Tag: hearing God

As Song

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, WinterLeave a comment

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I wouldn’t have done it that way. It looked like a disaster. Facts and figures and previous experience all added up to a negative number.

Then I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking in the night. “This one is like a Chinese finger puzzle. The more you fight and try to free yourself from circumstances, the tighter they will get.”

I trusted him. He took me through a tough, tough time and answered in a miraculous way mere logic could never duplicate.

Resting in God when everything around me says, “you need to do something!!” brings back memories of growing up in a house with parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who seldom agreed and who all gave me different instructions. No matter what I did someone would be mad. Which voice did I choose to listen to?

Now here I am again. So many angry voices. So many urgent opinions. So much distracting pain. So many dire consequences marching across the screen of unsanctified imagination.

Oh God, what should I do? What should I do?

“Remember the source of your strength. Remember my promise to never leave you. Be thankful. Rest.”

The Eternal is the source of my strength and the shield that guards me.
When I learn to rest and truly trust Him,
He sends His help. This is why my heart is singing!
I open my mouth to praise Him, and thankfulness rises as song.

(Psalm 28:7 The Voice)

 

 

Trickle Down Word

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, PhotographyLeave a comment

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“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord.
“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.

For just as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so my ways are higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

“The rain and snow come down from the heavens
and stay on the ground to water the earth.
They cause the grain to grow,
producing seed for the farmer
and bread for the hungry.

It is the same with my word.
I send it out, and it always produces fruit.
It will accomplish all I want it to,
and it will prosper everywhere I send it.

    You will live in joy and peace.
    The mountains and hills will burst into song,
    and the trees of the field will clap their hands!”

(Isaiah 55:8-12 NLT)

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Where You’ve Not Been Before

On By Charis PsalloIn faith, Uncategorized, Winter2 Comments

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I hate feeling incompetent. I enjoy being asked questions when I know the answer. Memories of first-day on-the-job-stress when I knew less than the customers or the students still get shoved back in the closet as soon as they make a peep.

As much as I enjoy new things and find routine stifling, there are times when I enjoy feeling like I know what I’m doing. I can coast. I can offer free advice. Dare I say it? Sometimes, in my Walter Mitty-type imagination, I picture the networks calling to ask me to come into the studio as their talking head expert of the day.

Mid-dream sequence the music screeches to a stop. God asks me to follow him.

“Where?” I ask.

“You’ll see.”

“But I finally know what I’m doing here. I have a system.”

“I know. Let’s do something else now.”

I wish I was faster at saying yes. I’m learning that growth only comes as I depend on God and quit relying on what worked before. I have a bad habit of not noticing that change lies ahead until I run into a dead-end or get kicked out of the nest. Sometimes asking God for guidance, and yet not moving until the yank of a bridle twists my neck or a stick pokes my butt, and the guidance is no longer subtle, is not the most comfortable way.

Part of the problem is still my fear of making a mistake, of being wrong, of having to backtrack, or worse, make an apology. But grace gives us latitude to learn. Somewhere deep down I am still fighting the notion that I have to earn this grace with a perfect performance. That’s when failure becomes freedom. His love is not conditional. I never knew how much God loved me until I offered him my incompetence as an ego-sacrificing form of praise.

He says his eyes will be our guide. We can respond more quickly when our eyes are focused on his face. If we are more focused on our work and personal improvement projects than on where he is looking we will miss it.

Stay close. Listen. Watch. Trust.

This is going to be good.

I hear the Lord saying, “I will stay close to you,
Instructing and guiding you
Along the pathway for your life.
I will advise you along the way,
And lead you forth with my eyes as your guide.
So don’t make it difficult, don’t be stubborn
When I take you where you’ve not been before.
Don’t make me tug you and pull you along.
Just come with me!”

(Psalm 32:8 – 9 TPT)

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Exuberant

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Winter9 Comments

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Our daughter needed to study calculus as part of her bachelor degree requirements. She liked math and was good at it so she happily signed up for the course. The problem was that the only class that fit into her timetable was the class her father taught. She had hoped to avoid that scenario, still being a teen and all.

One day she needed to ask a question about something she didn’t understand. Her father carefully explained the concept covering two blackboards with figures and diagrams, then turned and asked her if she understood.

