I read it with His eyes. I saw Him. I saw Him giving and giving and giving to His chosen people; loving them and pleading with them to see Him, to believe Him, to remember the things He had done for them in the past, to love Him back! Yet they only could look at their present circumstances and murmur and complain that He wasn’t doing anything for them now.

Still, He loved them.

I saw myself maybe for the first time as I read. I saw that I was one of them. I was a murmurer and complainer. And then I saw the most marvelous and amazing truth—a truth that transformed me. I saw that He still loved me. He loved me not because of my goodness, but because He is love and I am not. I saw my true self and at the ripe age of 40 years old, I repented in dust and ashes for the first time in my life because of His love, not because of His discipline. “…the goodness of God leads you to repentance” (Rom. 2:4b) I cried out to Him “Oh God, I don’t love You. I have wanted You to love me, but I have never loved You. My heart is small and hard—I am asking one thing of You now—enlarge this heart of mine to become a heart of love for You and only You.”

And, I fell in love with Him. Isaiah 26:9 and Ps. 63: 1-7 became my life verses and remain so to this day as day by day I ran into His great arms and told Him everything as soon as I got up in the morning. He began to read the Word to me, so that I would see what He really wanted me to see and understand; reading it became the joy of my life. Isaiah 26: 9 and Ps. 63:1-7 became my prayer to Him. All other prayers, supplications and petitions fell under this one single request “That I may know You!”

If we are honest with Him, our prayers will sound something like this: “Lord, please fix my circumstances. Lord, use me powerfully. Direct me in obvious ways today. Make me successful Lord, so that I can glorify You.”

Listen carefully to Jesus in these verses, meditate on them. Ask Him to conform you into this, no matter the cost, make this your one desire and only prayer in life.

“With my soul I have desired You in the night, Yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early” (Isaiah 26:9)

“O GOD, You are my God; early will I seek You; my inner self thirsts for You, my flesh longs and is faint for You, in a dry and weary land where no water is; so I have looked upon You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory. Because Your loving-kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You. So will I bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your Name. My whole being shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatnesss; and my mouth shall praise You with joyful lips, when I remember You upon my bed, and meditate on You in the night watches. For You have been my help, and in the shadow of Your wings will I rejoice. My whole being follows hard after You and clings closely to You; Your right hand upholds me” (Ps. 63:1-8 AMP).

Living Above the Line

2010-05-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

Most of us who call ourselves Christian have been conditioned to believe that once we are saved, then we will begin what they call the “sanctification” process. Sanctification is biblical. Our belief system however, of the meaning and the process of sanctification is mostly Christian tradition passed down from one generation to the next. We have been taught from a belief system of “working for” the approval of Jesus. I would like to suggest that we move into a new belief system, that of “working from” His approval. We are already approved by Him. Ephesians 1: 6 tells us that we are already accepted in the Beloved, based on His finished work on Calvary. It is an amazing chapter, but we tend to think that it is for some future period of time, after we have been sufficiently sanctified.

If we have been accepted in the Beloved Now—already accepted, already approved— why do we think we now must work to sanctify ourselves to gain His approval. What this really translates into is that we are working to gain the approval of the people at Church. Why would we work “for” Him when it was His design for us to work “from” Him.

The Gospel according to Jesus Christ is that He chose us from the foundation of the world, He has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 1 is a love story written on His heart and handed to us free of charge! Why don’t we believe it?

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Cor. 4:18, 19).

“That verse contains two truths. One truth talks about things that are seen and temporal, or temporary. The other truth talks about things that are unseen and eternal. Above the line is the unseen and eternal; below the line is the seen and temporary. The unseen and eternal is going on in the midst of the seen and temporal. As believers, we have the privilege of living an unseen and eternal life in the midst of this seen and temporal world. The realm above the line is invisible and eternal. It is changeless and timeless. The realm below the line is visible and temporary. We call it the natural realm. Whereas the unseen and eternal is the realm of 'I AM,' the seen and temporal is the realm of 'I am becoming.' (Stone, pp. 28, 29.)

In the process of walking through the valley of the shadow of death for four years, I learned something priceless. I learned that I can live in the “above the line” realm in the midst of unbelievable emotional pain. I learned the value of suffering and the work that suffering produces in a life surrendered to I AM. I learned that I can rest while He works “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

This is truth. It is for His good pleasure. He works in me to will and to do. This is freedom. This is the abundant life that He promised. And it is available to us all.

Get a Life!

2010-05-24T16:52:00.000-07:00

The number one thing on God’s order is not the battle between good and evil; it is my glory fighting against His glory. The purpose of life is: To lose my kingdom, my glory, my image, my strength, my righteousness. God will allow us to be offended until the thing that can be offended is offended to death.

I not Christ = Unbeliever

I and Christ = New Believer

Christ and I = Miserable Believer

Christ not I = Free Believer

God has recently been “stirring me up by way of reminder” (2 Peter 3:1). The teaching, discipling and training He poured into me during the tenure of John’s illness needed to be refreshed. It was the education that He used to save my mind from going into emotional overload—those times when I looked down into that black abyss and wondered if I would ever recover. He gathered up my thoughts and emotions and put them back in order. He saved me. This was not salvation from eternal separation, it was salvation from the hell of my daily life.

And now, He is instructing me to collect my writings and the writings of those whose wisdom was "from above" once more and refresh my soul for the trials of today. I will attempt to compile some of these gems of wisdom to write on these pages, although the words will only have meaning for the sojourner whose life is desperately clutching for truth in a world gone awry. It won’t have meaning for those who are in control or who have it together. I was one of those at the beginning of this journey. Now I can say with the apostle Paul, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:9, 10). Where in the world would you find such advice—rejoice in your weakness! It is foolish to the world, but for me it is powerful. Being weak—I can do that part!

