13 Lessons #8 Privation and Preparation Providences

Oh, the days that fly south like so many in a flock of geese!

Thanksgiving Day, several years ago,  our company cancelled from sickness and unexpectedly we were outside playing tennis (attempting to, anyway—and yes it was cold and wet), when a huge flock of geese flew overhead honking and calling.  A majestic sight, perfect formation headed for warmer climates and chattering all the way.  We were charmed.  Amazingly, in the time we were there, 11 huge flocks flew overhead in the exact same path, long after the previous flock had passed out of sight.  It was wonder-ful!  All around us, so many things pass by our days that are full-of-wonder.  GK Chesterton, in his inimitable way, struck profound when he said “Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland”.  The smaller we grow, the more wonder creeps up all around us, overwhelms us, stalks our joys and sorrows.

One wonder-filled aspect of life is how God weaves the tapestry of our experiences for his purposes and our callings.  We see, so many times, how the very thing that seemed so lacking, was the thing He used to bring about His perfect providence.

When we consider our children and all that we want for them: all we want them to learn, to grow in, to understand, to be wise about, we are apt to wrap the lifetimes of several people around them in smothering expectation.  But God has a perfect purpose for them, a purpose unfolding inexorably every day.  If we lean hard into Christ and lay our petitions before the Throne with expectation of His doing wondrous things, we truly will be amazed at what He fashions out of the poor offerings we can craft for these young lives growing into maturity. 

Home schooling mothers so often feel the weight of all that they are not doing; all that their strength could not afford, all that didn’t happen in a year, all that one child got but another has not had opportunity; all that was distracted when another child was unwell in body or soul and took away the parents’ attention, or the mother was disabled for a time.  The list goes on and on, as long as there are unique and varied stories amongst us all. 

And, we as mothers are apt to put together an aggregate of all the women we know and admire, and then expect to be that aggregate in its perfect, radiant totality.  Especially if we home school.  Last night, one of the most lovely “older woman” examples I know, was mentioning a hard thing and she said she felt God encouraging her with this thought:  “You need to be who I have called you to be.”  (I will clarify that this is a far cry, in fact, quite opposite the prevailing crippling sentiment of “That’s just who I am and I’m not going to/can’t change”).  God’s calling on our personality, skills, strengths and weaknesses, have been given as His gift to our children as just what they need.  They have been put in our household for specific reasons, specific preparations, specific providences unfolding.

Lettie Cowman, in her marvelous biography of her husband Charles, which I quoted at length in the two previous posts ages ago (last week), points again and again to how God used both privation providences and preparation providences richly in the young life of her husband to prepare him specifically for an intense and fruitful ministry in Japan.  He ended up leading thousands in studying God’s Word, submitting to His Lordship, and raising up training facilities, during a time that Japan opened up tremendously to the gospel prior to the world wars. 

I remind myself time and again that the things which come into the lives of our children are meant, first and foremost, for their good and for His glory.  But also, they are specifically the means by which God is preparing them for the work that He has for them to do, the calling they are meant to fulfill and He lovingly weaves this with His own Hand, on which He has said He has engraved their names and remembers them more closely than a mother remembers her needy babe.  He is kind and good, and He knows all that they need far greater than even we whose attentions and love is constantly being lavished on them.  Surely we can trust Him to prepare them perfectly, especially if and when their hearts are submitted to Him and they themselves are seeking His utmost best with all their soul.  This tenderness of their hearts to Him, therefore, is the greatest need of the hour as they struggle with future decisions and present pressures.

One more thing I simply must point out.  Those geese we saw, by the hundreds, just merely knew they had to catch the wind current, flap their wings, and keep the pace between their comrades.  But unbeknownst to them they were following ancient instinct in perfect rhythm and perfect formation according to the plan God had set down for them at Creation.  Sometimes our “doing the next thing” simply, humbly, accomplishes far more than we expect it does, in keeping in us in rhythm and formation and heading for the destination God has planned for us since Creation, when He first knew our name and fashioned our days and those of our children.

