Love Beyond Our Wildest Dreams

Wrings our hearts like nothing else, seeing a beloved one suffer, and especially if it is one of our own children.  Surely God has a father heart that watches over us in the same manner.  Scripture even tells us, incredibly, that He has like unto that of, but stronger than, a mother-heart:

Can a woman forget her nursing child,
    that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
    yet I will not forget you.

 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
    your walls are continually before me. Isaiah 49:15

It has been on my mind of late, this watching our children travel rocky paths, climbing the steep way, sometimes enveloped in the mists of unknowing. And this, this is the best thing that has come out of it: that if I, being human, long to give good gifts to my children and see them happy and fulfilled, surely God, who loves them more perfectly, plans great good for their hearts and their souls as they turn their hearts to Him like living things to the sun. And ultimately the greater thing – that He be glorified, magnified, and Known.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!  Matthew 7:11

Sometimes we are tempted to think, “Oh no, Lord, not this!  Can good ever come from this?”  But as when our children were very young and without understanding, we, too, are very young in understanding God’s ways of blessing, of bringing the richer and better things to pass.

“So often we darken the woods by sadness over one dear to us whom we long to see relieved or released, and all the time the Lord of Light is shining on that heart, and speaking words that will never be forgotten, and which handed on to others like a lighted torch, will travel, who can tell how far?  We must learn to look on and see the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory that is being prepared for our beloved.”*

 “There comes a time when the personal falls from us and we cease from the weariness of being entangled and encumbered in ourselves, and do with all our hearts desire to be perpetually lifted up in spirit above ourselves.  But the trouble of a loved one can throw us into a fever of agitation. And yet to lose our peace is to lose our power to help.  The energies which we might have turned to power are wasted in effortless grieving…if we are to pray we must turn from fear and turmoil.  Job could do nothing for his friends until his own heart was at rest…but there is a peace that must be ours if we are to prevail.  “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives, give I unto you.  Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”  The peace of our Lord was never a passionless peace.” *

We were made to share the sufferings of one another; to enter into a loved one’s sorrows, to feel one another’s burdens; to have our hearts touched by the path another has been called to walk; to look into their eyes and acknowledge the pain of their circumstance, knowing our own pain makes us sisters and brothers in this human journey that will one day give way to all things made new, all reconciled in Him;  to pray and to encourage and to lend a healing smile.  To this we have been called.  We can do this in a Christ-less manner-- sympathy and sentiment reigning; we can, by God’s grace, do this in a Christ-exalting manner--illuminating the Truth that He bears our sorrows, intercedes before His Father’s Throne for us in our extremity with words beyond what we are capable, has caused us to be fellow heirs of His royal purpose and destiny, and loves with a pure love beyond our wildest dreams.

*quotes from Amy Carmichael, Gold By Moonlight 

About Gardens

Gardens teach us a lot about life.  Which are the weeds and which are the plants to nurture?   Some weeds can look a lot like what we are trying to grow; they can be a close imitation but- they are still weeds that will choke out everything else and to no purpose.

Weeds can grow right close up to, or  into, what we are trying to grow.  It takes a knowing eye to discern which is the weed, and to pull it;  to not dislodge that which is growing, if the roots have become intertwined.

Weeding in a friend’s garden, takes a gentle touch; knowledge of what she’s growing. Gentle fingers to pull what should not be there, not dislodging the soil around the good plants, always working toward growth abundant.

Sometimes good things need to be pruned off in order for the best things to have room to grow large and healthy, like making time for priorities and subduing the urgent.  Still, it's painful to take off all those little rosy growing apples so just a few can flourish.

Sometimes it’s just not the right place for that plant.  Borage among the carrots will suffocate the carrots.  If it is the time in our life to care for the little carrots growing in our home, the borage will have to go, overwhelming and beautiful though it is.

 

And before ever a seed sprouts above ground, so much depends upon the soil preparation.  In a home, the parent’s inner life; the atmosphere of the home; the application of Proverbs and all of Scripture: till, fertilize, tend with diligence, and then realize that it’s not you who created the good seed, it’s not you who made the rich soil ingredients, it’s not you who makes the sun to shine nor the rain to water nor the organic matter to nourish.  And then you realize it really is all of grace, regardless of the value and importance of your efforts.