Where is the life Jesus promised? Why is it such a struggle to maintain the Christian life? Why are so many believers still in such bondage? “Having your sins forgiven doesn’t tell you one thing about how to life the life. Most of us go from believing that salvation is a free gift from God and rejoicing in that, and then we move into thinking that we have to work to sanctify ourselves. We begin going to the “how-to” classes, reading the “how-to” books, all in an attempt to become sanctified. This becomes works-based religion. . . .You can’t live the Christian life. Christ is in you and he will live the life—not ‘He will help me live the life’, but he will live the life. That’s good news. I can let Him live the life. I can do that.” (The Rest of the Gospel, Dan Stone, p. 18, 23).

(To be continued)

Free At Last?

2010-05-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

This morning in my Beth Moore "Breaking Free" lessons, she addressed one of the subjects I have long been studying myself. Beth has a way of breaking down each piece of a deep passage of Scripture and making it real and applicable in my life, so I am using much of her own work and words here.

Begininning with the passage from Isaiah 26:3(NIV) “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.” (Although I prefer the NKJV which says “whose mind is stayed on you.” My mind cannot be “steadfast” unless it is fixed on Him.) The word “keep” is the Hebrew “nasar” which means “to guard, protect, keep.” The word Perfect peace” is from “Shalom” which means “to be kept safe, complete, well, peaceful, whole, secure, friendly, healthy, sound.” It denotes a satisfied condition, a state of peacefulness, a sense of well-being.”

“Mind” is from the Hebrew “yetser” which means “to frame, pattern, image, conception, imagination, thought, device, plans and purposes.” It is to “frame” the mind around something. Frame means literally a picture frame. Our minds work to frame every circumstance, temptation and experience we have. Two people can look at the same experience so differently, putting the event in different “frames” and acting accordingly. Our reaction to people depends on how we “frame” the event.

“Steadfast” is from the Hebrew “samak” which means “to sustain, to be braced, to lean upon, to lay one’s hand upon. “

“Trusts” is from the Hebrew “batach” which means “to attach oneself to, to confide in, feel safe, be confident, secure.”

Based on these expanded definitions, I read Isaiah 26:3 as follows:
“He (God) will guard, protect, keep me safe, complete, well, peaceful, whole, secure, friendly, healthy, and sound, with a sense of satisfaction and well-being, when I frame my images, imaginations, thoughts, desires and purposes, around Him, when I brace myself upon Him, lean only upon Him, lay my hand upon His truth, because I attach myself to Him, confide in Him, feel safe with Him, am confident and secure in Him.”

Beautiful.

The next passage of scripture Beth connects to this one is from 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NIV, “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Anyone who has been in my Bible studies for any length of time will recall how often I refer to this passage. It is pregnant with meaning and I like the way Beth breaks it down.

“Demolish” is from the Greek, “Kathairesis” which means “demolition, destruction of a fortress--any strong points or arguments in which one trusts.” It is a “divine power.” When did you last try to break a stronghold in your own strength and end up feeling powerless and totally defeated? Human effort is useless in demolishing strongholds. No amount of discipline or determination will do it. Satanic strongholds require divine demolition.

I noticed when I was in Ireland and also in Israel that there are ancient castles and fortresses still standing, partially destroyed. Some of these go back as far as 2000 or more years. Men with all manner of weapons have attempted over the centuries to destroy these fortresses, but have succeeded in only a partial destruction. They stand as broken sentinels, a reminder to me of the ruins in my own life, erected by my own self, which I have attempted to demolish, but have only succeeded in partially destroying, leaving a broken ruin, not useful for protecting me or even to hide within.

Only God can divinely destroy these fortresses; only He can completely tear them down. A “stronghold” is a place of hiding in times of insecurity. What part does insecurity play in my strongholds? Beth asks this question. My answer is “Insecurity is the stronghold!”

From the passage, the word “arguments” is from the Greek “logismos” which means “a reckoning, a calculation, consideration, reflection, which determines conduct.

These “arguments” are our rationalizations for the strongholds we continue to possess in our lives. We maintain excuses for not surrendering areas of our lives to the authority of Christ. Satan persists where a stronghold exists. He supplies us with an endless list of rationalizations for the things we do and refuse to do.

“Pretensions” is from the Greek “hupsoma”, something made high, elevated, a high place, figuratively of a proud adversary, a lofty tower or fortress built up proudly by the enemy—Pride.”

From this, Beth concludes: 1) every stronghold is related to something we have exalted to a higher position than God in our lives; 2) Every stronghold pretends to bring something we feel we must have—aid, comfort, the relief of stress, or protection; and, 3) Every stronghold in the life of a believer is a tremendous source of pride for the enemy. Satan takes pride in the strongholds he has helped us erect, and in which we find security. He will stir pride is us to keep the stronghold from being broken.

Humility is a necessary part of the mind-set for someone ready to be free. The proud are never free.

“Sets itself up against” is from the Greek “espairo”, “to hoist up a sail, to lift up the eyes, meaning to look upon.”

Satan’s goal is to be worshipped; that is what he has always wanted. If Satan can’t get us to worship him directly, he will tempt us to worship something or someone other than God. We worship whatever we fix our mind upon—even someone who has hurt or disappointed us. Even worry is worship, if we are focused on the worry rather than upon God.

God created us to worship. We all worship something—the “epairo”—gaze, of our eyes determines the focus of our worship. Whatever we worship we will also obey. “Arguments” and “sails” serve to propel and determine the direction of the vessel. Strongholds are the cords by which Satan attempts to lead us.

From Hosea 11:4, we see the difference between Satan’s cords and God’s cords: “I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (NIV).