“What? Oh…” she said looking up from the page she had been doodling on. “Um, sorry. I heard you go into your lecturing voice and I tuned you out.”

The students who didn’t know about their relationship gasped in shock. Those that knew the prof was her dad laughed.

This story came back to me today as I was thinking about relating to the many facets of God. Our daughter was relating to the man at the front of the class as the dad who had been responsible for setting limits through some chaotic years. In that moment she wasn’t relating to him as a valuable teacher and missed what he had to offer. (All was not lost. That was the year she gained respect for his skills and actually changed direction to become a math education major herself.)

Many metaphors describe the way God wants to relate to us; He presents himself as creator, king, father, bridegroom, shepherd, healer, provider, lamb, mother, brother, law-giver, judge, protector and many more. Someone once asked me, “Who does God want to be for you now?”

I didn’t understand the question at the time. God is God. Holy Other. Unchanging. There is no one like him.  What do you mean?

Since then I have come to know God as my loving heavenly father, Jesus as a brother and the Holy Spirit as a comforter. I’ve known him as a teacher and healer and encourager and even as an intimate friend who shares confidences. What I am still learning is how to be flexible when he wants to show me another aspect of himself.

Lately I have been spending time praying about some heavy matters brought to my attention. I feel privileged to be trusted, and I do remember praying “break my heart with what breaks yours,” but I’ve been feeling the weight of it lately. I know the joy of the Lord is my strength but I must have set it down somewhere and I’m having trouble remembering where I put it. Before I fell asleep I asked for an understanding of joy, because I don’t know how to make myself feel something I don’t feel.

It snowed last night. When I looked out my window this morning I saw the berries on the mountain ash tree covered with little tipped white piles of snow that looked like gnome hats. I ran out in my robe and slippers and took a photo, not caring what the neighbours digging out their vehicles thought. The mountain ash hats just looked silly. They reminded me of little red Smurfs. I smiled.

“There it is,” he said.

“There is what?”

“Joy. My joy. It’s been here all along. You just weren’t expecting it or looking for it.”

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I need to shift my thinking and learn to relate to God as someone who has tremendous joy in spite of seeing selfish people misuse their authority and abuse the vulnerable. He knows how all this ends, and it ends well.

I remembered a passage of scripture that talks about Jesus being exuberant and full of joy because of his Father’s plans. This scene happened after he commissioned 70 people to go out ahead of him and declare the kingdom of God by healing the sick and casting out demons.

The seventy came back triumphant. “Master, even the demons danced to your tune!”

Jesus said, “I know. I saw Satan fall, a bolt of lightning out of the sky. See what I’ve given you? Safe passage as you walk on snakes and scorpions, and protection from every assault of the Enemy. No one can put a hand on you. All the same, the great triumph is not in your authority over evil, but in God’s authority over you and presence with you. Not what you do for God but what God does for you—that’s the agenda for rejoicing.”

At that, Jesus rejoiced, exuberant in the Holy Spirit. “I thank you, Father, Master of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the know-it-alls and showed them to these innocent newcomers. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.

“I’ve been given it all by my Father! Only the Father knows who the Son is and only the Son knows who the Father is. The Son can introduce the Father to anyone he wants to.”

(Luke 10 :17-22 The Message)

I put on my warm clothes and high boots and went out into the dazzling light of the day, plowing through white powder nearly up to my knees. I listened to the distant birds, and the babbling brook. I stood under showers of tiny diamonds as the snow crystals fell from high branches in the sunlight. Today I am learning who God wants to be for me now. Jesus is introducing me to a happy Creator – my strength and my joy.

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Gathering

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography4 Comments

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The thing I like about rest is it gives me a breathing space where I can gather myself. I can step back. You don’t have to react to externals; you have to respond to an internal.

-Graham Cook

I feel sorry for the person in a crisis or otherwise dramatic moment who has a microphone thrust in her face as a reporter is asking for reactions. If that happened to me I could probably supply him or her with a choice remark off the top of my head. But that’s the problem. My first reaction is just that -my reaction.