**God mentions how He clothes the flowers of the field, and that His eye is on the sparrow.  The details of birds and blossoms continually show His infinite creative hand in details of crafting beauty unbelievably exquisite. How much more His infinite creative Hand in crafting His beauty into the lives of our--His--children when they love and trust Him.

*flower pics from Thistledown Cards

His Purposes Meet Without a Shade of Variation Part II

Every child of God may find and enter into God’s plan for His life; and along with the God-planned life is divine providence.  It is interwoven with every page of the Holy Scriptures and every part of our Christian life.  The God of the Bible is a Father and a Friend, concerned in everything concerning us, touching with a hand of love and power all the ordinary affairs of life, and directing and governing the whole universe, from the minutest insect that floats in summer air to the mightiest star that rolls in immensity.

In the story of Eliezer and Rebekah, we have the finest illustration of God’s particular providence.  The servant goes forth to find a bride for Isaac, watching every indication of the will of God as he treads his unknown way; and as the maiden meets him at the well and every circumstance seems to point in the one direction, he recognizes the hand of divine guidance and utters that sentence which is the very embodiment of the whole philosophy of divine providence: “I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren.”

Still more wonderful is the story of Joseph.  It begins with a vision for his future, and then with dramatic vividness everything is blotted out in the bitter trials and disappointments that blight the fair promise of his youth; but the hand of love leads unerringly through it all, and the day comes when every one of these sorrows is overruled for his good and he can say to his cruel brethren, “Be ye not grieved or sorry that ye sold me into Egypt.  As for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.”

Charles Cowman’s lifetime throughout was just one series of providences, and often when asked why he had chosen to become a missionary he would reply, “I did not choose.  It was God’s choice for me.”  How can a man “choose” a “calling”?  If a man is called he does not choose.  It is the One who calls that does the choosing.  “Ye have not chosen ME, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that you should go and bear fruit, “ says our Lord.  Men act as though God threw down before them an assortment of plans from which they might choose what pleases them, even as the shopkeeper tosses out a dozen skeins of silk to a lady purchaser, from which she might select that which strikes her fancy.  But this is not true.  It is God’s right to choose.  It is simply ours to ascertain and obey.  For next in its eternal moment to the salvation of a soul is the guidance of the life of a child of God.  And God claims both as His supreme prerogative.

--taken from Charles E. Cowman, Missionary—Warrior, by Lettie Cowman

His Purposes Meet Without a Shade of Variation Part I

“If the Holy Spirit dwells in us there will be a strange accordance with God’s working in the world around us.  There is a divine harmony between the Spirit and Providence.  There is a double presence of the Lord for the consecrated believer.  He is present in the heart, and is mightily present in the events of life.

“How marvelously,” wrote one, “God can fit things together and His purposes meet without a shade of variation.  Look at that beautiful scene in the temple when the infant Jesus was brought in to be presented before the Lord.  Just at the right moment old Simeon was there to receive Him by the intimation of the Holy Ghost; and we read further still that, at the same instant, the aged Anna, also coming in, recognized her coming Savior and joined in the welcome testimony.

“Look at Peter and Cornelius.  Just the moment Peter had been prepared for the commission, messengers were waiting at the door to take him to Joppa. God had it all arranged and He had but to carry out the plan.

“The Acts of the Apostles is the book of providences under the control of the Holy Ghost.  We see in that wonderful book how everything moves at the bidding of the ascended Christ and the Holy Spirit.

“Look at Philip and the eunuch of Ethiopia.  In the height of his work in Samaria, the evangelist is called away by the voice of God to go down into the desert.  Everything looked the other way.  The work seems to require him there, and yet he obeys and leaves thousands of seeking souls and a whole city moved to its depth by the Holy Ghost, to go down into a desert.  So God sometimes calls us from the most useful position to what seems a waste of time.  But God has stepped before Him.  This Ethiopian prince has been up to Jerusalem, seeking after the truth and has not found the need of his heart.  They meet on the way, but for a few moments, perhaps, or a passing hour; but in that hour an eternity has been decided for that man, and not for him alone, but perhaps for the whole nation to which he was to return with the strange and glorious tidings of salvation.