“Against the knowledge of God” implies knowing the truth about who God is. How do we know who God is? We have His truth in Scripture. Anything that leads us to believe anything about God other than what is the revealed truth about His character in Scripture is setting itself up against the “knowledge of God.” Knowing and choosing to believe truth is the key to liberty. When I am believing that God is not who He claims to be, because my life is not going as I think it should, it must be my decision to choose to believe truth over the lie; only this will ultimately set me free.

“Take captive every thought” is from the Greek “aichmalotize” a “prisoner, captive, to lead captive, to subdue, to bring into subjection.” This implies a continuous action. We’re after a quick fix, God is after lasting change and freedom. This is a lifetime process.

“Make it obedient to Christ”—God wants us to be victors. We don’t become victors by conquering the enemy. We become victors through surrender to Christ.

THE COLD WINTER OF 2010

2010-04-23T21:44:00.000-07:00

After a long and complicated winter, longer than normal it seemed and colder, much colder, I am, like the tentative green leaves on my Aspen trees, peeking my head above the chill of winter and daring to expose my fragile soul to the outside world again. Does this sound morose? I don’t mean it to be.

I am in the second year since John’s death. The first year, in a sort of fog, I felt wrapped in the warm arms of love and support from friends, family and most certainly from Jesus. I felt protected and cared for in ways I cannot even describe and I thank Him most of all for the care that He provided, and still provides. The second Christmas, as I have previously written, it felt as though the fog lifted and I experienced the grief in its entirety. The blanket of protected security seemed to have been removed and the onslaught of grief was almost more unbearable than the actual time of his death. This surprised me.

In January, a crisis hit one of my family members which nearly took me out. I found myself wrestling with many emotional issues which surfaced in my soul, issues that hurt my heart more deeply than I could have imagined. After the warm security and safety of the previous year, it felt as if I were suddenly thrust into a cold, stark and very painful world and to put it frankly, my feelings were hurt. Hadn’t I been through enough over the past five years? Hadn’t I hurt enough? Hadn’t I learned enough about trusting in God, about leaning only on Him, about surrendering everything to Him? And now, still so fragile, this thing lunged at me and assaulted me from every possible angle. I went into hiding; it was all I could do.

On top of the family crisis, another more subtle event was working under the surface. The first year after John’s death, the Lord had launched me into many areas of ministry—discipling women in the Abiding Life, going on an amazing trip with OM Logos Hope Ship and ministering with people from all over the world, teaching a seminar on Abiding Life to poor village women in Honduras and seeing God work in amazing ways, and then the icing on the cake—the invitation to join with Joel Rosenberg’s Joshua Fund team as coordinator for the volunteers. My book was finished and ready for publication. I was in a whirlwind of satisfying, fulfilling, exciting spiritual activity with Jesus.

And then, as suddenly as it had all begun, it simply stopped. In January, everything came to a grinding halt. The event in my family brought me to my knees, but I was unable to speak to it or address it in any way. My prayers floundered terribly. Starting out strong, they seemed to hit an invisible net-like barrier and tangled hopelessly into confusion.

There were no women coming to me for discipleship. Communication with Joshua Fund seemed to have ceased. An invitation to return to Honduras to do another conference fell apart. I knew that I could make some contacts and find other ways to minister, but I kept hearing—off in the distance somewhere—the Lord telling me to just wait. I heard Him speak to me in Isaiah 50:11 about “kindling my own fire.” I didn’t want to kindle my own fire. Jesus had kindled a fire for me in the previous year and I knew the difference between relying on my own understanding and relying on Him. At least I still knew that. It was one of the few things I felt I did understand. You know that feeling when you stand in the surf and as the water recedes, sweeping the sand from around your feet, you are left feeling a bit dizzy and unsteady. So I too felt during the long months of winter.

Somewhere around the time of Passover and Easter, just as suddenly as the family crisis had hit, it resolved. I had not been able to pray and God showed me once again the value of my Christian friends who simply manned the helm and guided my listing ship until I was back on my feet. A verse kept surfacing during this time which I clung to as a promise meant just for me. “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ Jesus” (2 Cor. 2:14) He always leads us in triumph in Christ Jesus. Not sometimes, and not in some ethereal unknown way. It is in Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus lives in me. Therefore, I am always being led in triumph. Thanks be to God.

I had read in David Wilkerson’s pulpit letter how the children of Israel sang the song of victory after the Red Sea crossing (being led in triumph). But as the title of the sermon explains “Right Song, Wrong Side.” What if they had sung the song before the crossing? What if their praise had ascended to Heaven before the answer came? That is the question that came to me during the latest time of trial and I am developing a new understanding of the power of singing the right song, on the right side of the Red Sea. Singing when the army is approaching. Singing when the enemy is assaulting. Singing when death is imminent. Singing when my eyes are weeping and my heart is breaking.

These are hard lessons, but how I want to get it, have it permeate every fiber of my being. The enemy has no power against praise, that is key. He doesn’t comprehend it; he doesn’t know how to combat it. There is power in praise in the eternal, above-the-line, realm. I learned a little bit more about it this time, but I thank Jesus for His patience in this training also, because this one is huge and I want it for my life.

He Allows Me To Hunger

2010-03-24T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Jordon River

Reflecting on these past several weeks of being in "a dry and weary land where there is no water" I came to my little Amy Carmichael book You Are My Hiding Place, and happened upon this. Can I say it any better? I think not. Can I thank and praise my Lord for bringing me to this place? Most definitely yes!

He Allows Me To Hunger

Amy Carmichael

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water… My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise you (Psalm 63:1,5).

The son found himself in a barren place.

His Father said, “In this place I will give you the peace you are longing for. Here I will give you spiritual food that will nourish you. You are always with Me — no matter what the circumstances — and all that I have is yours.”

Then the Father, with great gentleness, drew the son to himself. Quietly, He said, I am the one who allowed you to come into these humbling circumstances, and allowed you to hunger. I did this so that I might feed you with manna — my bread from Heaven!