At the end of the day, with the bucket full of weeds, we can be assured that God delights in growing things that bear much fruit.

Blessed Are All They Who Wait For Him

Thou shalt know that I am the Lord; for they shall not be ashamed  that wait for me.  Isaiah 49:23

Blessed are all they that wait for Him.  Isaiah 30:18

"The context of these two passages points us to times when God’s church was in great straits, and to human eyes there were no possibilities of deliverance.  But, God interposes with His word of promise, and pledges His almighty power for the deliverance of His people.  And, it is as the God who has Himself undertaken the work of their redemption that He invites them to wait on Him, and assures them that disappointment is impossible.

"We, too, are living in days in which there is much in the state of the Church…that is indescribably sad…this waiting upon God on behalf of His church and His people will depend greatly upon the place that waiting on Him has taken in our personal life. The mind may often have beautiful visions of what God has promised to do, and lips may speak of them in stirring words, but these are not really the measure of our faith or power.  No, it is what we really know of God in our personal experience, conquering the enemy within, reigning and ruling, revealing Himself in His holiness and power in our innermost being.  It is this that will be the real measure of the spiritual blessing we expect from Him, and bring to our fellow man.

"It is as we know how blessed the waiting on God has become in our own souls, that we will confidently hope in the blessing to come on the church around us.  The key word of all our expectations will be, He has said: “All that wait on me shall not be ashamed.” From what He has done in us, we will trust Him to do mighty things around us.  “Blessed are they that wait for Him.”  Do let this truth acquire full possession of your souls,  that waiting on God is the highest privilege of man…

"Do  believe that waiting on God, His greatness and your littleness suit and meet each other most wonderfully.  Just bow in emptiness and poverty and utter weakness, in humility and meekness, and surrender to His will before His great glory, and be still.  As you wait on Him, God draws near.  He will reveal Himself as the God who will mightily fulfill His every promise.  And let your heart continually take up the song, “Blessed are they that wait for Him.”"  

Andrew Murray, Waiting on God

Like A Child Dipping Its Tiny Shell

“A believing comprehension of God’s loving and loveable character and of the great love with which He loves His saints lies at the root of all Holy, filial and unreserved obedience.

“As there is no commanding, controlling, all-constraining power like that of love, so, in proportion to the deep view we have of the love of God to us in Christ Jesus, will be the response it awakens of confiding love in our hearts and of obedient love in our lives…

“Love is not so much an attribute of God as it is His very essence.  It is not so much a moral perfection of His being as it is His Being itself.  He would not be God if He were not Love; to deny that He is love would be to deny that He is God…

“…this is the central perfection around which all the others revolve as satellites, and from which, harmonized in the salvation of man, they derive their position and glory.  For example, omnipotence is the power of love, omniscience is the eye of love, omnipresence is the atmosphere of love, holiness is the purity of love, justice is the fire of love…

“Every creature must derive its love and its capacity for loving from God; but God derives His love and his power of loving from no other being but Himself…

“It is a great comfort to faith thus to deal with Him who is essential love; no fear about the sufficiency of His supply can haunt our minds.  I may fear that the river may dry out, but not the ocean that feeds it; that the beam may vanish, but not the sun that emits it; because their resources are within themselves, independent and inexhaustible.  And thus, when we come to God through Christ, as to a Father whose nature and whose name is “Love”, we are assured that, whatever sources of power and sympathy fail, God will never disappoint us.  Accepting our draft upon His all-sufficiency, He will honor it to its utmost demand.

“It is a serious defect in the religion of many that their faith deals too faintly with the infinity of God.  This leads to a limiting of the Holy One of Israel.  Finite beings ourselves, all our ideas and conceptions of God’s greatness are bound by the finite.  This restricting of Jehovah dwarfs our personal Christianity and robs Him of His divine glory.  But God is infinite, and therefore His love to us is boundless and fathomless.  This view of His infinite greatness is not intended to paralyze, but to strengthen our faith; not to repel, but to attract us.  The very immensity of God is one of our greatest encouragements to approach Him...

