Filled with wonder, awestruck wonder
at the mention of your name
Jesus your name is power,
breath, and living water
Such a marvelous mystery
Holy, Holy, Holy
Is the Lord God Almighty
who was, and is, and is to come,
With all creation I sing
Praise to the King of Kings
You are my everything
and I will adore You
-Jennie Lee Riddle
Sunrise over the Steeples Range this morning
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!
Keep looking down.
You’re seated with Christ in heavenly places.
There’s something about seeking Jesus that changes our perspective. Often when we pray we try to explain the problem to God. When we don’t receive relief from unpleasant circumstances in the time and manner which seems logical to us we are tempted to go back to God and detail the problem again and beg for help. Perhaps we worry he is unaware of the seriousness of the situation and think that we can enlighten him.
I have been guilty of worrying at God, and then labeling it “my prayer time.” Apparently He is not all that impressed by my dramatic prognostications. “If this doesn’t happen soon, then that will happen and we’ll have an even bigger mess, so please answer right now, Lord.” I am slowly learning that as I spend time worshiping him he lifts me up to his perspective.
I read a quote by Ashley Brilliant that said, “Praise the Lord! But remember the Lord knows the difference between praise and flattery.”
I used to wonder why God needed praise. Was his ego so fragile he needed people to constantly boost him up? Was it to remind us of what lowly worms we were in comparison to Him? I’m embarrassed to admit my efforts at praise bore close resemblance to my efforts to butter my Daddy up before asking him for money when I was a kid.
One day after praying and thanking the Lord (quite genuinely this time) for miraculous ways he had intervened in my life even though I certainly didn’t deserve it, I put music on, closed my eyes and just listened. I had a vision of seeing the world from the viewpoint of an eagle. I felt like I was riding on the back of the eagle’s spread wings, soaring over incredibly rich forests, sparkling rivers and light-drenched coastlines in the warm low evening sun. I can’t describe the beauty.
Worship takes our eyes off ourselves, off our problems, and lets him take us up to a different perspective. He doesn’t need our validation to know who he is; we need his to know who we are, and worship turns our eyes toward him.
But God, with the unfathomable richness of His love and mercy focused on us, united us with the Anointed One and infused our lifeless souls with life—even though we were buried under mountains of sin—and saved us by His grace. He raised us up with Him and seated us in the heavenly realms with our beloved Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King. He did this for a reason: so that for all eternity we will stand as a living testimony to the incredible riches of His grace and kindness that He freely gives to us by uniting us with Jesus the Anointed. For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing. For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago. (Ephesians 2:4-10 The Voice)
When we pray we can join with his plans, his solutions, from his perspective. Our current “impossible” circumstance may very well be the character-builder that leads to rich blessings for a future generation. Or it could be a ripe opportunity to see another aspect of God’s love and goodness that we have never seen before. It’s just hard to see the bigger picture when we are smack up against a fence that is 4 inches higher than our eyeballs.
“I don’t get it!” I cry. “I can’t see any way around this problem!”
“So come back up here,” Jesus offers.
“How do I get there again?” I ask.
“Enter my gates with thanksgiving in your heart. Enter my courts with praise. I am the one who lifts you up. This is where you belong.”
“Spirit wings,
You lift me over all the earthbound things
and like a bird my heart is flying free
I’m soaring on the song Your Spirit brings
O Lord of all You let me see a vision of Your majesty.
You lift me up, you carry me on your Spirit wings.”
(Claire Coninger and Michael Foster based on a poem by Madame Guyon)
When morning gilds the skies
my heart,
awakening,
cries,
May Jesus Christ be praised!
Sunrise over the Rocky Mountains in Banff National Park from the Trans-Canada Highway this morning.
Erupt with thanks to the Eternal, for He is good
and His loyal love lasts forever.
Let all those redeemed by the Eternal—
those rescued from times of deep trouble—
join in giving thanks.
(Psalm 107:1,2 The Voice)
Surprise us with love at daybreak;
then we’ll skip and dance all the day long.
(Psalm 90:14 The Message)
Kootenay Lake Dawn
The Eternal’s purposes will last to the end of time;
the thoughts of His heart will awaken and stir all generations.
The nation whose True God is the Eternal is truly blessed;
fortunate are all whom He chooses to inherit His legacy.
