Bring us back to You, God.
Turn the light of Your face upon us so that we will be rescued from this sea of darkness.
(Psalm 80:3)
Category: Black and white
Toward the Bright Mountains
Sometimes I feel like a Hobbit -and not a young Hobbit. I like the Shire; it’s cozy. But one day a tall man talked to me about going on an adventure. Then dwarves showed up and ate everything in the pantry.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Toward the bright mountains… but first we turn left and go through some valleys and forests and meet beings you are not familiar with. Some good, some not. But you won’t be alone. ”
“And how will this turn out?”
“Here’s the Book. Read it yourself.”
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And to the Earth It Gave Great Light
*And to the earth it gave great light*
But who can discern their own errors?
Forgive my hidden faults. (Psalm 19:12)
Here’s the thing about light: it reveals.
Sometimes we would really rather not see the things it reveals especially if those revealed things are in the lives of people we trust to be shining examples for us. When light reveals our own errors and faulty thinking, those embarrassing weaknesses hidden from even ourselves, we want to squirm in shame. Light can be uncomfortable.
But God is merciful, and willing to exchange the lies we have believed for truth. If we avoid kicking them into another dark corner or assigning their ownership to someone else, but rather own up to them, he is willing to show us a better way. He is faithful and just. He will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Yesterday an error on my part was revealed to me by a man in a car with flashing lights on top. It was not a deliberate disobedience of the law, but nevertheless a serious oversight on my part and I was extremely embarrassed by it. Mortified. My first response, when the light shone upon it, was to want to make excuses, but the better response was to say, “Yes, Sir,” and go get the problem fixed before I went any further. So I did. Today I my conscience is clear and I am actually glad that he stopped me when he did, before something much worse happened. (And to all my friends and acquaintances who drove by while the man in uniform and I chatted on the side of the road and then he gave me a ride in the back of his squad car –“Hi there!”)
Repentance means to turn around. Change. Have a different thought.
What we are telling you now is the very message we heard from Him:
God is pure light, undimmed by darkness of any kind.
If we say we have an intimate connection with the Father but we continue stumbling around in darkness,
then we are lying because we do not live according to truth.
If we walk step by step in the light,
where the Father is,
then we are ultimately connected to each other through the sacrifice of Jesus His Son.
His blood purifies us from all our sins.
If we go around bragging, “We have no sin,”
then we are fooling ourselves and are strangers to the truth.
But if we own up to our sins,
God shows that He is faithful and just
by forgiving us of our sins and purifying us
from the pollution of all the bad things we have done.
(1 John 1:5-9)
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See the Big Picture
There is something about this area on the Cowboy Trail in Southern Alberta that seems to catch my attention every time I drive through it. This photo was taken in the area between Longview and Black Diamond. So many times the sun burst through the clouds in a dramatic eye-catching display just as I approached Longview that one day I jokingly said to the Lord, “Are you saying something here?” Immediately I got that “pay attention” feeling. Then it came to me -Longview -long view. Take the l-o-n-g view. See the big picture.
Sometimes we are so swamped in the dailiness of life it is difficult to see the big picture. Many of us, like so many high school and university students, still complain that we don’t see the point of learning a lesson that seems annoying and time consuming. “I want to be a film-maker. What good is algebra going to do me?”
When I was a child learning to play scales on the piano to the slave ship drumming of a metronome, I yelled at my mother that I saw no purpose to such a pointless exercise. I wanted to be a singer! I could see no possible application for this time-waster in my adult life. I knew even then I did not have the fine motor control it took to be a good pianist. Piano playing was not my gift. Too many accidental accidentals. It was utterly frustrating.
Eventually I became a singing teacher. I may have played a million scales and vocal exercises in my career. I never did develop good piano playing technique. I hired good accompanists for my students for exams and competitions, but in my studio I actually played the piano a lot more than piano teachers do.
Sometimes we go through lessons and testing that seems like a frustrating waste of time. I get the feeling the lesson I have been complaining about lately is a unit on perseverance and endurance. It’s not my favourite, but I hear the great teacher say, “Trust me. This will come in handy. I have a purpose in all this. Longview…long view…get it? See the big picture.”
This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies:
“I am the First and the Last;
there is no other God.
Who is like me?
Let him step forward and prove to you his power.
Let him do as I have done since ancient times
when I established a people and explained its future.
Do not tremble; do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim my purposes for you long ago?
You are my witnesses—is there any other God?
No! There is no other Rock—not one!”
(Isaiah 44:6-8 NLT)
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Larger Measure
There are two ways of getting out of a trial. One is simply to try to get rid of the trial, and be thankful when it is over. The other is to recognize the trial as a challenge from God to claim a larger blessing than we have ever had, and to hail it with delight as an opportunity of obtaining a larger measure of divine grace. -A.B. Simpson
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When Skies are Grey
God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry
chafe our shoulders and weigh us down;
when the road seems dreary and endless,
the skies grey and threatening;
when our lives have no music in them,
and our hearts are lonely,
and our souls have lost their courage.
Flood the path with light,
run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise;
tune our hearts to brave music;
give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age;
and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage
the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life,
to Your honour and glory.
-Augustine of Hippo
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Black and White
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.
(Psalm 32:8,9)
I heard someone ask once, “What are the minimum qualifications for being a Christian? What is the least I must do or believe to get “in”? I had trouble answering that question. It felt like a young man asking a friend’s advice on a relationship with a woman who expressed her love for him, by asking, “What is the minimum required of me to be married to her?”
I would be tempted to say, “Run, girl!”
Jesus answered a similar question in Mark 10.