“Although in coming to His infinity we may appear like a child dipping its tiny shell into the depth of the ocean thinking to exhaust it, nevertheless, small though our vessel may be with which we draw, we must feel that nothing less than infinite love can meet the deep need and satiate the yearnings of our soul.  In proportion as the Holy Spirit leads us to see the depths of our sinfulness, poverty, and nothingness, we will learn that nothing less than a God of infinite love, grace, and sufficiency could meet our case.

--Octavius Winslow, Our God

We Shall Reveal {His Glory} Together

I am convinced that a whole lot of liberal theology—false thoughts about God as God Almighty and sovereign Lord, and mis-truths about who we are, humble, fallen, worship-needful souls—is slipping under the fence into the sheepfold because of our human desire to be loved and known.  I recently heard a person speak, words laced and spangled with philosophical terms to excite the most die-hard esoteric-loving soul, on our need to be known, to have the eyes of another’s soul seek and know our truest self. Enthusiastically received, the address encompassed an astonishing amount of I-oneself-me-my pronouns.  I said to my companion as time wore on, “Guess I won’t be needing this” and placed my Bible on the chair next to me.  Indeed, I didn’t.  And the grand finale was a fireworks ending of social gospel liberal verbiage.

 I understand the allure; how many times I’ve spoken with another person and in genuine interest asked question after question to get to know them, but never a question of interest asked in return; struggled or sorrowed only to find that even those who knew, would not encourage or promise their prayers.  But surely I have failed many too, while my gaze was upon myself, and I did not hear their cry.  Truly, we were heart-woven for community and fellowship.  We are fully known by the God who created us; yet we also need reflections and refractions of that with one another: feeling others’ love, being known by those closest, having the comfort of others entering into our lives and experiences.  Why do we find this so hard?  If Truth has its rightful place, then it is those who most magnify God, who make the most of Him transcendent above all human need and desire, who walk closely with Christ, they are those that best know how to love one another, to enter into a one-another lifestyle.  Surely, while there is not so much of the me-oneself-I in  conversation, deep human needs of the soul are thus met as our gaze together is lifted to the Creator and God of all comfort.

“And what is God’s glory?  It is the ministration of love.  We are not to wait for a union of opinions.  We are to begin with a union of hearts.  We are to be united, while yet we do not “see together” (“and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” Isaiah 40:5).  You and I may look at the same stars and call them by different names.  You are an astronomer, and I am a peasant; to you they are masses of worlds; to me they are candles in the sky set up to light me home.

“What matter?  Shall we not enjoy the glory though we do not agree about it?  Let us join hands over the message ere we settle the dispute about the messenger.

“Ye who stand upon the shore and wrangle about the number of the waves, there is meantime a work for you to do, and to do together.  There are shipwrecked voyagers out yonder, crying and calling.  They have folded their hands in prayer, and have heard no answer save the echo of their cry.  Shall they call in vain?  Shall they wait till you have counted the billows that consume them?  Shall they stand shivering in the storm while you are disputing the name of the lifeboat?  What matter how we name the lifeboat if only we believe in it?

“Come out to the wreck, my brothers.  Come to the souls who have lost their compass, to lives that have broken their helm, to hearts that have rent their sails.  They will not ask the name of your lifeboat; even Jacob’s angel had no name.  You may not see together, but you shall reveal together—reveal the glory of the Lord.  You shall be the church of the united sympathizers.  You shall see together the face of the Master, but you shall touch together the print of the nails.   Tomorrow, you shall see Him as He Is.”  –G. Matheson

Skara Brae: A community settled before the pyramids were built, dated 5,000 years ago and uncovered still largely intact, in a sand dune in the mid 1800's  (Orkneys, Scotland).  One day we will know the faithful from every era, every time.  What an amazing story-telling will reveal God's weaving of human lives, human hearts, His designs.

