That moment when the endless empty makes you realize how small you are, how big the world is, (much less the universe.) and how unreasonably kind God is for still having eyes for me.
That moment when the endless empty makes you realize how small you are, how big the world is, (much less the universe.) and how unreasonably kind God is for still having eyes for me.
“We fill our lives with what we love most.”
In order to learn to love God, God must live in the heart. We come to love best what we hold closest. (No, it’s true. We’re duped into holding close what is actually entirely unlovely, and so come to love our worst enemy best of all.) The reciprocal is also true.
For what it’s worth… I’m sticking with them.
Minnows flee the froth while they tumble out of the boats and splash ashore, this exuberant rabble.
They’ve been looking for the miracle worker that baked 25,000 barley loaves (not including what wife and kids ate) without an oven yesterday, and they’ve just found Him.
He doesn’t answer their first question at all, rather gently reminds them what alone is really worth pursuing.
“Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you.”
(John 6:27 KJV)
Whether or not they actually understand what He’s saying, they are plainly intrigued. So they ask another question. The answer to which has me positively intrigued…
“Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God? Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe…”
(John 6:28-29 KJV emphasis added)
Belief changes everything.
Because if Christ really came, then God is really good, and self-love is really a lie, and sin is really a destroyer, and who wants to die anyway?
I have some news for you.
Christ came. (Matchless condescension.)
And He comes again, every time a dark heart opens its door. (Again, matchless condescension.)
What more proof do we need of His benevolence?
And if He is benevolent, then where’s the controversy?
Believing is everything.
We only ever hesitate to serve a God whose character we question.
I wonder if you, like me, have ever stood in the doorway of the tabernacle* and felt like you were totally out of place there…
I’m as sure as the sunrise. This is the secret…
I stand at my front door and watch Africa stir, listen to the jungle morning. But my thoughts are far away. I cry and He answers. And though we better our acquaintance daily, most days He still catches me off guard. And some days when I’m only half done with my rant he silences me with one word, burned in silence across the wall of my soul.
“… And say I not well that I am ‘a Samaritan’?
Say I not well that Thou deservest more and better?–“
“Say I not well that there is only one of you in the world, and in My heart you’re irreplaceable?”
There is one thing that binds me to the cross. One thing that is to be thanked for any progress, any strength, any accomplishment.
And that one thing is not my commitment, my abandonment, my faith, my hope, my experience, my choice, my will, my power, or my surrender.
It is the mercy of Christ.
The love that doesn’t want “more and better” as a substitute for broken me.
Consumed as I’ve been of late with strategies to arm next generation’s young heroes with this generation’s arsenal of lessons learned, I think I’m justified in my excitement.
Aren’t you? Maybe you didn’t read what I read this morning.
…About the way stone walls can either make us slaves, or make us like themselves. Invincible.
“It is written of Joseph in the dungeon that ‘the iron entered into his soul.'” – (Streams in the Desert, September 8)
The let us neither bemoan the ruggedness of the way, nor the apparent strength of the enemy.
Let us rather gather always strength from our surroundings. And let the battlements we break through become in us the stuff of steel that the brave men and women of the cross are made of.
We can’t lose.
I esteem that audacity which leads brave men to “crave the fire’s embrace,” if only through it they might come to know God…
(For it is true that a day of hardship imparts more strength to the soul than a month of sunshine.)
But after today, I’ve had a change of mind as concerns just how men (and women) should pursue the treasure imparted by tears. Once, that is, faith has made them steel enough to do so.
Pray not for pain or hardship.
The world is plenty full of both.
Pray you’ll have the heart to suffer with another’s.
When their hardship becomes my pain, then God can heal the both of us.
We fly.
To old friends, and new lands.
We leave. People we love. Life in progress…
But only for a few weeks.
Mean time, for those we leave, and for where we’re headed, we claim the same assurance.
“The path where God leads the way may lie through the desert or the sea, but it is a safe path.” (PP 290)
Pray us on our way!
Europe and Africa, here we come.
“Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations. . . He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.”*
See, that’s the essence of triumphant faith to me. And the reason why Abraham received the impossible.
Because he believed the impossible.
Hope against hope.
You’ve heard perhaps that “God will be everything we let Him be…”?
Maybe God can’t work what’s impossible, because I only believe what’s reasonable.
PC and post: Nathan Lee Westbrook |
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