(Psalm 33:11,12 The Voice)
There must be more than this
O breath of God, come breath within
There must be more than this
Spirit of God we wait for You
Fill us anew we pray
Fill us anew we pray
Consuming fire
Fan into flame
A passion for Your name…
(from Consuming Fire by Tim Hughes)
It’s much easier to pray for God’s consuming fire to come and purify our hearts before we have experienced how intensely uncomfortable that process can be. Isaiah agonized,”Woe is me! I am undone! Everything that has come out of my mouth is filth!” when confronted with the holiness of God.
This is not a prayer for dutiful gatherings of people to sing casually without thought, or for those looking for an easy life.
This is not a prayer for those who only seek God when they want relief from suffering or think following Jesus means he will buy them a colour TV and fill their freezers with microwaveable dinners.
Jesus Christ’s pure love shines a light on our acceptance of ugly unholiness in ourselves as only-human-normality and reveals putrefied only-human-depravity. His Holiness confronts it with the intensity of a burning laser. His relentless kindness and gentleness provide the burning coal that purifies and leads us to change, but it is not a happiness-all-the-time experience. Sometimes the reality of living in the light of pure love that leads to life-changing Godly sorrow (and not merely hopeless self-pity) results in brokenness and bitter weeping before the joy of closer friendship with the Lover of our Souls.
This prayer is only for those who dare to hope that knowing Him is better than life.
Wow! The little counter over on the left says this is my 500th blog entry. And I was worried I would have nothing to say after the first month.
I never knew, when I dared to overcome my technophobia to find an outlet for my poems, paintings, photos and musings, that God would have so much more to teach me than overcoming fear of computerese. I sometimes questioned the wisdom of writing about events of this annus horibilis before there was any evidence of it becoming annus mirabilis. And who knew it was going to be an annus horibilis anyway?
What if things don’t work out? What if I die of ovarian cancer? What if the depression comes back? What if our miracle grandbaby doesn’t make it to term? What if our son-in-love dies of necrotizing fasciitis? What if our son and his family never recover losses from the flood? Maybe I should wait before I write about them, to make sure God answers our prayers.
Then it occurred to me that I am not in charge of God’s P.R.. This is what it is like to walk in faith, not knowing how the cliff-hanger ends. (And honestly I did not make this stuff up. It has been a horrible time -and a miraculous time.) I have also noted that my anxious questions starting with “what if” seldom come in God’s tender voice.
So to celebrate 500 posts I have chosen not the five most popular blogs but five with the most meaning to me -some of them written in blood and some of them written in tears of joy. Five, because the number 5 is symbolic of grace, and Charis, my chosen name, means grace in Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament. (Psallo means song, and since I have lived a life full of songs it seemed appropriate.)
Right off the bat I’m going to cheat on my own rules because these two posts are part of one story that cannot be separated (and I can do that -my blog, my rules, and my bending of rules) This is about how God took something utterly horrible and turned it into something miraculously wonderful. These were written during the time many excellent doctors expected our son-in-love to die from multiple overwhelming complications after contracting an extremely severe case of flesh-eating disease. He has been restored to full health and the story is just too too too good not to tell over and over -so it goes first. Love is Louder and Love is Louder part II
For the second I am going back into history. After spending decades drowning in soul-crushing depressive mental illness, I was raised up out of the depths. Bluer than Blue
One of the hardest parts in co-operating with Jesus’ healing work and recovering from the prison of the past is the struggle with forgiveness. Letting Go is a poem about stepping away from practised anger and entrenched bitterness.
Red Button, Yellow Button is one of my favourites because the older I get the more I appreciate the insightful wisdom of children before we educate it out of them.
Finally, Night Vision, because Jesus Christ is the Lover of my soul and my greatest desire is to know him and live in his presence.
So now the beautiful, sorrowful, joyful, frustrating, exhilarating journey continues.
To borrow from The Proclaimers I would like to make a proclamation of my own:
But I would write 500 blogs
And I would write 500 more
Just to be the one who wrote 1000 blogs
To tell you God is good.
And yes, He will restore.
“I have told you these things,
so that in me you may have peace.
In this world you will have trouble.
But take heart!
I have overcome the world.”
-Jesus
(John 16:33)
Charis: Subject to Change 