Started in October 2008 as companion journal to a 40-Day Fast, the journaling continues as a journey of learning to know the heart of God better, to see how His love and grace changes me, and how that change affects others.
Here with us 1986 – 2008 | Home with God November 15, 2008
Article and video on Luke’s untimely passing at: http://kgmb9.com/main/content/view/11552/40/
“Friends” written by Michael W. Smith, sung below by Na Leo Pilimehana
When we pray, we’re asking for it. Literally.
Prayer is many things and has lots of different forms and functions, but the one function that is most familiar is prayer that asks for something. The technical term would be “supplication” or asking God to supply.
Now after a while, some of us begin to realize that much of our relationship with God is asking for it. It’s a pretty one-sided conversation. When was the last time in prayer that we turned to God and said, “And what about you? What can I do you for?”
We don’t because we know even before we start asking that we can’t do much for God, not really. After all He IS the Creator of the Universe, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, All-Holy, Almighty, Omnipotent God. Pretty hard to have a reciprocal relationship with someone like that.
But does God mind? Does he mind all the asking?
I remember when my daughter at not quite 3 years old was getting into her stride talking and launching into “conversation.” We were trapped on one of those long car rides between LA and San Francisco, and were pressing on non-stop through the more boring stretches that have you begging to just get home.
But my daughter didn’t notice it was boring. She was conversing, using her words, learning the fine art of social relationship with her mom, the “connection thing”—and asking one why question after another. She had a lot to ask: Why this? Why that? And what about that?…with no stopping to pause, ponder, pout or play. After about two hours, I had to say, “Honey, can you just be quiet now and not talk to Mommy for a while?”
She had exhausted me. It’s not that I didn’t like talking with my daughter. I just didn’t have the answers.
That’s the difference between God and I: He does have all the answers. And because He does, God delights in our asking. Our asking opens the doors to Who He Really Is.
In Matthew 7:7-11, Jesus tells us:
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
The invitation to ask doesn’t go only for the pretty, neatly wrapped things that can be easily packaged and tidily put away. That’s how we humans would have all our answers. The invitation takes on new dimensions when we give God something hard. I wonder if God loves these prayers best because it gives us the opportunity to see what God can do.
Let me repeat that: It gives US the opportunity to see what God can do. Asking God the impossible removes the limits we place on the possible. Asking admits that God has powers beyond human capability, thought or genius. When we ask the impossible, we turn the corner on who God is—from a neatly boxed God, to not what I thought he was, and then even more. That, in itself is a miracle within us that changes everything.
Every prayer is a crack in the wall between heaven and earth, a wall not put up by God, but our wall of little imagination that prefers to gaze at the limited things of earth than wonder at the limitless things of heaven. Ask for it.
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This evening, my daughter and I learned that one of her friends died in a car accident last night. He was 22, finishing college, a nice guy, good person with a future full of hope. It’s what you don’t want to hear. One of those things that you wish were a bad dream and not true when you wake up in the morning.
Something happened that caused the car crash. No one knows exactly. We can only speculate: Was it the weather, the roads, the car, the driver? Was there a distraction, a slip, blinding light from oncoming traffic?
And even if we knew the exact reason, the detailed cause, we can only second guess how it could have been prevented: If he had this, if he had that. If he hadn’t this, if he hadn’t that. If only…
If only what? If only he had known? If only someone else had changed the circumstances? If only God had stepped in and un-caused it?
Here, “if” is not a useful word because it dares to entertain that we are capable of always making the better choice, exercising better control, seeing and sidestepping danger with the flick of a steering wheel.
“If” is a conditional word offering a fork in the road that is just one intersection in a complex decision tree.
We cannot build our lives on IF.
It’s too shaky, too fragile to have every branch break off into more and more branches. We cannot hold steady in the uncertainty that maybe we made the wrong decision. With IF we always second guess.
We can only build our lives on IS.
The only way to have peace in our lives is to build on something Absolute – where there are none of the proverbial if's, and's, or but's—only IS. We need a permanent stability that moves us forward through change while remaining immovable, invariable, inalterable, unshakeable, unchanging, uncompromising, unconditional.
Jesus told us where to find that Absolute. He describes the differences between the surety of IS and the uncertainty of IF using house building. He says in Matthew 7:24-27—
Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
Building our lives on IF is like building our house on sand— a million little particles shifting with rain, flood, wind. Sand does not hold its ground, cannot hold its form but flees. IF is the same way: you can’t pin it down.
But when we build our lives on IS, we build it on rock. Rock has integrity, shape, certainty, mass; rock is the foundation of the earth. Jesus says we can depend upon his words and shape our lives around them. Jesus IS the Word of God, the Great I Am. You can’t get anymore IS than that.
