Life With God 9

And so we conclude our weekly foray into Richard Foster’s fine book as we started by rehearsing the the Immanuel principle means to us as we attempt to live it out. Life With God began by reminding us of a truth that we all know on the periphery of our consciousness but often fail to bring to the center of our lives; God is with us. In that intimate presence he extends a hand and asks, ‘will you be with me?’ Our choice is to partake of the stream of grace that is offered, to imbibe of it, to allow it to infuse our core and transform us such that we love God and love others more than we are ever able to comprehend on our own.

Or we can ignore it and spend the precious currency of our lives living on the edges of the grace. We can acknowledge that God is near but never truly see him as present and thereby lose out on the power of a grace filled life. This is biological life … it is not life in full!

The central theme of LWG is that we read the Bible not just for information but to discover the relationship with God that we can have. Our hearts and minds are stretched to greater realization as we see how the relationship has touched other humans for the centuries before we arrived on the scene. We read to know God, not just know of Him. In return, God speaks to us individually through His Word. He offers comfort, guidance, instruction, wisdom – anything we need so long as we hear his voice as we read His story.

There is a risk in exploring spiritual formation through the Bible that derives from our brokenness. The risk is that we try to do something rather than resting in the grace offered. Jesus pointed this out to the Pharisees:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (Jn 5:39-40)

The Bible is not the source of life, its author is. When we read for spiritual growth, we read to know the author the words. May He bless us in our efforts and help us to understand it is not for our efforts.

First Sunday in Advent with Micah

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The season of anticipation is upon us beginning today. The liturgical year begins anew with the first week in Advent. The break with the old year and everything that may have accumulated during the period is marked with a return to looking forward with a positive sense. Christians look from within the kingdom to the new heavens and new earth to be ushered in by the Lord. For now, we prayerfully look to the record of His coming and to those who pointed the way.

Isaiah often takes center stage in the readings but this year I’d like to turn to his contemporary, Micah. The prophet compresses the cycles of travail and hope and points the way to the coming King.

In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains;

it will be raised above the hills, and peoples will stream to it.

2 Many nations will come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob.

He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”

The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Mic 4:1-2)

Living in the kingdom after the Messiah has come gives our anticipation a similar focal point. The Spirit guides our prayers in the now but not yet kingdom of God which we inhabit and serve. We too look forward to a peace that can only be realized as the worship of God floods the world and replaces our brokenness with wholeness.

An Advent Benediction

May the Lord bless you with an aching heart.

An aching heart that beats with His as He longs to gather all of His children,

as He surveys the discord amongst His family, and the condition of His Church.

 

May the Lord bless you with burning eyes.

Eyes that travel to and fro and view the troubles of the world as opportunities,

eyes that see the people that are often unseen, and eyes that can look forward more than they look backward.

 

May the Lord bless you with a deep, abiding sorrow.

An anguish at the numbers of lost, of the found who have fallen aside, and for the found who continue to deceive themselves.

A sorrow at allowing doubt and mistrust into our souls and within our community.

 

May the Lord richly bless you with a childlike humility to know that the Spirit within you knows no boundaries.

May He simplify your thinking, replacing doubt with trust, and move you to change the world.

To sooth the aching heart, salve the reddened eyes, and turn sorrow to Joy.

 

Amen

The Blue Parakeet 6

BPkeetDo not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. (James 1:22)

The Lord’s brother reminds us that although having a correct view of the Bible regarding its inspiration, inerrancy, and authority are essential, because the Bible is God’s personal word to each of us we must also be doers of that word. Our training in reading the Bible has a goal of developing our listening skills. We want to be more than information gatherers. We want to approach the words in love, with attentiveness and intention so that our thoughts and behaviors become naturally driven by the voice that we hear emanating from those words. In this week’s chapter of  The Blue Parakeet, Scot McKnight devotes a short chapter to the importance of listening intentionally.

God speaks to us through His bible for a reason. He speaks so that we might know Him and enter fully into relationship with Him. In the context of that relationship we tend to listen differently. If we were to happen upon a cache of love letters between two strangers, we might sit and read them marveling at the turn of a phrase or the depth of emotion expressed but they would not necessarily speak to us as an outsider. On the other hand, finding the letters that we received from our husbands or wives early on in our relationship we hear a different voice. It is no longer our own voice reciting the words but the soft, gentle voice of our wives telling the story of the letter. It speaks directly to us because we know and love the person who put the words to paper.

The Bible is intended to be read the same way, in the context of a love relationship. God speaks through the story directly to you and I in order to move us. It may be for the purposes of mission or it may be to put up a guardrail in our lives by hearing Him tell the story of others who failed to do His word. Either way, the voice we hear is personal and loving, not the technically disconnected voice of the Greek interpretation of Paul. We aren’t moved by Paul or John or Micah, we are moved by the story that God tells through them.

This concept is amongst the easiest to understand when we ask ourselves what our significant others want from us more than anything else…to be heard. Listening is loving (thank you Alan Jacobs.)

Psalm 18 Pt 1 ~ The Lord is My Rock

I love you, O Lord, my strength.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies. ( vv 1 – 3 )

Such effusive praise is easily expressed in our moments of gratitude and joy as we revel in the grace that God has granted us in life. What of the more challenging times? Are we as able as David to continue to bless the Lord when it seems as though His hand has been withdrawn? The psalmist challenges our modern travails as he recounts his long running struggle with Saul.

There are three divisions to Psalm 18 and in the first David recounts the blessing of deliverance that God granted him from the hands of his enemies. He found himself as close to death as a human can be;

The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.