“Only in this way could I help you to know that you cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from My mouth.”

The son said, “Give me this bread always!”

And when he grew thirsty he learned to cry —, “The light of your face is my life!”

… Later still, the son wondered why one like himself, who is so richly fed and cared for at times, should at other times feel so poor and needy and thirsty.

His Father replied by asking four questions:

“Can someone who has never thirsted know how precious is My living water?

“Can someone who has never discovered rivers of these living waters flowing on barren heights — can he ever lead his thirsty friend to those rivers?

“Can someone who has never walked the deep valleys of the spirit help a friend who is fainting — or lead this friend to the well-springs that will save the life of his soul?

“Can someone who has never seen burning sands in the wilderness turn into a refreshing pool — can he speak in praise of My marvels, or My power?

My Father, I’ve been struggling within, because of some of the places life has led me … and struggling with you, too. …

I come to you today, Father, and ask you to begin refreshing and nourishing my soul again

Hide in Him!

2010-03-01T10:42:00.000-08:00

I have a good friend who owns a large and very beautiful house on the 18th hole of a golf course. This friend has offered me the use of her house when she and her husband are out of town, if I just need a place to get away from it all. I have found myself in a pretty difficult place emotionally for the past several weeks and I found that their travel plans coincided with my desperate need to get out of my own environment and spend time alone with the Lord. There were things I needed to sort out; very big things, things which I couldn’t get my mind to wrap around, especially with all the distractions at my own house. It sounds strange to say that just driving a few miles away to another house would give me the opportunity to clear my mind, but that is exactly what was needed. Once there, it took a few hours for me even to get to a place where I wanted to think about it. My emotions have been absolutely battered by these recent family upheavals and I had to hear from Jesus—I had to hear truth, not the many lies the enemy was shouting at me. I had to hear truth from the great Shepherd of my soul, not the voice of the butcher of the sheep, even as he spoke through other people, sounding like truth. In my friend’s house, I turned on the TV, another futile attempt to drown out the pain I was feeling, and in the dimly lit downstairs TV room, shutting off the TV, I simply cried out to Jesus "Please sort out these things for me because I can’t!" And, I heard Him speak to me, "You can let this all go. You really can let go of it and give it into My hands." It sounds so simple doesn’t it? Let it all go? But it is not simple and anyone who tries to tell you these things are just as simple as speaking the words have never been in deep emotional turmoil where everything is shifting under your feet. In fact, I had spoken the words, over and over, but my heart was clinging tightly to the thing and I wanted only for the pain of it to go away.

For some reason, this time, it was the voice of the Shepherd, speaking directly to my heart, giving me full permission, relieving me of all of the feelings of failure and inadequacy and fear, and replacing it with His peace. Peace flooded my soul. One by one, I started giving Him all of the things that were hurting my soul—something which I thought I had already done—but this time, it was different. This time it was a revelation from Him that everything that I had been wrestling with since last summer were now fully out of my control and He was holding me through it all and He had plans much bigger than my finite mind could reach.

About that time I heard a loud howling sound, very close outside and went upstairs to go out on the deck to see, and as I stepped onto the deck, I saw a coyote romping off towards the pines on the other side of the green and its dinner, left behind by my intrusion, one lone leg of a rabbit! It was right there next to the little gurgling brook, and as I looked out at the pines, I suddenly heard that little brook and smelled the pines and the sun was shining brightly onto the deck and it was very warm and brilliantly light. I was just filled with amazement again at God and His creation and the simple ways He answers and shows Himself. I have been so engulfed in the events taking place in the members of my family, that I had not been able to see Jesus through it.

Nothing changed in the circumstances, but something changed in me.

I heard Him telling me that my "life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3) and I heard Him telling me that even though I knew I couldn’t fix the things that were going on, and wasn’t even trying to fix it, I had continued to protest to God reminding Him that the thing was just hurting me so much—what do I do with the pain it was causing me? God seemed to be uprooting so many of my family relationships over the last year and my heart hasn’t caught up to it just yet. On Friday afternoon, when He dragged me out to the deck I was finally able to even let go of the pain and then crawl up into His arms and be loved and comforted by Him. It is difficult to attach mere words to my experience out on that deck, but one thing I know—there was a healing that took place in my heart that day.

God is up to something big here, not with me only, but with so many others I talk to. I see Him working to set us free from long years of emotional bondage to old family stuff. Once those "spiritual ties" are cut, not only we, but those we have been emotionally tied to, will be free from it. I have had to go through this process now with others in my little tight circle, and though the process is like a sort of amputation of the emotions, at the end there is only Jesus, and so, it is worth it.

He is worth it.

Spiritual Dejection

2010-02-08T06:59:00.000-08:00

“But we trusted…and beside all this, today is the third day. . .” (Luke 24:21).

Dejection springs from one of two sources—I must have it at once. Spiritual lust makes me demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God who gives the answer. What have I been trusting God would do? And today—the immediate present—is the third day, and He has not done it; therefore I imagine I am justified in being dejected and blaming God. Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer, we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not the answer. (Oswald Chambers)

This Thing is from Me

2010-02-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

My world got upended this past three weeks. A windstorm of assaults from in front and from behind, and from every side it seems, hit me full on one after another.

Everything I thought I had learned about Abiding in Christ, fixing my mind on Him and walking in His perfect peace, seemed to have no meaning whatsoever in the face of this thing. It hurt my heart; it hurt my soul.

I learned (or so I thought) so well from the Abiding Life messages that I can’t “fix” things, much less people, but I resorted to my old self-life of trying to fix, failing of course. The thing so consumed me that I couldn’t pray. I didn’t know how. My prayer life log jammed and all the old baggage got strewn about like dirty laundry lying all over my soul—hopelessness, despair, fear, panic, anger, unbelief and the old feeling that God had abandoned me, at least for a period of time. The enemy had a field day. How he loves to bypass all of our past experiences with God and throw us under a train.