And for those of us who need it simple, can’t remember big expositions about anything, let along theology, Jesus’ words boil down to just one thing: I love you. The Absolute is nothing less than God’s unconditional love. Love that is pure, without reason or motive, without season or expectation. Love that never goes away.
Tonight, I thought about my daughter’s friend who knew Jesus' words and practiced them. He is on the other side of time where there are no longer any "if's" to second guess his life, and where he knows without condition the sure love of God. I then went into my 13 year old son’s bedroom as he lay sleeping, and laying my hand on his head said a prayer that went like this:
May you always know the absolute love of God.
May you know His absolute love through me, your dad, your sister, your brother.
May His Love protect you, because I cannot.
May it guide you, because I cannot.
May it redeem your present and your past, because I cannot.
May it be your future, because I cannot
May it be your peace, because I cannot.
May you know that it IS.
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Sometimes I think I would enjoy life more if I were an ascetic.
I know that sentence doesn’t seem to equate. Enjoying life more would generally put the emphasis on the “more”—more quantity, more volume, more indulging, more More. I would seem the perfect candidate for the BOGO buy one, get one scheme. The problem is, I am.
I like a bargain, I like value, I like More, and I’d like to have more of what I like. A good experience begs a repeat experience, another partaking to match or even exceed the first. Pleasurable feelings, whether sight, sound, smell, taste, texture, or emotional have an addictive quality. How many people go to garage sales, thrift shops, Ross Dress for Less, One Day Sales for the mere thrill of the hunt?!
At the same time, however, I don’t need more, and sometimes I discover I don’t want more.
I often feel worse off for having more. Eating too much makes my body feel out of sorts. I physically turn away from tasting some foods because of their excessive richness. I can find a bag full of bargains at a store—but when I get home even though I like all my treasures, my delight meter falters.
When More should be sending me off the seismic sensory scale, inside the needle sometimes flutters before falling flat. Rather than filling me, More can deflate me. Can you have too much of a good thing. Apparently, yes.
Without being lifestyle anorexic, I feel better when I eat less. I travel better when I pack less. I write better when I say less. I find uneasy dissatisfaction when I see my closet getting too full. I become irritable when my day is too packed. Large department stores decrease my desire to shop. Crowds send me packing home. Long books are just long books.
Mine is an ongoing personal struggle of discovering life to its fullest on a thin line.
Have I always been like this? Are ascetics born or made? I don’t know, and I don’t think I quite qualify as an ascetic. I’m not a hermit…yet. But I do know that when I fast I get much more out of it than when I feast.
Recently I had one of those necessary medical procedures where I had to completely empty out my digestive track. Nada was left inside. When I returned to eating, I couldn’t enjoy a normal diet. After a few bites of meat, I felt like I had eaten a whole side of prime rib, several lobsters, and polished it off with an entire dessert table. It took a week for me to recover and eat a regular meal
Fasting not just from food but fasting of a spiritual nature does that to me, too. When I fast as a spiritual discipline, whether it be from magazine reading, gossip, unnecessary purchases, computer games, sarcasm—I become more acutely aware of what I do not need. The purpose of a spiritual fast is to release toxic intrusions so that we can make more room for experiencing a Holy God in a deeper, more intimate, more powerful, more real way.
There’s that More word again —and the paradox of fasting. How can less bring us more? Or, what is the difference between fasting and feasting? Maybe we can take our cue from that little letter “e.” E for eating, ego, engineering, escapism, escalation, everything excess.
I would like to suggest that fasting is feasting when we are holding out for the best things in life. Not just the cream, but the crème de la crème. Not just the fat, but the fatted calf that God, “the waiting father” roasts on our return (see Luke 15:11-32). We don’t need dessert when desert experiences show us oases to hide from the scorching sun, and when darkest night brings out the brightest stars.
The feast is in holding fast to Jesus, seeking Him to show us the way back to ourselves when we have become glutted and gorged. The feast is in letting go of everything, sending it out so that Jesus can show us in the residue that we with Him are enough. The feast is in finding the Essential E’s: El-Shaddai, The God Who is Sufficient for the Needs of His People. Emmanuel, God with Us.
When we do, we are better able to live on thin lines, to meet people where they feel empty and lacking, to love others when they feel small, to embrace those who feel invisible but whom God calls precious.
Thin lines help us survive lean times without giving up the best. It’s how Etty Hillesum lived in the Holocaust. (See Day 25.)
Celtic Christians talked about the thin place, saying that heaven and earth are only three feet apart, but in the thin places that distance is even smaller. “A thin place is where the veil that separates heaven and earth is lifted and one is able to receive a glimpse of the glory of God.”
May we all hold fast to thin lines.
