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.
“Gentleness is not apathy but is an aggressive expression of how we view people. We see people as so valuable that we deal with them in gentleness, fearing the slightest damage to one for whom Christ died. To be apathetic is to turn people over to mean and destructive elements, to truly love people cause for us to be aggressively gentle.”― Gayle D. Erwin, Spirit Style
I have told my kids to avoid burning bridges. It’s amazing the way people turn up in our lives thirty years after we were sorely tempted to tell them what we thought of them and their stupid job the day we were told to clean out our desk. What is truly amazing is that people can change and thirty years later enemies can become friends.
I am so grateful that the Lord put a guard over my mouth sometimes (although, alas, sometimes I shouted over it.) I’m so glad gentle folk did not curse me when I was so angry and hurt by some folks in the church and walked away in disappointment. (Discussions about which denomination would be the greatest in heaven were as tiresome to me as the disciples squabbles were to Jesus.) I am so thankful the gentle ones not only talked about grace; they practised it.
“Speaking the truth in love” is less about criticizing that part of people’s lives which is dead or rotten and more about pointing out the part of them that God sees – the part of them which, like the water lilies I saw in this pond with its dead wood, yearns to live and grow and blossom.
It also struck me this week, whilst reading the apostle Paul’s qualifications to write the letter to the Galatians, that God knew who Saul was going to be even when he was violently opposed to Jesus Christ and threatened his followers. God saw something in him even then and chose him in advance for a special mission. Unlike many of us would have, given the opportunity, Christ did not curse him. When Jesus spoke the truth to him it was to tell him who he really was.
Today I read another blog publicly condemning some well-known ministers. One commenter was quite willing to call them “accursed” for what he considered to be inaccurate doctrine.
There is a reason why Paul told Timothy and Titus that leaders need to be able to teach, but with gentleness. It could be that God is simply not finished with the people they are charged to serve and love. It could be that people whose understanding of God is not yet complete (and whose is?) are people in process and need, like Apollos, to be taken aside and gently and lovingly taught by someone who actually has a relationship with them, rather than be publicly executed by a stranger.
Decisions to remove those who have become toxic to the body from positions of influence can only be made by those who love deeply and are willing to lay down their lives for another in their care. Poor teaching is best routed by good teaching.
We do not need not be contentious in order to contend for the faith.
Again I say, don’t get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights. A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach, and be patient with difficult people. Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people’s hearts, and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil’s trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever he wants. (2 Timothy 2:23-26)
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.
Tonight as I gave approval to a friend’s pithy observation, it dawned on me that clicking on LIKE on Facebook or on blog posts is the modern equivalent of saying “Amen.”
I looked it up to make sure it meant what I thought it did.
amen
Expression of agreement or confirmation used in worship by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The word derives from a Semitic root meaning “fixed” or “sure.” The Greek Old Testament usually translates it as “so be it”; in the English Bible it is often translated as “verily” or “truly.” By the 4th century BC, it was a common response to a doxology or other prayer in the Jewish temple liturgy. By the 2nd century AD, Christians had adopted it in the liturgy of the Eucharist, and in Christian worship a final amen now often sums up and confirms a prayer or hymn. Though less common in Islam, it is used after reading of the first sura. (Concise Encylopedia)
So instead of amen we Canadians could correctly say, “For sure, eh?” or click on LIKE.
Campanula
Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.( 1 Corinthians 1:20-22 The Message)
God’s promises come with a yes. To which the response is (altogether now) Yes! or Oh yeah! or Right on! or I solemnly affirm or —--LIKE!
This evening I was asking the Lord the rather useless question, “How long?” (Useless because “soon” to him seldom seems like soon to me when we’re talking about seeing promises fulfilled.) In my frustration I dropped my work and went for a walk around the neighbourhood.
As I was taking photos of flowers I remembered a post I made on April 14, about how God always keeps his promise, that spring was coming even though, at the time, we couldn’t see it and the robins were sitting in a snow-filled tree. It was like He said, “Did I not keep my promise?”
He did indeed. Spring has turned to summer. The flowers bloom and the fruit is beginning to ripen.
Aster
He showed me more and more of his beautiful promises fulfilled.
PortulacaPlum PromiseLavateraOver the FenceCosmosCosmos and Bee
And as a special gift -a robin in a big old pine tree. When I looked at my photos I saw the heart shape the branches made.
Robin
You’re good, Abba. I praise you for your faithfulness. You do keep your promises.
“It is not for us to predict the day – but the day will come – when people will once more be called to speak the word of God in such a way that the world is changed and renewed. It will be a new language, perhaps quite non-religious language, but liberating and redeeming—like Jesus’ language; so that people will be alarmed and yet overcome by its power – the language of a new righteousness and truth, a language proclaiming that God makes peace with humankind and that God’s kingdom is drawing near. Till then the Christian cause will be a silent and hidden affair, but there will be those who pray and do right and wait for God’s own time.”
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Thoughts on the Day of Baptism, Letters and papers from prison.
Charis: Subject to Change 