“Look at Paul’s wondrous life.  What a romance of providence, culminating in the marvelous voyage to Rome, which is a sort of picture in miniature of the whole church in her perilous journey through the seas of time.  Everything tried to baffle and hinder, but through everything God led him, and used the very things that seemed to be against him for the furtherance of the gospel, making all things work together for good to him and for the glory of His own great name.”

Everything is included in the plan of God.  Not only all things in general, but everything in particular.  The theologians love to call it the particular providence of God.  That means his plan in reference to the minutest details of human life, and the most significant things that happen…”

Part II to come…

Excerpted from Charles E. Cowman, Missionary-Warrior, by Lettie Cowman

Your Crown of Glory

The greatest things are always hedged about by the hardest things, and we, too, shall find mountains and forests and chariots of iron.  Hardship is the price of coronation.  Triumphal arches are not woven out of rose blossoms and silken cords, but of hard blows and bloody scars.  The very hardships that you are enduring in your life today are given by the Master for the explicit purpose of enabling you to win your crown….do not wait for some ideal situation, some romantic difficulty, some far-away emergency; but rise to meet the actual conditions which the providence of God has laced around you today.  Your crown of glory lies embedded in the very heart of those things—those hardships and trials that are pressing you this very hour, week and month of your life.  The hardest things are not those that the world knows of.  Down in your secret soul unseen and unknown by any but Jesus, there is a little trial that you would not dare to mention, that is harder for you to bear than martyrdom.  There, beloved, lies your crown.  God help you to overcome, and sometime wear it.  --Unknown

You shall also be a crown of glory In the hand of the LORD, And a royal diadem In the hand of your God.  Isaiah 62:3

...And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that does not fade away.  I Peter 5:4

Scattered Jewels

Beware in your prayers, above everything, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what he can do.  Expect unexpected things, above all that we ask or think.  Each time you intercede, be quiet first and worship God in His glory.  Think of what He can do, of how He delights to hear Christ, of your place in Christ; and expect great things.  –Andrew Murray

The capacity for knowing God enlarges as we are brought by Him into circumstances which oblige us to exercise faith; so, when difficulties beset our path let us thank God that He is taking trouble with us, and lean hard upon Him.  
–L.  Cowman

No calamity can be to us an unmixed evil if we carry it in direct and fervent prayer to God, for even as one taking shelter from the rain beneath a tree may find on its branches fruit which he looked not for, so we in fleeing for refuge beneath the shadow of God’s wing, will always find more in God than we had seen or known before.  It is thus through our trials and afflictions that God gives us fresh revelations of Himself; and the Jabbock ford leads us to Peniel, where, as the result of our wrestling, we “see God face to face”,” and our lives are preserved.  Take this to thyself, O captive, and He will give Thee “songs in the night,” and turn for thee “the shadow of death into the morning.”  --William Taylor

God takes the most eminent and choicest of His servants for the choicest and most eminent afflictions.  They who have received most grace from God are able to bear most afflictions from God.  Affliction does not hit the saint by chance, but by direction.  God does not draw His bow at a venture.  Every one of His arrows goes upon a special errand and touches no breast but his against whom it was sent. It is not only the grace, but the glory of a believer when we can stand and take affliction quietly.  –Joseph Carlyl

O my soul, thou hast not one single promise only, like Abraham, but a thousand promises, and many patterns of faithful believers before thee; it behooves, thee, therefore, to rely with confidence upon the Word of God.  And though He delayeth His help, and the evil seemeth to grow worse and worse, be not weak but rather strong, and rejoice, since the most glorious promises of God are generally fulfilled in such a wondrous manner that He steps forth to save us at a time when there is the least appearance of it….He commonly brings His help in our greatest extremity, that His finger may plainly appear in our deliverance.  And this method He chooses that we may not trust upon anything that we see or feel, as we are always apt to do, but only upon His bare Word, which we may depend upon in every state. 
–CH Von Bogatzky

Remember, it is the very time for faith to work when sight ceases.  The greater the difficulties, the easier for faith; as long as there remains certain natural prospects, faith does not get on even as easily as where natural prospects fail.  
–George Mueller

photo from Thistledown Cards

"Pressed Out of Measure"

"Pressed out of measure" (2 Cor. 1:8).