The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. (vv 4-5)

but still his reaction, born of spiritual strength was to seek his redeemer;

In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help.

From his temple he heard my voice; my cry came before his ears. (v 6)

Yahweh’s thunderous response is not measured and meek; he storms from heaven on the wings of the cherubim and whirling of the wind. Accompanied by lightning and the quaking of the mountains, God reaches down with his fist and scatters the enemies of His king. That same hand reaches out and pulls His beloved from the depths of his despair.

He reached down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters.

He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes who were too strong for me.

They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support.

He brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me. (vv 16 – 19)

You and I must trust that God would rush across the heavens to preserve us as well. This is one of the great challenges that we face but to continue to soak our souls in these words develops our David like confidence.

Life With God 8

imageThe life with God drives us to see what  could happen we are faithful doers of the Word rather than just hearers. As Foster begins to wind down his book Life With God, he is emphasizing the ‘why’ of spiritual transformation. He says that “ the quiet power of a life transformed by God is so explosive that it can redirect the course of human events.” When we are deeply enmeshed in a life lived in the immediate and intimate presence of God, we find ourselves with transformed inclinations. Our purposes are driven less and less by personal desire and worldly avarice and more by the subtle whispers that guide our fulfillment of God’s purposes through us.

Coming to this spiritual awareness is the purpose of the spiritual disciplines. Remember, the definition of discipline that we apply to our spiritual nature is the ability to do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. The spiritual practices are not intended for record keeping, that is, we are not rewarded by the measure of their exertion. Rather, the reward for the practice of spiritual disciplines comes in an increased sensitivity to the words of God through which He moves you to action. As Dallas Willard says, we are being prepared to enter a state of unthinking readiness in which we are able to respond despite pressures from outside to act otherwise. When the moment of action arrives, we  move in the Spirit without having to consider the possible societal implications of doing so.

There is a liberating truth that we can come to understand through study and focus on the lives of the saints that have gone before us such as John Woolman (pictured above.) The truth is that we do not become godly by trying to become godly. We become godly as our worldly habits are replaced by holy habits such as love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness. When our character is filled with these traits we will instinctively do the right thing at the right time for the right reason. Our practice of the Disciplines is not intended to change ourselves, that is God’s work. Rather, our practice is intended to open ourselves to His power so that the transformation may occur. This is the principle of indirection.

This principle works by addressing human character issues by attending purposely to the attending spiritual virtue. For example, pride is overcome by intentionally seeking out opportunities to serve others. Over time, this consistent practice puts us in a proper relationship with others, engendering humility within us. Paul mentions this intentional training in 1 Corinthians;

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified. (1 Cor 9:24-27)

We do not train in the Spiritual Disciplines solely for the sake of training. We train for transformation. The key to this shift in our understanding is to remember that it is God that will provide the transformation, not our own efforts. We must become expectant of the change, sensitive to His whispers that slightly change our mechanics as a coach would do. All of our training and the resulting transformation of our character will reorient us for life in the kingdom of God and our thoughts and attitudes and our behaviors will gradually become radically different from what passes for normal in this world.

Now, that’s not such a bad thing, is it?

Psalm 17 ~ In Righteousness I Will See Your Face

The seventeenth psalm calls out to God in His role as the judge of righteousness. The psalmist cries out for judgment on himself and his enemies. Read that again. Not only does he point the Lord’s attention to his enemies so their wickedness can be noted and avenged, he calls for God to examine his own life as well.

Hear, O Lord, my righteous plea; listen to my cry. Give ear to my prayer – it does not rise from deceitful lips.

May vindication come from you; may your eyes see what is right. (vv 1 –2)

Would you and I be willing to invite the same scrutiny? The power to make this invitation comes from living the undivided life, one in which integrity is an integral component of the believer’s life. We do not live in secret a life different from the one we live in the light. We would be able to say:

Though you probe my heart and examine me at night, though you test me, you will find nothing; I have resolved that my mouth will not sin. (v 3)

Reading this psalm challenges us. Our lips might proclaim our innocence in comparison to others but our heart knows the truth. God knows the truth as well and will highlight our hypocrisy to its full extent the harder we beat our chests. We want to be in the position that the psalmist is, satisfied with the immediate presence of God and being able to express how much we cherish God. Pray that we might all be so blessed.

Psalm 16 ~ My Portion and My Cup

How many times do our prayers drift toward our needs or even our desires? We may be enjoying a perfectly satisfactory life where needs can slide towards desires and still feel the need to make the request of the Lord. Or, our circumstances may be different as much of our waking time is spent pursuing the basic requirements of life. Our prayers of request take on a different tone at these moments. In either scenario, the psalmist shows us the proper approach to the throne.

Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. (vv 5-6)

You say, it would be easy to praise the Lord if my life was provisioned as such. I can envision very large boundaries that would remove the daily stress and concern from my life. On the other hand, when circumstances are dire, how am I to lift my voice in praise? We do it in trust. Trust that the portion assigned by the Lord is perfect for His purposes. Trust that the exact amount of security needed in order for us to serve His purposes has been provided. In trust that our labors and struggles in this kingdom will be rewarded in the new heavens and the new earth of eternity.

Trust comes from relationship. Relationship is born in the crucible of prayer.

I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.

I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. (vv 7-8)

Perhaps our time in prayer is better spent in learning the depth of our relationship with the Lord. Knowing how deeply we are loved puts our circumstances in perspective.

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (v 11)