The very first words God spoke to me were these: “But the word of the LORD came to Shemaiah (which means “Yah has heard” in Hebrew), the man of God, saying …You shall not go up or fight against your relatives; return every man to his house, for this thing is from Me” (2 Chronicles 11:2-4). That seemed clear enough “Yah has heard” and “this thing is from Me.” In other words, “hands off Kathy, I have heard and I am doing this.”

But I made the choice to believe the lies of the enemy and for about five days, I went there. I got beat up. I got shamed. I got condemned. I shut down. I tried to run somewhere, escape if I could, but then the next wave hit like a freight train from another direction and I was forced to stay and see it through.

The next word I heard was again from 2 Chronicles, in 32:7 “Be strong and courageous, there is greater power with us than with him—with him is only the arm of flesh but with us is the LORD our God to help us and to fight our battles.” This lesson came from the Beth Moore Breaking Free study we are doing and she goes on to say, “God hears the cry of the oppressed. God even hears the cries of those who have been oppressed as a result of sin and rebellion. We must never cease believing that God cares about those in physical, emotional, mental or spiritual prisons. It is part of God’s consistent character to woo the captive to freedom.”

Another word came at some point during the windstorm which was “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts…” (1 Corinthians 4:5); and “I have made you hear new things from this time, and you did not know them. They are created now and not from the beginning; and before this day you have not heard them, lest you should say, ‘Of course I knew them’” (Isaiah 48:6-7).

And further words from Beth Moore’s study:

“If you have been feeling like a failure, you are in bondage.”

“Strongholds always lead us to isolation. We will only have relationships with people who we can practice our stronghold with. People who will shelter us in our strongholds will end up oppressing us.”

“Jotham grew powerful because he walked steadfastly before the Lord His God” (2 Chron. 26-9);

“But what did Jotham fail to do? He failed to remove the ‘High Places.’ The high places are every thought, pattern, affection, and attachment to the world that exalts itself above the knowledge of God.”

“We know that God’s help will actually set us free from our sin and our idols, but we love our sin and our idols” (James 4:4).

“The great paradox is that healing can flow from a wounding. God may be wounding you in order to heal you. Repentance is not our punishment; repentance is a gift.”

“A Christian is held captive by anything that hinders the abundant and effective Spirit-filled life God planned for us.”

“Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor o what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isa. 55:2);

Psalm 51:6 says God desires truth in the inner parts. A combination of two vehicles—God’s truth and our truthfulness—will drive us to our desired destination. Honesty with God is an absolute requirement to keep moving on this journey.…there is a huge difference between salvation from sin and satisfaction of the soul. Salvation secures our lives for all eternity. Soul satisfaction ensures abundant life on earth.”

“God’s presence is absolutely unchanging, but the evidence of His presence is not. On some occasions God may purposely alter the evidences of His presence to bring the most benefit from our experience.”

And finally, just this morning, a dear friend sent me yesterday’s Streams in the Desert devotional. This is an old devotional written by Mrs. Henry Cowin, a mentor of Oswald Chambers. And what do you think the scripture verse was for this day?

“This thing is from Me!”

Amen then, I will rest in that since You, Lord have taken such pains to reveal it to me again.

Jesus calling

2010-01-23T06:59:00.000-08:00

We have had several days of snow now. It comes from a severe storm off the Pacific which has drowned Southern California in rain, 93 mph wind, tornadoes, water spouts and mudslides. It continues today for the fourth straight day. Today is supposed to be the last day and tomorrow my little weather widget on my computer has a bright sunshiny icon, which makes me smile. I am a true Arizona girl. I love the sun, I even love the dry heat, so I say "Come on sun, four days is too long to be without those warm rays blasting through my windows."

I woke up at 4:30 this morning and gave in to it. I got out of bed instead of returning to the warmth of the down comforter and pillow for a couple more hours of sleep. There are so many things going on in the world, in my country, in my State, in my family and in me personally that threaten to rob me of peace. I found these things crowding into my early morning with Jesus, "Good morning Lord, what a blessing and honor it is to come into Your presence this morning...[where is my list of things to do that I wrote out yesterday, I must have left it in my purse, got to remember to get that out and add such and such to it]...oh yes, and Lord, this morning can I talk to you about this thing that is troubling me concerning my son's finances, it is hurting my heart and I so want to fix it...[I could go to Bed, Bath and Beyond and find that comforter I have been looking for, oh yes, here it is in my clippings from the latest Cottage Living magazine--Oooh, I love the way this looks, it would look perfect in my...] Oh Jesus, listen to me! I am just so double minded this morning, I can't keep my eyes fixed on You at all!"

This morning in a little devotional booklet I picked up over Christmas called "Jesus Calling", I read His response to me: "It's all right to be human. When your mind wanders while you are praying, don't be surprised or upset. Simply return your attention to Me. Share a secret smile with Me, knowing that I understand."

Wow! Was that You Lord, did You just respond to me like that?

How do we return our attention to Him? I don't try to pretend that I am superspiritual wonder woman, but this morning I did what I have done so often, I simply said "Jesus, You know my heart and how my mind wanders all over the place. I can't control these things, but You abide in me and Your mind is not wandering all over the place; it is steadfast, fixed, at peace and not at all overwhelmed by the things that are overwhelming me. I choose to walk into Your peace and undisturbed composure right now. Jesus, come and be my peace. Come and be my security. Come and be my fearlessness. Come and order my thoughts for this day. Remind me that even if my children undergo trials and tribulations, it is for their refining and for their good and for Your glory and I don't have to fix everything. So, right now my Beloved Lord, go ahead and pray for them through me, with Your groanings too deep for words, groanings that I myself experience, but do not know how to voice. Pray Your own will for them; Your own plan for their sanctification and growth."

