The Necessity of Daily Reliance

So runs my dream, but what am I?

An infant crying in the night

An infant crying for the light

And with no language but a cry.

So wrote Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Poet Laureate of Great Britain in 1849.  Though the poem does not center around a persons relationship with Christ, but with the death of Tennyson’s close friend, it is appropriate to learn from it and apply it to our lives.  The Bible consistently refers to Christians’ maturity in terms of infancy.  When we mature and move away from the pure milk to more solid foods it seems that our prayers deepen, or we have learned to pray in a different way.

Yet are these prayers still nothing more than cries?  Can we approach Yahweh with any other “language but a cry”?  Infants rely daily on their parents, for nurturing, healing, caring, and comfort.  As children mature, they begin to move away from their parents, begin to take care of themselves more and more; but the reverse must be true for the Christian.  The mark of a mature Christian is not in their isolation or self-sufficiency but in their recognition of their infinite infancy before God.  The Christian who wakes and begs strength of God is far closer to Him than the Christian who rests his head on his pillow and is grateful God has given him the means to keep himself warm.

The Two Knowledges

I believe that there are a few things we need absolutely correct understanding of.  Like A W Tozer argues, the knowledge of the holy is paramount to our Christian faith.  I know that nothing looking or nearing absolute understanding of Yahweh can or ever will happen, but we need a higher, deeper respect and love for His nature.  The other aspect is sin.  Because we have been freed from the burden of sin I fear that it has crept below our radar.  How often do we seriously discuss or confess sin?  It would seem that while the burden of sin is no longer upon us we still carry the guilt of sin in our silence about it.  Very often we point out the sin in others, especially those who are not in Christ’s flock; but, how often do we publicly confess our own shortcomings?  I’m not arguing for random and widespread, un-heartfelt blabbering; but this is an aspect of deep community.  You do not have deep community without the knowledge of the holy nor do you have deep community without the knowledge of our unholiness.  It is my belief that our response to sin, in either its immediate aftermath or long term recovery, in our lives, our personal lives, is a great indicator of our maturity in Christ.  Grief or apathy will reign for that moment in the person’s heart.  Either the voice of the Holy Ghost or our own demonic voice will sing loudly.  When we confess, when we are brought into that deep, meaningful community, we add voices to that majestic choir that the Holy Spirit leads, and though it should be enough we listen to the promptings of the Divine Ghost, the added encouragement and admonishment is never harmful.  We would do well to remember that sin is our choice; love, mercy, salvation, is God’s and we stand in the middle of two kingdoms calling our name, vying for ownership. Whose hand will you reject?

The Sand People

I wonder if Yahweh Rophe is concerned not so much with giving us wings but in tearing the ground from beneath our feet that we might rest in Him. If this is the case, as I truly believe it is, then we should ask of El Roi not to take our troubles away but to show us where our foundation lays in our troubled times. The man who built his house on the sand is separated from the man who built his house on the rock in his foolishness and his regret. There was the possibility he could have been the man whose house endured or there could have been two “rock men” but in his anxiousness, in his desire to have good things now, he sacrificed a sure foundation. The man who built his house on the rock must have sacrificed something too. To have a steady house upon a rock it would be necessary to center the house on the rock; any building near the edge would risk falling off into the sand. So the church, Church, and Christian must center their lives on the Rock. In doing this we, like the parablean man, risk a loss of visible community. Centering ourselves on the rock means daily contact with those who live on the sand might not happen; there is a certain sense of isolation for both parties. But this is where the first man’s regret comes in: when his house collapses where does he go? The one place that sits in silent security amid the storm and its aftermath. He will go either to the rock or to another place on the sand. So in their semi-isolation Christians must live in such a way as to draw people to them and inviting those too stubborn or broken to ask. But this also means only the house centered on the rock survives. Those near the perimeter can be damaged from the rising waters and the blowing wind because the sand-world is still a concern for them; its not that they are conscience of it and those near the rock’s center aren’t; they aren’t willing–like Lot and his wife–to live in a way where the sand is secondary, where the land of walking is soft and comfortable instead of the hard, jagged walkways of the rock. But the Christian must center their life around Christ, around the Rock, for his own sake and the sake of those building doomed lives on the sand.

Trust

We don’t know why Yahweh says “no” anymore than when he says “yes” so let us dwell content knowing His will is being divinely enacted and guided.

An Eternal Holiday

Discussing the New Creation in small group and listening to Phil Wickham’s new album, “Heaven & Earth,” has, well, caused me to think more of New Creation. I get the impression that we often feel our entrance into Zion, into Elohim’s throne-room to be a humbling experience. Which it will be. Humbling because it will be so undeserved. Often, in the past, I’ve pictured myself dropping to my knees, weeping joyful and sombre tears in Christ’s presence. Which I probably will. But this, I am afraid, centers that moment on me, on how I will relate to Elohim in those moments. David wrote constantly that he “waits on the LORD.” What will His reaction be when we come strolling, running, through the fields, past the City’s gates? Will it not be something undignified, something only shadowed at in the parable of the prodigal son? Running so fast we are nearly tripping, laughing, not crying, crashing to the ground in the arms of a Savior who has waited far more eagerly than we the arrival of his children, home from the rebellious years spent away. Home at last. I hope that I allow this to inform my living now, with the knowledge that, as I eagerly await Him and His new creation, He too, is marking down the celestial calendar, filled with the exciting words, “Sons and Daughters Come Home!”

The Grand Operation

Today, during Campus Focus worship, I thought of Yahweh and how He is called the Great Physician.  This is a marvelous term, although I think it needs some study.  We often think of physicians as the people in white coats we go and see and cause us some discomfort by pressing down on our tongues with a bland popsicle stick and ask awkward questions as if they knew us on a friendship basis.