The Holy Habit of Waiting

And therefore will the Lord wait, that He may be gracious unto you, and therefore will He be exalted, that He may have mercy upon you: for the Lord is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for Him.  Isaiah 30:18

"We must not only think of our waiting upon God, but also of what is more wonderful still, of God’s waiting upon us.  The vision of Him waiting on us will give new impulse and inspiration [imagination] to our waiting upon Him.  It will give us an unspeakable confidence that our waiting cannot be in vain. If He waits for us, then we can be sure that we are more than welcome—that He rejoices to find those He has been seeking for…

“Look up and see the great God upon His throne.  He is Love – an unceasing and inexpressible desire to communicate His own goodness and blessedness…He longs to bless.  He has inconceivably glorious purposes concerning every one of His children, by the power of His Holy Spirit, to reveal in them His love and power…And, each time you come to wait upon Him, or seek to maintain in daily life the holy habit of waiting, you may look up and see Him ready to meet you.  He will be waiting so He may be gracious unto you.  Yes, connect every exercise, every breath of the life of waiting, with faith’s vision of your God waiting for you.

“And if you ask: How is it, if He waits to be gracious, that even after I come and wait upon Him, He does not give the help I seek, but waits on longer and longer?  There is a double answer.  The one is that God is a wise husbandman “who waits for the precious fruit of the earth and has long patience for it”.  He cannot gather the fruit until it is ripe.  He knows when we are spiritually ready to receive the blessing to our profit and His glory.  Waiting in the sunshine of His love is what will ripen the soul for His blessing.  Waiting under the cloud of trial, that breaks in showers of blessing, is as needful.  Be assured that if God waits longer than you could wish, it is only to make the blessing doubly precious…

"The other answer: The giver is more than the gift: God is more than the blessing.  And, our being kept waiting on Him is the only way for our learning to find our life and joy in Himself.  Oh, if God’s children only knew what a glorious God they have, and what a privilege it is to be linked in fellowship with Him, then they would rejoice in Him!

“Let waiting be our work, as it is His.  And, if His waiting is nothing but goodness and graciousness, let ours be nothing but a rejoicing in that goodness, and a confident expectancy of that grace.  And, let every thought of waiting become to us the simple expression of unmingled and unutterable blessedness, because it brings to us a God who waits that He may make Himself known to us perfectly as the gracious One.”

“My soul, wait thou only upon God!”

--Andrew Murray, Waiting on God

How much, as earthly fathers and mothers, we understand an overwhelming desire to bless our children, to give good gifts to them, to surround them with favor and love!

 

Fellowship with one another can bless our waiting times

Joy and enjoyment can still be found in the waiting times

And getting a bit dirty in the meantime never hurt anyone

Who needs to be entertained?

Joy in the journey

As we seek to bless our children, may we remember how perfectly our Heavenly Father watches to bless us.  As we wait for our childrens' blessings to unfold, may we see an imperfect pattern of how our Heavenly Father waits for our times to come to fullness.  And as we enjoy fellowship in the meantime, share laughter and memories, may we revel in our fellowship with our Heavenly Father who rejoices over us with singing, who wove laughter and delight into His creation, and who lovingly writes all of our stories, remembering us and inscribing our names onto the palms of 

His Hands. 

Be Not Dismayed

--more notes from RZIM Summer Institute, Amy Orr-Ewing speaking richly on the promises in Isaiah:


"Let the peoples renew their strength...

"You whom I took from the ends of the earth,
    and called from its farthest corners,
saying to you, “You are my servant,
     I have chosen you and not cast you off”;

¹⁰ "Fear not, for I am with you;
    be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
    I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."
-from Isaiah 41:1-10

"God’s omnipresence is personal: “I am with you, you are Known.”  The God who terrifies, whose presence is a reality, is with us.  Personally yours, your God.  He is saying, “You and I are inextricably linked.”  “I am your God.” “I will help you.”  If we can do it without Him our visions and dreams are far too small.

“I will strengthen you.”  This God is the Lord who is the judge of all the earth.  He is the one who strengthens us.  This is Truth, this is Reality.”

Two commands: 

Do not be afraid

Do not anxiously look around you

Four promises:

I am with you

I will strengthen you

I will help you

I will uphold you with My righteous right hand

Accompanying thoughts from Daniel 7:13-14:

1.        God is the Judge.  The God of all time, the judge, He is the one who will call all people.  Do you believe it?  If you do, it will shape how you live and think.

2.       The Lord is the Ruler of all rulers.  However great Cyrus was, God is infinitely greater.  We are unduly impressed by earthly rulers.