And Peace returns.

It always does.

Shachah (Fall Face Down)

2010-01-18T06:05:00.000-08:00

In Hebrew, Worship is the word "Shachah" which means to "fall face down."

This morning, early, face down in worship, I surrendered another of those things to Him and His presence enveloped me. Words fail when attempting to describe those moments, and so I will resist the urge to even try.

It started on Saturday. I was faced with a temptation. Jesus has been ministering His plans for my life and my decisions for awhile now, beginning with the financial trials during John's illness. He beckoned me "Will you trust Me? Even with this?" "This" was my "no water" situation at the time. No income, not for six months. I resisted the urge to fix it myself, because He told me that this was from His own hand and it was for a training of His faithfulness into my life. I trusted and for six months, He provided, above and beyond what I needed. I ended up with $500 when it was all over and I received our first disability check. In myriad ways, He has brought me to this place again and again since then and I am in awe of His provision and especially the ways He seems to delight in surprising me with it. Still, I trust the "Provider" and love Him, more than the provision.

Now, as my "husband" He is training me in this trust. It has to do with money and possessions; it has always been this way. I tithe and pay my bills, but what is left over is mine to spend as I like, right? Then why, when he has provided over and above what I need to be comfortable, do I end up with more month than paycheck?

This weekend, I was given the opportunity to have this training put to the test. I have been coveting a little white Honda CRV. I had a CRV and loved it, but sold it along with John's car when Jesus told me to sell both cars and have only one. This was so that John, who had to give up driving and was refusing, would not have as many opportunities to drive, and it worked; much as he hated it, he had to give up driving and he accepted that the selling of his car was ok. Shortly thereafter, he began having the seizures and was "ordered" to give up driving. It was a huge thing, for John loved to drive, and I loved driving with him.

So the car I had purchased was a nice, 2006 Altima, but in the way back recesses of my heart, I longed for another CRV. And now, there it was, priced way too affordable. My son wanted to buy my car at fair market value, and he did all the wheeling and dealing for the CRV. In the end, I would only have to come up with $4,000 "out the door" to have it.

But I had no peace.

I sought the Lord, but there are times, you know, when you hear from him, but choose to believe that it was your imagination. He has been training money decisions into me, and I have been learning so much about what I "want" and what I "need" in the process. He has not deprived me of anything, not even the silly things I want, but this time He seemed to be saying something and it was my choice whether I listened to Him or to my "wants."

You see, as a widow, I now must make all these decisions through my "Husband" Jesus. I have to ask myself, if John were alive, would I be making this decision independent of him? Well, I did that, or at least I knew how to manipulate the situation so that he thought it was his idea and he would go along when I wanted something that we couldn't really afford. I was quite good at that.

But this was Jesus. Would I attempt to manipulate Him so that I could get what I wanted? That was the big question before me this weekend.

He has been telling me to pay off everything (which compared to people deep in debt, isn't much), and He has made a way for me to do that. Pay off the little debts before you add more to it. The question then shot through my mind, Do I need another car? Is the car I now have serving the purpose? Is it in need of repair? Does it require repairs? The answer of course is a resounding "NO"! Did God provide it? Yes He did.

So, this morning, I woke very early--4:30. I wanted to snuggle down into my big warm comforter and go back to sleep but felt compelled to get up. In fact, I nearly bounded out of bed--rare to have that much energy so early in the morning.

With my steaming cup of dark roast coffee, sitting in my favorite rocker in my little office, I turned on my ipod to worship music before I opened my Bible. There is a tremendous storm brewing outside, the wind is howling and it is cold, but in my little coccoon where I go to meet alone with Jesus every morning, it is a warm glow of golden light, and He is very near. I always know when He wakes me early and rouses me out of a warm bed, that He has something important to discuss with me, or to pray through me. This morning was no different and as I listened to Paul Wilber singing "Dance with me Lord" and reading 2 Chronicles 7:3, as Solomon dedicates the new Temple, the people all "fell to the ground" and worshipped. Shachah--fall face down.

I did.

And I had my answer from Him. No, I would not buy the much coveted little shiny white CRV. I would offer it back to him as an act of worship. For that is what worship is, an offering of everything we are, have and desire. We think it is standing in Church listening to beautiful music singing with hands raised, and that is certainly a part of worship. But Abraham, as he was taking that long painful walk towards Mt. Moriah with his only beloved son, to offer him to the Lord, told his servants that he and the lad would go on alone and worship. His offering of this most beloved and precious thing in his entire life, his long-awaited son, was worship.

I would not manipulate my Husband and cajole Him into letting me have this thing. Not this time.

I learned some years ago while reading Daniel 1 that Daniel and his friends refused to eat of the King's delicacies in obedience to the Lord, and a few verses later it says that the Lord added to them wisdom. I heard Him say to me, "You see, the reward for obedience is not things or possessions or even that you will become great and have great favor. The reward for obedience is wisdom. When you choose to obey Me, I will add to you My wisdom."

It was a powerful lesson and has stayed with me.

And just to make sure that I got this lesson this morning, reading a little devotional booklet written by Max Lucado, it said:

"If you believe, you will get anything you ask for in prayer" (Matthew 21:22).

"Don't reduce this grand statement to the category of new cars and paychecks. Don't limit the promise of this passage to the selfish pool of perks and favors. The fruit God offers is far greater than earthly wealth. His dreams are much greater than promotion and proposals.

"God wants you to fly. He wants you to fly free of yesterday's guilt. He wants you to fly free of today's fears. He wants you to fly free of tomorrow's grave. Sin, fear, death. These are the mountains He has moved. These are the prayers He will answer."