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
In other words, he wants your whole heart.
When first introduced to the God of power in the desert, the one who showed up on the mountain in a sound and light show beyond description, the children of Israel said, basically, “Moses, this God is too scary. Tell you what, you talk to him, get his demands in writing, and when you have it in black and white we’ll have our people look at it and get back to you.” Thus a relationship with rules and a book (and experts on rules and the book as intermediaries) became the norm. The question they were asking was, “What is the minimum we need to do to get what we want and keep this God from being mad at us and making our lives miserable?”
A minimum marriage requires signatures in black and white on a marriage certificate. A true marriage requires a husband to lovingly lay down everything for his wife, the way Christ laid down his life for the church, and for a wife to respond to that love by offering him everything she has in return. The Bible often uses the metaphor of the Bride of Christ for his chosen church, the ones who have responded to his call.
Being a Christian is all about relationship. And yes, God does communicate with his beloved with more than rules and a book. He has already given everything. She just has to come to him.
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Upon reflection
I heard somewhere that if you can worry, you can meditate. The difference between worry and meditation is just the subject matter. To the believer in Christ meditation is not an emptying, but a filling.
When we worry we reflect upon the evidence of things seen. We ponder it, we turn it over in our minds, we obsess about not having a workable solution, about how “It cannot be done.” Worry leads to unbelief.
When we meditate we reflect upon the substance of hope, the evidence of things unseen. When we reflect on the promises of God and bring back to memory the times when He has demonstrated his faithfulness we are filled with faith and hope.
When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches,
For You have been my help,
And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to You;
Your right hand upholds me.
(Psalms 63:6-8)
Related post: Substantial Unbelief https://charispsallo.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/substantial-unbelief/
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I left my heart in….?
“To say that worship is either about glorifying God or finding personal satisfaction is to put asunder what God has joined together. His glory and your gladness are not separate tracks moving in opposite directions. Rather His glory is in your gladness in Him.” -Sam Storms.
In my life I’ve been part of different denominations within the big C Church. Each of them seemed to emphasize their favourite part of the heart –the lebab– and each were willing to jettison a part another group cherished. Some, admittedly on the extreme edge, said the will is pretty much vetoed by God’s sovereignty, that he is going to do whatever he is going to do with or without our participation or input, thank-you-very-much. Some told me the mind is a source of pride and that serious study is an exercise in distraction. Some taught the emotions are untrustworthy, misleading, and a hindrance to disciplined devotion.
I’ve never managed to successfully ignore any part of my heart for any length of time. When, under pressure, I tried to set aside emotions, for example, in order to please someone else, the conflict without became the conflict within. When a God-given part of our souls is ignored for too long a person experiences, well, some craziness –at least some major stress. At least I sure did. And when it erupted out of me, it was not pretty.
At some point in my past I have been told I am too emotional, I am too intellectual and I try too hard. At some point I have been advised to shed all of these parts of my heart –not all at once of course. The first to go was those old unreliable emotions.
I spent many years forging on without the caboose of emotion, wondering why it never caught up. The faith life was a joyless drudge of duty and responsibilities. One day I finally realized that caboose thing was not even on the same track. I think I left it in a switching yard someplace. My soul needed my caboose. Without it I was lacking the discernment that comes from feeling something is off or the joy in the Lord that is my strength.
I see the same thing happening with some folks who have been bullied by academics. They tend to react by praising anti-intellectualism and raise feeling/sensing or engaging the will to a higher level. Some of these folks have told me I think too much. I am too much in my head. But God gave me a brain for a reason, and if I leave it on the hook with my jacket I also give up one of the tools for discernment –and the joy of discovery whilst chasing a rabbit trail through a genealogy.
I’ve also been told I try too hard, that I should “let go and let God” (whatever that means). It would seem that some of those who have lived under the oppression of legalistic attack are tempted jump to the ditch on the other side of the road and use grace as an excuse for not taking responsibility for the fruit that comes from stupid unwise choices. But when I disengage my will my jeans don’t fit anymore, I seldom get around to telling people how good God is –and frankly, I start to feel more like God’s victim than his beloved adopted child with a role to play in the family business.
I am not suggesting any merit in being led by wilfulness, argumentative king-of-the-hill theological debate nor unfettered emotionalism. Apart from the transforming love of Jesus any gift of God is perverted when it serves selfish ego and it all becomes a gong show. Our minds, wills, and emotions need to come together in submission to Christ in spirit and truth .
But that’s why Jesus the good shepherd came –to restore our souls.
This is what integrity means to me – Jesus helping me get my stuff together and having it all head in the same direction at the same time on the same tracks. My prayer is that the Lord unites my heart to fear His name. I choose to study the scripture because it points to Jesus Christ and he just makes me feel good and want to join in on his plans. I want to put everything in happy submission to the Creator who made me and wants me to use and enjoy every gift he gives to his glory –and my gladness.
Abba, with my whole heart I offer You my praise! Thank you for every good gift and for making me the way you made me.
Teach me your way, O Lord,
that I may walk in your truth;
unite my heart to fear your name.
I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever. (Psalm 86:11, 12)
I will sing of steadfast love and justice;
to you, O Lord, I will make music.
I will ponder the way that is blameless.
Oh when will you come to me?
I will walk with integrity of heart
within my house. (Psalm 101:1,2)
And as for you, [Solomon] if you will walk before me,
as David your father walked,
with integrity of heart and uprightness,
doing according to all that I have commanded you,
and keeping my statutes and my rules,
then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever…
(1 Kings 9:4,5)
Charis: Subject to Change 