"That the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Cor. 12:9).

God allowed the crisis to close around Jacob on the night when he bowed at Peniel in supplication, to bring him to the place where he could take hold of God as he never would have done; and from that narrow pass of peril, Jacob became enlarged in his faith and knowledge of God, and in the power of a new and victorious life.

God had to compel David, by a long and painful discipline of years, to learn the almighty power and faithfulness of his God, and grow up into the established principles of faith and godliness, which were indispensable for his glorious career as the king of Israel.

Nothing but the extremities in which Paul was constantly placed could ever have taught him, and taught the Church through him, the full meaning of the great promise he so learned to claim, "My grace is sufficient for thee."

And nothing but our trials and perils would ever have led some of us to know Him as we do, to trust Him as we have, and to draw from Him the measures of grace which our very extremities made indispensable.

Difficulties and obstacles are God's challenges to faith. When hindrances confront us in the path of duty, we are to recognize them as vessels for faith to fill with the fullness and all-sufficiency of Jesus; and as we go forward, simply and fully trusting Him, we may be tested, we may have to wait and let patience have her perfect work; but we shall surely find at last the stone rolled away, and the Lord waiting to render unto us double for our time of testing.

 --A. B. Simpson

13 Lessons #7 No Greater Joy Part III

It is one thing to become adept at defining or observing a problem.  It’s quite another to gather a basket of transforming thoughts.  We see that many of our youth are not captivated by Christ, drawing deeply from the well of His refreshing waters, pursuing the Christ-walk in their daily life and in their sense of future calling.  Is the environment we create permeated with the following perspectives I’ve excerpted?  I have been challenged and convicted by John Piper’s When I Don’t Desire God; How to Fight for Joy.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.  Here are some quotes that I believe have everything to do with how we speak of, live, wear the gospel, and the value that our children come to place on it as a result of a million decisions of the heart and of daily life (ours and theirs):

“Love darkness, or love light.  That is the crisis of the soul.  But what is love for darkness?  It’s preferring darkness, liking darkness, wanting darkness, running to darkness, being glad with darkness.  But all of that is what Jesus demands for Himself.  “Prefer my light, like my fellowship, want my wisdom, run to my refuge, be glad in my grace.  Above all, delight in me as a Person.”  Look around on all that the world can give; then say with the apostle Paul, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better”. (Phil 1:23)  That is what it means to love Christ.  And to have no love for Him is to be accursed. 

“Surely then this is worth fighting for.  It may seem strange at first, but when we see what is at stake, no battle will seem more important.  Loving Christ involves delight in His Person.  Without this love no one goes to heaven.  Therefore there is no more important struggle in the universe than the struggle to see and savor Christ above all things – the fight for joy…

“One of the reasons that today in the Western church our joy is so fragile and thin is that this truth is so little understood—the truth, namely, that eternal life is laid hold of only by a persevering fight for the joy of faith.  Joy will not be rugged and durable and deep through suffering where there is not resolve to fight for it.  But today, by and large, there is a devil-may-care, cavalier, and superficial attitude toward the ongoing, daily intensity of personal joy in Christ, because people do not believe that their eternal life depends on it.

“The last two hundred years has seen an almost incredible devaluation of the fight for joy.  We have moved a hundred miles from Pilgrim’s Progress where Christian labors and struggles and fights all his life “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb 12:2) in the Celestial City.  Oh, how different is the biblical view of the Christian life than the one prevalent in the Western church.  It is an earnest warfare from beginning to end, and the war is to defend and strengthen the fruit-bearing fields of joy in God…”

“I do not minimize the joy of seeing the works of the Lord.  But His works are great because the Lord is great.  And they will become idols of delight unless they point us to the Lord Himself as our highest delight.  The faith that honors Christ is the faith that sees and savors His glory in all His works, especially the gospel…”

(My thoughts interrupting here--Esoteric theology ends and this gets very personal when we see and savor His glory in all His works as the answer and the antidote to the wailing “Why?” of some painful circumstance in our own lives, sometimes seeming as the very last thing that ought to have happened in good Providence, or sometimes seeming as the last thing we can personally bear.)