"New cars and paychecks..." sometimes, in very serious matters of the heart, He also makes me laugh!

Shachah.

What Does This Look Like?

2010-01-15T07:08:00.000-08:00

I asked that question a little over a year ago. I was thinking about all of the changes in our world, in our country, in our Churches. It sometimes feels that we have been placed into a blender and everything once familiar is now unfamiliar, changed, foreign. We live in what they call the "Post-Modern" generation. I'm not sure I can define that exactly, but someone can I'm sure. I taught the subject of Bible prophecy many times in various Bible studies, and it was always taught as a sort of "here is what is coming--be prepared--be informed!" Suddenly, it began to actually look more real--the reality was here and now my focus changed to "What are we, the body of Christ, supposed to look like to the world as the world begins to turn upside down?" Are we supposed to take up arms and fight? Are we supposed to join in the movements with Christian activists and "take back our country?" I stay up to date with world news, but I grew weary of the many angry commentators getting into arguments on the news talk shows, finding myself becoming angry and frustrated and even fearful every time I heard the latest "change" facing us and the latest "rights" being removed from us.

So, what does Jesus want me, His follower and disciple, to look like in the face of the coming darkness? Reading Jeremiah I heard Him instructing me. As in the days of Jeremiah, we find ourselves facing a spiraling down of everything familair in our nation and as with Israel, there was a time to fight, to take back our country, to do everything in our power to maintain the status quo. But God told Jeremiah to tell the leaders not to fight this time. He told them to relinquish their own beloved Jerusalem and go willingly into captivity. The time for God's refining of the children of Israel, and the purification of the Land had come and they were to submit to His refining. They had gotten off track, lost their focus, forgotten what was important to their God and developed their own religious system. The leaders cried out "NO! This cannot be. This is the Land God gave to us; the Temple is here!" But Jeremiah continued to stand his post, the post God assigned to him and warned the religious leaders to submit and to go into captivity--into Babylon. God would protect them there, but he would not protect them if they refused to submit.

How does this look in my life today? What should I look like to the world that is careening headlong into darkness? I am to have Hope--the "Blessed Hope" that is Jesus. In a hopeless world, what will the people want more than anything? They will want Hope. We have hope. We have the only Hope there is; the only Hope that is real--Jesus Christ.

So often in the past several years, when despair met me at the door when I entered into my house, I walked through my house speaking out loud to the enemy who wanted to rob me of joy, quoting from John 17 that Jesus prayed for me. He prayed that I would be in Him and He would be in me and we would be one in the Father and that His joy would be in me and my joy would be full! Therefore! No one can have my joy because it isn't mine--it is His and His prayers are always answered.

Today I choose to walk in His joy no matter what is going on around me. Amen

The Broken Vessels

2010-01-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

I want to begin writing about my little group of friends. We call ourselves the "Broken Vessels." We are from a variety of Churches, certainly a variety of backgrounds and most definitely a variety of walks of life. We are a microcosm of what the Bible calls "The body of Christ." What is the body of Christ? It is the new and extended family of believers in Jesus Christ which we join when we invite Jesus to live His life in and through us. He is the Head of the body, and we are all the building blocks which make up Jesus Christ's spiritual body as He lives exactly His life through each of us individually and corporately. We cannot be lone ranger believers--there is no such thing as a closet Christian. We are part of a vast network of fingers, toes, legs, mouths, hearts, hands, eyes, and even those hidden parts--livers, spleens, gallbladders. You get the picture.
I want to write about these amazing members of Jesus' body as they relate to me personally and, as we talked about yesterday, the "workshop" that Jesus has placed us in together as we walk through late mid-life together. We are what they call the "sandwich" generation--sandwiched in between leaving our life of raising children to now taking care of parents. There was a brief period of time when the children left home, married and began raising their own children and when the parents were still active and healthy, where we enjoyed a sort of respite from caretaking. John and I did a lot of traveling during those short years. We enjoyed each other's company, got to know each other all over again.
Our little group of broken vessels began as a small group of couples meeting together to study the Word of God. That was four years ago I think. Maybe three. It was after John got sick, that I know. They were all formerly of my Church but had left during a difficult period in the Church and were now attending Harvest. I was myself, sneaking off to Harvest; going to FBC with John and then after taking him home, going to Harvest. My son and his family were going there, and I loved the music and teaching, and of course, the fellowship with my little group of friends.
We were a group of couples, although John in his new state of dementia, had decided he didn't want to be a part of this group. The old social butterfly who loved socializing, had become reclusive and grumpy with this group. So, I went alone. How many times during our times of sharing, I sat alone and wept as these dear friends loved on me and encouraged me. Thus, I had learned through this experience that I very much needed this body of Christ and these broken vessels in particular.

And how can I neglect to mention that Jesus used my own family in this process-my own mother, sisters and kids and even my little grandbabies! How many times did I get in the car with my sister Linda and scream and cry when it got to be too much? How many times did she scream and cry with me? How many times did I go to my sister Pat's second house in Dewey, crying all the way and calling her and she had a word from the Lord just for me? How many times did I call my son Adam and he prayed the most anointed and powerful prayers for me, even once while he was broken down on his way to work? And Adam's wife Jeniece, sitting by John's bedside as he lay dying, reading to him from his own Bible, all of his highlighted passages. And how many times did my son Dane, and his wife Tasha just stand by my side watching as helplessly as I, as John vanished into the mist of dementia? The "ministry of presence" is as much a part of our ministry to each other as anything else, and that is what they provided and what my Mom provided. Seeing the fresh, innocent faces of my little grandbabies gave hope that there was a future for me, a future and a hope. God had moved a nephew and his wife down the street and they provided much needed assistance with house projects. Another nephew wrote a song about me.