Yahweh is not like this physician.

Nor is he like the surgeons who quietly remove the infection while we lay on the table comatose with anesthesia.

Yahweh is a vicious surgeon; He is invasive.  He puts us up on the operating table and, almost always, rejects the notion of anesthesia.  We are awake, vividly sometimes, when He is at work, digging around in us removing the disease.  This is necessary.  When we wake from a surgery we haven’t experienced, its almost as if the body has healed itself.  But when we have gone through the surgery, felt the intimacy of the pain, felt His closeness when He is weaving through our lives, we become something more than patients; we become soldiers who are proud of their healed wounds.  Proud in the sense that the evidence remains, and that, in spite of them, we are standing and alive.

He knows us far more intimately than any physical physician will and heals us with a medicine to which there are no complications; the only side effect of grace is holier living.

Proverbs states the wounds of a friend are faithful; how much more faithful are the scars of the Great Physician?

Something Like Fireworks

The possibility of inertia is no longer an option.  We are to be imitators of Christ, children of Yahweh and He has never once been inactive.  We have no idea what El “did” before creation, other than be in perfect unity and community with himself; I like to think, however, that Yahweh Sabaoth was dreaming, captivated with the story He was about to write.  But there had to be something that came before this.  El Roi is not only the God Who Sees but the God who opens eyes.  How many millions of angels waited in eager anticipation as rumors scattered through heaven that El Olam (God Everlasting) was about to do something no one could comprehend?  With the promise of Yahweh’s greatness, of his power and love being displayed, how could the angels not gather together, sing praises, remember the times they, equal parts creation as we, experienced the goodness and faithfulness of Him?  And then creation happened.

We are living in a far advanced time, a time where Elohim is going to do great things, as He has always done.  What then?  Will we stay silent or will we be like the angels before us, like Yahweh Shammah, who sustains life constantly, is never ceasing from work yet never tires because He never expends energy, what will we do?  Inertia, immobility is not an option.  We must move, either running to tell someone of what He is about to do, or just to get a better view of the coming fireworks, the Shekinah Glory.

More

Throughout the past few days, amid the stress and semi-isolationism the end of the semester brings, I’ve been asking God for more of his peace, more of his patience and more of his righteousness.  English is gravely insufficient when it comes to describing God.  The closes we come to his personal name, Yahweh, is LORD, a simple change in three of the letter’s cases.  The ancient Jews had many names for God: Yahweh-Shalom and Yahweh-Tsidkenu are God of Our Peace and God of Our Righteousness.  As I was thinking of this fact I realized that when David asked Yahweh for forgiveness, for restoration, for peace, for protection and love (and when I or you ask for those same things) what we are really asking God for is more of him.  God is the only necessary thing and the only thing upon which we actually depend.  Ask the infinite God for more of himself and that is exactly what you receive, the infinite goodness, grace, mercy and love of the Incomparable Yahweh.  How much of Him do you want?  How much of Him do you need?  Reach out for Yahweh-Shammah, the Lord Who is There.

The Refreshing Surprise

The past two days have reminded me of how much I love the late spring, and how much our bodies and souls were created for the Edenic existence.  We experienced mid-winter like weather when we should have been gradually easing our way into the dismal cold.  Then, almost unexpectedly, summer showed up again.  Its as if we forgot its existence entirely.  Is that the way we Christian’s have become?  We’re in the abysmal chill of this world, and its something we haven’t been gradually wading into but thrust into head first; and it seems we’re almost used to it.

But when spring arrives again, what will our reaction be?  We are anxiously awaiting the constant return of warmer weather yet how often do we sit back and contemplate how the moral weather of this world will change when winter is over, when Christ returns?  What was once dead and buried will be resurrected, literally and figuratively, by the warmth of the Savior.  Winter replaces fall and is replaced by spring slowly, with time and clear signs but the Radical Transformation will be swift and take us all by surprise.  One day, we will be shivering in the dark cold and the next we will wake up to a world warming, brimming with life; faintly recognizable but so unexpected that we will be compelled to go explore it.  With each step further into that country we will be more awed and refreshed we will forget there was a winter at all.

Story

I recently sat down with a wonderful friend to share our stories.  Our original intention was to hear her story, but, as often happens when one begins a story, it grows.  As she was telling me about certain times in her life I began to realize how the external action of our stories (all of our stories) resemble each other, and, as any author will tell you, all stories resemble others in some way.

But what makes our lives unique?  As complicated as a novel may be, when it comes down to it, the characters are only two dimensional because they exist on paper and somewhere in our imaginations.  But real people exist on a plane infinitely higher.  We are spiritual creatures and we can’t get away from this and our significance, the exclusiveness of our own stories comes from a mixture of our physical existence and our spiritual existence.  The fact that they are inseparable not only deepens them but allows us to relate to each other.

As of now, though, we see our lives through a darkened mirror; we are in the middle of a great epic and the novels of our lives are but the footnote to the overarching narrative God is writing.  We must not think this is a bad or inadequate thing; the Author trims his work so that everything within it is not only necessary, but the work would suffer should a single word be taken out.  God does not write boring stories or pulp-fiction stories; there are lulls in our life that allow us time to breathe before chaotic battles or windstorms of character development.

I encourage you to think of your life as something more than mediocre, or your story as something less than extraordinary.  I believe you’ll be willing to endure most anything if you keep before you the knowledge that you are part of a story in which evil is being vanquished on a daily basis and that, in the end, we will be the ones to stand triumphant.

That will be the beginning of the greatest story yet…