“Maintaining joy in God takes “work”; that is, it’s a fight against every impulse for alien joys and every obstacle in the way to seeing and savoring Christ…”

“We embrace the truth that not only our joy in God, but also the fight for joy itself is a gift of God.  In other words, God works in us to enable us to fight.  Embracing this truth prevents us from thinking that the joy we fight for is ultimately our achievement.  Joy remains a gift and continues to be spontaneous even though we ourselves are engaged in its cause.

“The evidence for this point is found in numerous biblical texts.  For example, in I Corinthians 15:10 Paul says, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace towards me was not in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”  Paul worked hard.  He did not say that God’s grace made his work possible.  He worked, but it was “not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”  So the fight for joy is our fight, and we are responsible to do it.  But when we have fought for joy with all our might, we say with the apostle Paul, “it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”  It was a gift.”

flower pic courtesy of thistledown Cards

13 Lessons #7 No Greater Joy Part II

At this most faith-encouraging conference we attended last weekend, comprised mostly of leaders in the broader church community, one speaker spent the last 20 minutes telling his story of their daughter’s turning from the Lord at age 16 and living a nightmarish rebellion for several years until the Lord answered their prayers and brought her back to Himself.  He then did something unprecedented.  He gave an altar call--not for those desiring salvation, for everyone there was involved in some aspect of ministry or was heavily supporting ministry—but for the parents and grandparents of those whose hearts were heavy over a child in overt rebellion against the faith.  A few immediately left their seats, and my heart began to sink as I had this fleeting thought, what if more than just this few came forward on this?  What would be the sadness and the profound generational implications of a number of people gathering up front – each one a story, each one showcasing a heart that at some point had seeds of doubt, apathy, temptation, worldliness, rebellion, planted, and in those secret places there was no one there to see it?  Did no one pull the first seedling weeds, did no one heed the veiled eyes, the defiant look, the undertone of answer, the dust on the Bible once so hopefully supplied, the turning of the mind to things distracting and defiling?  And then the long slide, the moments of decision strung together until the choking necklace of servitude to the evil one claimed its prize and the son of daughter turned to his parents and said, “Not your way, but mine.  Not your God, but my god, myself, and my desires”, not knowing indeed it was but an idol after all, and an infinite slide into the abyss. 

My worst fears were confirmed and then they kept coming.  A man seated nearby groaned in prayer, and I felt my own spirit groan within me—Oh, God, have mercy.  They just keep coming.  Over half of the 400+ people were standing at the front.  Constellations of grief, refracted sorrows.  The speaker prayed over them and I felt frozen with sorrow.  How is it that these numbers of our youth are being lost?  Shall we not spend considerable time praying and fasting about why we are not cultivating willing and ready soil to take up the mantle of the next generation?  We are all too busy, too distracted, and we do not recognize that the soil is tended early—oh, so early.  

Another speaker mentioned that now, by 12 and 13, youth have experienced much of the world and sin and are already becoming cynical and lost, in a way that used to attribute more to late teens/early twenties.  I perceive that the ages of 8-9 are hugely pivotal in discipling hearts, and the ages of 5-7 in cultivating appetites in antithesis to the culture of the world around us.  Under 5, habits of the heart and an allegiance to, a longing after, obedience.

At breakfast we sat with a family and asked one of the girls, 15, what she’d most enjoyed about the weekend.  “Dinner last night”.   “Oh, the mother filled in, “they’re just hanging out in their room and at the pool.  They would say the sessions at Universal Studios and DisneyWorld were their favorite ‘sessions’.  They came in last night the last twenty minutes when R-- was speaking and they said they couldn’t understand a word he was saying.”  (I just have to add here that the man who was speaking at this time is one of the most interesting and lucid, heart-reaching, culturally astute speakers/story-tellers I’ve had the privilege of hearing.  Our hearts burn within us…)  Cultivate the soil—early.  Their ‘hearing’ can be trained to take in godly counsel with joy and understanding, and a healthy stretching toward deep matters of life.