And of course, there were my long-time faithful Bible study women who stood with me from day one, praying for me, providing financial aid at times, letting me go on and on while I taught, pouring out my own personal pain to them? These showed up after John went home, cleaning, shaping up my very messy yard, and one couple who had moved to Iowa, sent me money every month while I waited for John's retirement to process (four months). What they sent was exactly what I would need to live on. These fragrant aroma saints did just what the body of Christ does best--when the Holy Spirit actually gets to operate unhindered by formality and programs.

There isn't enough time or space here to name all of the ministering angels who came to my side and continue to come to my side and I will never be able to thank them, or Jesus, enough for what they have given to me.

2010-01-02T05:47:00.000-08:00

I am thinking this morning about my Christmas this year. Everyone in the conservative camp was in a twitter over the attempted hijacking of Christmas from the marketplace, replacing it with Holiday, Solstice, or ignoring it altogether. I don't normally get too excited about Christmas, mostly because it is not a day Jesus encouraged us to celebrate. He had very specific instructions for the celebration of His death and resurrection (which celebration was hijacked long ago), but he had little to say about the day of His birth and the need to buy gifts and decorate our homes in honor of His birth.

My Christmas this year was glorious--truly. And anyone who knows me knows that I almost always sigh a sigh of relief when it is all over. This year was different. I went through Christmas last year in a sort of mourning fog--mourning my first Christmas without John, but not feeling it all just yet. In fact, I think I went through the entire year in that fog; going through a lot of motions, having bursts of the most intense painful missing him, but overall, I wasn't "feeling" the feelings. This year it hit me full on and I longed for the fog to return, I missed him so powerfully I honestly wasn't sure I would survive it.

I decorated my house and cried. I shopped and cried. I went to Church and cried. Driving downtown in the snow, I cried. John was everywhere--around every corner and in every restaurant and Christmas event. I just wanted him back. In the 75 mph wind storm which tore shingles off my roof, I missed him. I needed him to take care of that; he always took care of everything. Trying to shovel the snow off my driveway I needed him. I never thought of those things, it never occurred to me how really difficult it is to shovel snow.

The loss was as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

But once all the shopping and decorating and big events had passed, and all 38 members of my family--from Phoenix and Tucson--arrived, it all changed. Jesus gave me a Christmas present this year. He reminded me of His love and His care and His compassion for me and He showed me all of that with my family. Oh yes, it was a madhouse--loud and wild and crazy--which John did not always appreciate, but which I desperately needed this year.

My sons and their wives and my dear and precious grandchildren (minus Jacob who had to stay in Phoenix because of illnesss), all spent the night here and once more this empty house was filled with the sounds of children giddy with excitement and wide eyed with joy. It was Christmas!

I felt greedy to be so blessed, so undeserving of all of the benefits that Jesus continues to pour down on me in so many ways.

***************************

I sent off my book proposal. Somehow in the middle of Christmas madness, I actually got it in the mail after long months of procrastination.

I also finished designing the volunteer applications for Joshua Fund and sent them to be reviewed. Again, after longs months of procrastination.

It feels this morning as if my mind has had a good cleaning and I am thinking clearly and for the first time in months, I am caught up on all of those things that have been hanging around on my desk and around my chair.

I think the grieving and crying cleared out a space in my soul for the new year.

I have sat in a hospital waiting room with friends or family while a family member lay dying, three times since November. Have attended the funeral of these loved ones three times in the same little chapel at my Church. The first time, my brother-in-law, Bob, sent me reeling. I think it was the catalyst which opened up the floodgates of my fresh grieving. The second was the mother of a long-time friend and now the mother of another of my good friends. It has changed me. I want to spend as much valuable quality time as I can with my mother. I don't want to hurry her out when she comes upstairs to visit me. I want to write about our mothers, instructions on how to love, appreciate and care for them when they are old. It is very much on my heart to do this now, while there is quality time left.
And so, Lord Jesus, what is Your assignment for me this coming year? I have my own little plans and agendas, but they are easily moved aside by You as You help Yourself to my life. So help Yourself--it is all Yours. I love You so much.

A New Years/A New Day

2009-12-29T06:31:00.000-08:00

What a year this has been! Grieving the loss of my beloved John. Ambushed by the loving Grace of Jesus who announced "From now on you will call Me, 'My Husband.'" The discovery of my new and extended family--His family--my amazing and caring friends who surrounded me, prayed for me, supported me, and even redesigned and redecorated my house! The explosion of my walk with Jesus after I secretly whispered the words, "Help Yourself to my life and to my checkbook"; never in my wildest imagination would I have known He would literally take me up on it. He sent me on a wild ride, first to OM Ship Logos Hope, docked in Cork, Ireland where I experienced the expansion of my new family--400 believers representing over 40 nations. Then the call from Joshua Fund inviting me to join their ministry as coordinator for volunteers which would take me to Israel four times a year! Really Lord? On to Honduras to conduct a women's seminar on my favorite subject--Abiding in Christ--"Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Three weeks later flying off to Washington, DC to meet with Joel Rosenberg and the Joshua Fund staff to begin this new life. And the losses--my brother-in-law, Bob, received home to Jesus in November. My dear friend Carole's mother, received home the week before Christmas and now even as I write, my other dear friend Judy's mother, awaiting her call home. What will 2010 hold? I have no way of knowing. I don't even ask anymore for this new road I am traveling is called the "ministry of availability." He is helping Himself to my life and to my checkbook and I am showing up. Amen.

Thinking Out Loud

2009-12-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

In an age of never-ending noise, TV, texting, cell phones, isn't it necessary, even imperative to find a quiet place? Doesn't God call us to "come away My beloved"? Doesn't he promise "Come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light" (Matt. 11:28-30)? I call it my Shabbat; my rest for the soul. I write as I hear Him moving whisper soft through my soul. In these pages you may hear Him, if you listen.