3.       The Lord is the uncreated First One.  He is the First reality of all realities.  That’s the one who says, “Do not be afraid.”

The covenant name for God  means “the first” – Yahweh.  Comes from the verb “to be”.  Used 6,000 times in the OT.  In the ancient cultures if you made a covenant it was for life.  It means for us, “We now have a shared identity.  We belong together.”  He is the God who bears the scar in covenant-making.  That’s the God who upholds us.

               

4.       He is the God who chooses us.  Vs. 8 “I have chosen you”

Stop defining and limiting your future by your past.  God is greater than your past, your personality, your pain."
--notes from talk given by Amy Orr-Ewing

"It is not from the secret counsels of Heaven, of which all are ignorant, but the open communications of Heaven, to which all have access, that we extract hope." Thomas Chalmers

The Sheer Wonder of Souls Eternal

This world is full of wonders.  Abounding as the greatest wonder is that of people, souls eternal.  Shall we look into people’s eyes today and know that God crafted their story as a particular articulation of His Love and Creative Hand? Do we often think about how our words sow seeds of encouragement or stamp out live growing things in their hearts?  Our lives are not so very long; how carefully we ought to consider what we scatter-sow.  Shall we love with our eyes and with the eyes of our hearts as we see one another walking the particular path God has written as their story?  Shall we choose carefully words which make the love of Christ our Brother, the magnitude and almighty power and purifying Fire of God our Father, the ministry of the Holy Spirit our Comforter and Guide – better even than the presence of Jesus incarnate, He said to His Friends--more real to them for today, that they may be faithful living actors in the story God is weaving around their hours?  Shall we be a strength and joy, taking their hand warmly as they stumble on the way?  Or shall we look the other way as we pass by?  After all, someone just texted us and dinner is late and we forgot to call that person and we’re leaving in two days for vacation and – it never does end.

My daughter and I had an unforgettable time at the RZIM Summer Institute this past week.  We were powerfully struck by all the persons we met – people who, behind their eyes and smiles and greetings all have extraordinary stories and it was a very great joy to hear even the little bits of them: the woman from Jamaica who is an oncologist and hematologist and university professor, talking softly about her readings on the martyrs; the young graduate from Kansas who said there were more tumbleweeds than people in his tiny town, but he wanted to articulate great things for God; the man who had a brain tumor and went into a seizure and was taken to the hospital just after sharing a great heartache in his life; the FBI agent who fights faithfully against the world’s greatest sorrows and fears;  the woman who holds Bible Studies in retirement communities and the one who mentors college students as family and the one who ministers to women snared into trafficking and the one who actively loves Muslim neighbors into Truth and really this list has no end.

We all drank deeply from the encouragement given by the Australian-accented, the Kenyan, the Scot, the Canadian with the British humor, and the man originally from India—dynamic powerhouse for the gospel whose friends and father said he would never amount to anything and now he stands before robed kings of foreign lands who embrace him after he speaks Truth and say to him things like “I hope this is the beginning of a long friendship”. (Take opportunity to read his books or listen to him on the radio (Ravi).)

I’m going to include here some notes from the conference that struck me, tho’ I do know it’s almost impossible for such things to translate with the same power and impact they have within the context we heard them.  And before I sign off, I would just like to share with everyone that my sugar snap peas are blooming white curled blossoms of promise and six feet high.  The rabbits have moved on to all my white impatiens, barred out of lettuce and peas by chicken wire.  Just thought those who read me rave about this a couple months ago would like to know that something good is garden-happening out in this rain.

Isaiah 6:1-8, 9:1-7

"Isaiah calls the people to faithfulness during a time of great pressure.  Pressure and difficulty are normative.  The Bible anticipates the lives of people will be lived out under incredible pressure...  When the dark clouds are rolling that’s when God speaks.

Isaiah knows with utter certainty that this is reality – God’s reality breaking in and everything is shaken.  This is the opposite of a self-centered perspective where we are the reality.

God is a reality, not a concept that fits around you and your reality.  There is no transformational power in God being a concept that fits around me and my reality.  God moves into my life and begins to shape my priorities and my life.