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From Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest, November 15:
One of the hardest lessons to learn comes from our stubborn refusal to refrain from interfering in other people’s lives. It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with God’s plan for others. You see someone suffering and say, "He will not suffer, and I will make sure that he doesn’t." You put your hand right in front of God’s permissive will to stop it, and then God says, "What is that to you?" Is there stagnation in your spiritual life? Don’t allow it to continue, but get into God’s presence and find out the reason for it. You will possibly find it is because you have been interfering in the life of another— proposing things you had no right to propose, or advising when you had no right to advise. When you do have to give advice to another person, God will advise through you with the direct understanding of His Spirit. Your part is to maintain the right relationship with God so that His discernment can come through you continually for the purpose of blessing someone else.
Most of us live only within the level of consciousness— consciously serving and consciously devoted to God. This shows immaturity and the fact that we’re not yet living the real Christian life. Maturity is produced in the life of a child of God on the unconscious level, until we become so totally surrendered to God that we are not even aware of being used by Him. When we are consciously aware of being used as broken bread and poured-out wine, we have yet another level to reach— a level where all awareness of ourselves and of what God is doing through us is completely eliminated. A saint is never consciously a saint— a saint is consciously dependent on God.
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Hands off!
It’s what our teachers told us in kindergarten: Keep your hands to yourself! As adults, some of us still haven’t learned the lesson. Sometimes I think I’m so right…about other peoples’ lives, other peoples’ decisions, other peoples’ circumstances. And rather than actually helping them, my advice becomes a barging in, “pimp their lives” make-over as if I really knew better—as if I were God.
Hands up!
Chambers reminds me that the most important thing I can do for another person is that I “maintain a right relationship with God.”
When challenged by the Pharisees, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus said,
“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” [Matthew 22:36-40]
God reigns, hands down.
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What Do You Hear?
I posted the two recent quotes by Etty Hillesum (Day 25) and N.T. Wright (Day 26, Part I) because they resonate with me.
Their words go beyond mere reassurance that others believe in The Divine. They speak of my personal experience of a God that is intimate and alive, real and sacred, a God that moves within my life with the ethereal whisper of fine-spun gossamer and delicate filament, not quite visible to the naked eye and yet pulsating undeniably like an unquenchable quasar, the sure heartbeat of His presence.
Like Etty Hillesum, I feel Him in secret dwelling places—unmovable, unmistakable, like a bit of ore, precious metal lodged in a site deep within that I can’t quite identify, its nucleus irradiating an expansive sense of being alive.
Like N.T. Wright, I hear whisperings from someone who cares about me and the world—words of truth that show me how to put things right when I have badly botched up, perspective when the forces of this world create tilt that would make me believe I am going to spill out, mercy when we have all gone over the edge, grace that picks us up and shows the eternal, imperishable beauty that conquers the darkest evil to give us hope.
When I read the experience of fellow believers in Jesus, see on paper, hear in their words the intimacy with the God that I know who does not leave us and is here for our hope—I feel a simultaneous welling up of tears and shouts of “Yes! Yes! Yes!” He is here for me. He is here for you.
This is not something new. The apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4
vv 6-12
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
vv 16-18
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
I believe that God does speak to us. I stand by that. We can all hear His voice, feel His presence. It only requires surrender. Not in the sense of being defeated—because God is not our enemy, but in the sense of putting down our guard to trust the One who loves us more than we can begin to imagine.
Like the photo in Day 24 (My Child), we must rest unguarded, quieted with our head near His heart so that we can begin to catch the echoes, as N.T. Wright puts it, until the whisperings are real and we are “rescued at last.”
Click below to hear how Casting Crown sings this truth in "Voice of Truth"
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Quote by N.T. Wright
There are three basic ways of explaining this sense of the echo of a voice, it is call to justice, this dream of a world (and all of us within it) put to rights.
We can say, if we like, that it is indeed only a dream, a projection of childish fantasies, and that we have to get used to living in the world the way it is. Down that road we find Machiavelli and Nietzsche, the world of naked power and grabbing what you can get, the world where the only sin is to be caught.
Or we cay say, if we like, that the dream is of a different world altogether, a world where we really belong, where everything is indeed put to rights, a world into which we can escape in our dreams in the present and hope to escape one day for good—but a world which has little purchase on the present world except that people who live in this one sometimes find themselves dreaming of that one. That approach leaves the unscrupulous bullies running this world, but it consoles us with the thought that things will be better somewhere, sometime, even if there’s not much we can do about it here and now.
Or we can say, if we like, that the reason we have these dreams, the reason we have a sense of a memory of the echo of a voice, is that there is someone speaking to us, whispering in our inner ear—someone who cares very much about this present world and our present selves, and who has made us and the world for a purpose which will indeed involve justice, things being put to rights, ourselves being put to rights, the world being rescued at last.