When they are very young it is a bit of a different matter than a few years later. What goes into their mental basket dictates what begins to forge and form appetites even before they really have the ability to begin the process of discernment. If their imagination is already captivated by worldly things, it is what will define their thoughts and desires in pre-teen years, creating noise that will crowd out a quiet spirit and a deep desire for Christ. If their imagination is cultivated in the areas that allow them to focus on that which is good, true, pure, lovely, then when they come to an age of understanding, of being able to make certain connections, then those good things can take root and grow and be nourished because there exists an appetite for them, and soil uncrowded and undistracted.

But when they come to this age and thereafter, it ceases to be the critical, main thing that they be shielded from each soiling influence, but rather that they have such a love developing in their hearts for their Savior, profound gratitude for what He has done for them, that they love to learn more of Him; and they are mortified at the idea of doing that which would displease Him or run contrary the set-apart life He asks of them.

This change is easy to miss and hard to navigate. It’s a trajectory from one to the next, always we as parents looking ahead to the emerging of their loyalty to Christ, their unshakable love for him and gratitude for His work in their lives, His powerful presence in them, hearts alive with understanding. They still may not have all the discernment built up, practiced, that they would need, and they are always thinking they are stronger than they are to resist temptation, to see clearly, to discern rightly. But it no longer is the primary need to keep them from each pitfall. It is the primary need for them to Love Christ and His Ways. So easy to let the protection be all about prevention and not about preparation.  But the Words We Speak are signposts to them, directing them in one Path or another path.

At all times this discipling is a matter of prayer.  At all times it should be a captivating transference of the immensity of God’s character, Christ’s gift to us in the Cross, and His Presence in us, His temples.  If we ourselves are not just daily undone with this reality, we hardly will create wonder in their hearts over it.  Sometimes it is making sure we ask after the state of their heart.  So many times, it seems, parents don’t feel they have the right to ask probing questions, to pry towards the inner thoughts, to direct them to a life-saving dependence on Christ, to illumine again, and again, the beauty and awe of the gospel.

Oh, it is the passion of my heart that we would desire the winsome glory of youth be invested wholly in glorifying our Lord and Christ.  And when any of us see good fruit being borne in them may we in gratitude say it is grace upon grace from His storehouse, undeserved.  The hand tool, the hammer and the chisel, can hardly look at Michelangelo’s masterpieces and say “I did this!”

13 Lessons #7 There Is No Greater Joy, Part I

Lesson #8  There is no greater joy than (through grace alone) to have children walking in Light and Truth

Last night I ducked out of the chill rain into a winter wonderland at a local plant nursery dressed brilliantly for the holidays.  Beauty decked the halls and every nook, overload for the senses.  I really love to decorate, I love color and I hunger for beauty, so admittedly I loved the feast.  Just the day before I’d been at a conference with other believers from around the world, in a sundrenched setting with bougainvillea trailing over the walls and funny little lizards running across the stones.  God has given us many things in this life to delight us and I savor them daily.  But there is a thing of value which rises star-ward, so high above the pursuits of our world and culture that it does not even measure with them.  I can say with all my heart and with no reservation, there is not a single thing that holds enchantment and sheer joy like seeing sons and daughters rise up loving Christ, growing in Him, overcoming the sins that would beset them, learning to love others, seeking out His Word and His Truth.  What wealth of the world, what exquisite art, color, what profound intellect, what magnificence of accomplishment, can even come close?   Nothing, no nothing at all.  What can bring such joy?  Aside from our own reality in Christ, nothing earthly here.

I puzzle, then, what scant attention is paid to preparing the foundation for this.  Knowing that what happens in their hearts is of the Spirit, and God’s work in their lives is that which will accomplish His perfect purposes, still I know that God has put children in families for a reason.  He has appointed parents as tools for building a foundation, preparing the soil, bending their knees and their earnest hearts daily; and there is so very much that can be done to influence what they grow to love, to embrace, to own as their beliefs.  So very much they can be taught, must be taught; so much that sets them to understanding their times, preparing them for taking their place in the world.  It is the greatest of callings for both mothers and fathers, and it is the calling which holds the richest rewards, thought we all have much responsibility in many areas.