You will need to have encountered the fire of God – a reality for you—just as He touched Isaiah’s lips, cleansing them.  Fire represents judgment and wrath.  When God comes as a reality the self is shaken.  Our mediocrity shakes our esteem.  Isaiah was a brilliant communicator, articulate, and yet when God revealed Himself Isaiah said, “Woe is me” – I am ruined, disintegrating.

God is utterly holy and glorious.  The seraphim are calling out attributes of God—His Nature—constantly, present-progressive.  The Hebrews conveyed magnitude by doubling a word; tripling signifies superlativeness.  Holy, Holy, Holy – a category beyond categories.  Greatness, Brilliance, Purity.

The word glory means weight: it is permanent, substantial, the real.  God’s glory is ultimate over our material realities."

--notes from talk given by Amy Orrr-Ewing

Full Identification

"The sweetest part, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. It little matters to my servant whether I send him to buy a few cash worth of things or the most expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money and brings me his purchases. So, if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in position of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trial, much strength? No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me."  --Hudson Taylor 

Stromness, Orkney Islands

His Crown Jewels

I am convinced we haven’t cultivated the imagination we need in order to fully enjoy, and be encouraged by, some Scripture passages.  Take, for instance, talk of jewels.  Jewels don’t do it for us anymore.  We’ve got stores full of baubles and costume jewelry, drawers full of matching earrings and necklaces.  But it feels detached from our reality to view the crown jewels of England or Scotland; to imagine this king or that coming in full regalia to a coronation, a wedding, an affair of state.   We hardly have the framework to appreciate the magnificence of the scepters or crowns, and the beauty doesn’t touch our soul or move us--maybe because the crowds push us through the spectacle without room for reflection (after all, we’re more accustomed to Disneyland than to the Tower of London or Edinburgh Castle); maybe because our value system has been transferred to electronics, nice cars, big vacations.  Yet God uses this imagery often in Scripture, and since we’ve recently been reflecting on the divine and perhaps even hidden depth of His promises, two of these have been on my mind.

One of my very favorite passages of promise:

“…my kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord who has mercy on you.  Oh, you afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted, behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems, and lay your foundations with sapphires.  I will make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of crystal, and all your walls of precious stones.”  If we try to think about the essence of foundations, pinnacles, gates, and walls, like the Hebrews did, rather than a flat picture, we can imagine God’s building of our lives as something which is enduring, which provides a home, safety and security for other human souls, a place where fellowship is found; a person’s life work which lives on after they are gone, still acting as fortress, as castle.  Foundations, gates, pinnacles and walls do not come into being without careful planning for the purposes of strength, provision, purpose, and beauty.  Castles take a long time to build.  The blessing and the beauty of them lasts many generations beyond those whose dream and reality first brought them into being.  Castles were often made for defense and protection as well as for beauty.

 

But I digress, we are talking about jewels—how is it imaginable, when one sees castles built of grey rock, to get our minds around foundations laid with sapphire, blue, glowing translucent?   “Walls of precious stones”?  Breathtaking beauty beyond our imaginations.  A most lovely reality of our value and our potential impact here on earth, amidst both sorrows and joys; also perhaps a lovely reality of what is being built in heaven that bears our name as we fitfully and faithfully seek to honor Him with our lives.    Surely it is as simple as the first Westminster Catechism:  What is the chief end of man? …To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

And what about this one?

“They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels.”  Malachi 3:17

“A day is coming in which the crown jewels of our great King shall be counted, that it may be seen whether they answer to the inventory which His Father gave Him.  My soul, wilt thou be among the precious things of Jesus?  Thou art precious to Him is He is precious to Thee, and thou shalt be His ‘in that day’ if He is thine in this day.

“In the days of Malachi, the chosen of the Lord were accustomed so to converse with each other that their God Himself listened to their talk.  He liked it so well that He took notes of it; yes, and made a book of it, which He lodged in His Record Office.  Pleased with their conversation, He was also pleased with them.  Pause, my soul, and ask thyself: If Jesus were to listen to thy talk would He be pleased with it?  Is it to His glory and to the edification of the brotherhood?  Say, my soul, and be sure thou sayest the truth.