[N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, HarperCollins, 2006, pp 8-9]
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From the diary of Etty Hillesum.
July 12, 1942~
Dear God, these are anxious times. Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me. I shall promise You one thing, God, just one very small thing: I shall never burden my today with cares about my tomorrow, although that takes some practice. Each day is sufficient unto itself. I shall try to help You, God, to stop my strength ebbing away, tough I cannot vouch for it in advance. But one things is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold You responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help you and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last. There are, it is true, some who, even at this late stage, are putting their vacuum cleaners and silver forks and spoons in safekeeping instead of guarding Your, dear God. And there are those who want to put their bodies in safekeeping but who are nothing more now than a shelter for a thousand fears and bitter feelings. And they say, ‘I shan’t let them get me into their clutches.’ But they forget that no one is in their clutches who is in Your arms. I am beginning to feel a little more peaceful, God, thanks to this conversation with You. I shall have many more conversations with You. You are sure to go through lean times with me now and then, when my faith weakness a little, but believe me, I shall always labor for You and remain faithful to You, and I shall never drive You from my presence.
Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman, born in the Netherlands in 1914, lived in Nazi-occupied Netherlands and died at the age of 29 in Auschwitz, Poland on November 30, 1943. During that time she kept a diary, which she entrusted to the safekeeping of a friend when she was sent to Westerbrook Camp., then published posthumously.
More on Etty at http://www.ehoc.ugent.be/en
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I Will Carry You
The Amy Grant song posted below (Day 23) reminded me of this black and white photo of my daughter in 1987. She was about 15 months. It’s one of my favorites.
It captures the essence of a child who completely trusts, laying down everything in the arms of one who cares. It’s a picture of feeling that all is well with the world—resting not for weariness, resignation, despair or surrender but in absolute security.
That’s how I would like to feel in the arms of God—possessed by the absolute that all is well with the world, resting not for weariness, resignation, despair or surrender. Not held down or coerced but secured by the simple gravity of being in the arms of someone who is able to carry me with the weight of a small child fitting perfectly in the crook of his neck, on the soft strength of his shoulders.
The parent-child relationship that God has designed feels no burden in the carrying because it is without a Why, or a “Y” —not so much carrying as caring.
Those of us who are human parents are always learning this. We so much want to carry every weight, failure, disappointment, hurt, mistake, sorrow of our children. We cannot. Only God can carry our children’s burdens, just as only He can carry our own.
Watching and walking by my children as they have grown up, I am having to unclutch, unclinch, unclasp my fingers from their lives. When they were small, I could carry them and the weight of their tears. But as the older two have grown into adults, I have had to let them down from my insufficient safety and limited strength, and allow them to walk on their own…prayerfully into the arms of God who can carry them.
A few weeks ago I was praying for my daughter, now 22 and a few weeks short of 23. I was going over the details of her life, talking to God about the decisions and opportunities before her. I went through my usual exercise of providing a litany of requests along with accompanying preferences, followed by my usual “discussion” with Him about pros/cons, and ending with what has become a ritual prying off of my hands on her existence.
Some minutes later in resuming other activities, I heard God say, “She’s not your daughter anymore.” I felt my heart respond, “Yes, she’s yours, Lord.”
I understood immediately. The time had come. While she will always be my daughter, she is no longer my little girl whom I can protect or command to stop, start, or turn. I felt relieved and sad at the same time—relieved that God will be there for everything she needs, all the time, in every capacity, beyond my ability; sad in the acknowledgement that a season had passed, a chapter ended..
I have said from my children’s birth that they are God’s. As the saying goes, our children are only on loan. Dan and I baptized them as infants, I holding firmly to my part of the covenant that I would raise them as best I could in the knowledge of Him—and demanding that God likewise keep His part of the deal.
God seems to be saying that He’s coming through. He has not forgotten His covenant. He’s making good with me, as He made good with Noah, Abraham, David, Mary, and every one who holds on to His Promise.
I will carry you. That goes for my daughter, and it still goes for me.
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<br /> <br /><a href="http://www.metrolyrics.com/Amy-Grant-lyrics.html">Amy Grant Lyrics</a><br /><a href="http://www.metrolyrics.com/">Carry You Lyrics</a></embed>
This song by Amy Grant reminds me that I don't have to bear everything by myself. Too often we think that the burden is ours to carry down a solitary path in life. As Christians we will even spiritualize it and laden our prayers with overwhelming responsibility.
But God says we were never meant to bear the weight of the world, only Jesus His Son can. Jesus says: Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
"Lay down your burden. I will carry you, I will carry you, my child, my child."
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