 

Haggai is rather obscure among the h’s and z’s which obtusely end the Old Testament.  But I can’t shake the feeling there is something here for us.  Back then, the temple tangibly did need to be built, stone upon stone, maintained.  But now there exists no central temple of God: no, He has made us His temple, each believer taking his place in the church triumphant just as each stone upon stone rose to the heavens then.   So is there a message to us today?  “Thus says the Lord of hosts:  “Consider your ways!  Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple, that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified,” says the Lord.  “You looked for much but indeed it came to little; and when you brought it home I blew it away.  “Why?”  says the Lord of hosts.  “Because of my house that is in ruins, while every one of you runs to his own house.  Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew, and the earth withholds its fruit.  For I called for a drought…on all the labor of your hands.” " Haggai 1:7-11

How do we build the temple now, stone upon stone, maintained?  After our own clinging to Christ and His power, the next layer of stone is raising up godly children (“she is your companion, and your wife by covenant.  But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring." Malachi 2:15) who will be the next tier, stone upon stone, raising up the bulwarks and setting the flying buttresses in their place.  Any ministry we will do outside the home will not be as fundamental to building the temple as raising up godly sons and daughters whose strength and abilities glorify their God.

(My qualifier here is not to add one raindrop of sorrow to those who pray daily for a wayward son or daughter; this word is meant to wake us all up to the priorities of praying without ceasing and of investing, of discipling, of actively doing that which God has given us to do in the lives of sons and daughters in our homes, while there is yet time, of teaching their hearts while they are young.  Ultimately we know God conceives the fruit of salvation and godliness, and He perfects it in them.  And-- we also share deep conviction that we all falter and fail in so many ways as parents.) 

“Go up to the mountains and bring wood…”  searching out, effort, arduous labor, knowing all the while it is yet another Hand that will fashion the wood into carved masterpiece worthy of the temple.  Still we are called to gather and build, though it is the rough and unseen work of the unknown peasant.

“You looked for much but indeed it came to little…”

(Part II tomorrow)

photo courtesy of Thistledown Cards

The Ordering of Those Afflictions

When Providence frowns upon you and blasts your outward comforts, then look to your heart; keep it with all diligence from repining against God or fainting under His hand. For troubles, though sanctified, are troubles still.

Jonah was a  good man, and yet how fretful was his heart under affliction!  Job was the mirror of patience, yet how was his heart decomposed by trouble!  You will find it hard to get a composed spirit under great afflictions.  Oh, the hurries and tumults which they occasion even in the best hearts.  Let me show you, then, how a Christian under great afflictions may keep his heart from repining or desponding under the hand of God…

One method for keeping the heart from sinking under the afflictions is to call to mind that your own Father has the ordering of those afflictions.  Not a creature moves hand or tongue against you but by His permission.  Suppose the cup is bitter, yet it is the cup which your Father has given you; can you suspect poison in it?  Foolish man, put home the case to your own heart.  Can you give anything to your children  that would ruin him? No!  You would as soon hurt yourself as him. “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,” how much more does God.  The very consideration of His nature as a God of love, pity, and tender mercies – or of His relation to you as a father, husband, and friend—would be security enough if He had not spoken a word to quiet you in this case.  And yet you have His word, too, by the prophet Jeremiah:  “I will do you no hurt.”  You lie too near His heart for him to hurt you; nothing grieves Him more than your groundless and unworthy suspicions of His designs..  Would it not grieve a faithful, tender-hearted physician, when he had studied the case of his patient and prepared the most excellent medicines to save his life, to hear him cry out, “Oh!  He has undone me;  he has poisoned me!” because it pains him in the operation?

God respects you as much in a low condition as in a high condition; therefore it need not so much trouble you to be made low.  No, He manifests more of His love, grace, and tenderness in the time of affliction than in time of prosperity.  As God did not at first choose you because you were high, He will not now forsake you because you are low…

Though your condition is changed, your father’s love is not changed.

--from Keeping the Heart, John Flavel

photo from Thistledown Cards