“But what will be the honor for us poor creatures to be reckoned by the Lord to be His crown jewels!  This honor have all the saints.   Jesus not only says, ‘They are mine’, but ‘They shall be mine’.  He bought us, sought us, brought us in, and has so far wrought us to His image, that we shall be fought for by him with all His might.”  --Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If we are not shocked, undone, and utterly changed by this reality of our life and infinite value in Christ, then we are stepping falsely on another path than the straight one called Truths of His Promises.  Shall we miss the beauty and wonder of the journey?  Or live a life of awe, of jewel-brilliance?

--This fairytale castle was built by the 9th Earl of Argyle, who was martyred for his Christian faith in the 1600's.  In the castle, you can view his Bible: imprisoned, he marked passages of encouragement for his loved ones by pricking his finger and setting his blood by the verse.

--Also in this castle: a letter written by Rob Roy; and the flag and drum of this clan carried into the Battle of Culloden. 

 Inverary Castle, Scotland

Infinitely Beyond Us

“Let us believe that the very promises of God we plead have a divine meaning, infinitely beyond our thoughts of them.  Let us believe that His fulfillment of them can be, in a power and an abundance of grace, beyond our largest grasping of though.  And let us therefore cultivate the habit of waiting on God, not only for what we think we need, but for all that His grace and power are ready to do for us.

“In every true prayer, there are two hearts in exercise.  The one is your heart, with its little, dark human thoughts of what you need and God can do.  The other is God’s great heart, with its infinite, its divine purposes of blessing.  What think you?  To which of these two ought the larger place be given in your approach to Him? Undoubtedly, to the heart of God.  Everything depends upon knowing and being occupied with that.  But, how little this is done…

“May it not be that you have had your own thoughts about the way or the extent of God’s doing it, and have never waited on the God of glory, according to the riches of His glory, to do for you what the heart of man cannot conceive? 

--Andrew Murray, Waiting on God

Orkney Islands, Kirkwall, St. Magnus Cathedral, 1137

Bearing Seed for Sowing

 “Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.  He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.” Psalm 126:5-6

“bearing seed for sowing” implies that there is more to suffering than enduring; that gospel words spoken, biblical truths applied, humble acquiescence to the inexplicable that God has brought into your life, belief in the unerring kindness of God and in the intercession that His Son Jesus bring to the throne, all are seeds that are sown, and God brings His Sun and His rain and His growth to those seeds.  Seeds are specific to the needs of nourishment of others and ourselves;  seeds grow up and bear fruit.  We do not need just to bear our suffering as a burden; that very suffering-burden can be a seed-sack full of that which brings life—seed for sowing.  Words of truth and hope and grace to one another scatters seed.  Knowing the Word spreads seed. 

“bearing seed for sowing”  leaped out at me.  Hearts blinded by tears can still walk forward, do the next thing that they know needs to be done, all the while clinging to the promises they find in Scripture—carry them in their pocket, post them by the sink, shower, car dash, wherever their eyes will look to take in Truth rather than the eyes of their fainting heart which may see but the trouble that lies all around them.  Each time is a tiny “bearing” of a seed. 

He doesn’t say we fertilize and cultivate the seed.  He says we can walk through our days continually weeping, all the while we bear the seed for sowing.  We wait for Him to carry the seed where He will, grant fruit where He wills.  But we have beautiful promises:

“For since the beginning of the world men have not heard or perceived by the ear nor has the eye seen any God besides You, Who acts for the one who waits for Him.  You meet Him who rejoices and does righteousness, who remembers You in Your ways.”  Isaiah 64:4-5

“We shall never forget a remark that George Mueller once made to a gentleman who had asked him the best way to have strong faith.

“The only way,” replied the patriarch of faith, “to learn strong faith is to endure great trials.  I have learned my faith by standing firm amid severe testings.”  This is very true.  The time to trust is when all else fails.

“Dear one, you scarcely realize the value of your present opportunity; if you are passing through great afflictions you are in the very soul of the strongest faith, and if you will only let go, He will teach you in those hours the mightiest hold upon His throne which you can ever know.

“Be not afraid, only believe.”  And if you are afraid, just look up and say, “What time I am afraid I will trust in Thee’, and you will yet thank God for the school of sorrow which was to you the school of faith.”—A.B. Simpson