It is, as often as not, a shallow, self-centered reaction motivated by whatever has caused inconvenience or pain. For small things, like a stubbed toe, the memory of a short loud complaint fades faster than it takes to hop across the room on one foot. For big things that involve profound disappointment in people and may even change the course of my life, I need to get away and submit my reaction to the Holy Spirit’s response before I say or do something I’ll regret later

I need to gather in angry scowls, perturbed sighs, peaceless mutterings and woe-is-me moans. I need to take catastrophizing thoughts and calls for revenge captive. Then I can present them to Jesus. After all he paid to take this stuff away. Then I need to listen and respond with his love, his joy, his peace. I need to see the way he does.

Sometimes it’s a bigger struggle than I think it should be. Sometimes I sit in his presence wishing I could take back words that flew out of my mouth before self-control showed up to edit them. Sometimes I feel as stubborn as three-year old who would rather sit at the dinner table until bedtime than eat my broccoli. I don’t want to eat my words. And sometimes I eventually hear the futility of my repetitive argument as the finer points dull in comparison to his wisdom.

I’ve changed my mind about a lot of situations and people lately. When my first reaction might be to reject them he whispers, “Look again. Do you see what I see?”

Freedom means that when a situation sticks a metaphorical microphone in front of my face demanding an immediate reaction, I don’t have to give one. I can step back, wait, listen and respond with Christ in me, the hope of glory.

It definitely beats counting to ten.

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Until the Stream Runs Clear

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Photography, Trees and forests, Uncategorized, WaterLeave a comment

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Fall on your knees and grow there. There is no burden of the spirit but is lighter by kneeling under it. Prayer means not always talking to Him, but waiting before Him till the dust settles and the stream runs clear.

– F.B. Meyer

In the Rustling Grass

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Fields, Mountains, Photography, Uncategorized1 Comment

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This is my Father’s world:
he shines in all that’s fair;
in the rustling grass I hear him pass;
he speaks to me everywhere.

(from This is My Father’s World -lyrics by Maltbie D. Babcock)

Creative, Not Reactive

On By Charis PsalloIn Uncategorized4 Comments

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Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.
(Psalm 37:7)

One night in a dream I heard, “Creation, not reaction.”

Then, “It is the nature of God to create, not react.”

My first reaction to crisis is to want do something. I need to feel useful.

And maybe a little bit less out of control.

Frequently my running around trying to fix things or trying to solicit help, or at least sympathy, has just complicated matters.

Until we experienced a natural disaster via our son and family when they became homeless after a flood, we probably would have reacted the same way as many well-meaning folk who felt a need to “do something.”

Some of the truckloads of used clothing and household goods they worked so hard to gather and ship to the beleaguered areas ended up in a landfill. Where does a town put this all low priority stuff when buildings have been destroyed?  Where does the manpower to sort and distribute come from when every available person is shovelling knee-deep mud out of the kitchen or dragging mattresses saturated with sewage to the street? What seemed like a good idea ended up adding to the pain of loss.

I was very impressed by the Mennonite aid agency. After the big name rescue agencies left and the cameras and talking heads moved on to another story the Mennonites erected a building they could work from. They knew from experience that restoration was a long term commitment. Their actions were well thought out. They had a creative long term plan.

In matters of immediate threat to life rescue is essential. But I find when I feel pressured to react to hypothetical crisis (“If this doesn’t happen soon it could be really bad,”) the sense of urgency often comes from a source other than God. Sometimes the hardest action to take is to wait on God.

God chooses when to move. He does not react to the enemy’s attacks that goad us into rash reactions to his terrorist threats. God is in charge of the timetable, not the one who comes to steal, kill and destroy.

His answers are creative and sometimes even shockingly counter-intuitive. Who sends a choir and marching band to meet an army hell-bent on your destruction? Who arranges for a prisoner accused of sexual assault to save an entire country from starvation? Who defends a people from genocide by setting up an orphan girl with an enemy king (a situation which in other times and places would have been called fraternizing)?

When our prayers are more about worrying at God (because he doesn’t seem to be taking the situation seriously enough) we are tempted to start dictating what he needs to do. Praying “precise prayers” without precise understanding of his intentions is trying to micromanage the Creator of the Universe. Good luck with that.

Jesus is never stops interceeding for us. With joy. How is he praying in your crisis?

Can you drop the frantic unproductive busyness, clear the noisy fearful voices from your head and wait patiently for the voice of peace to whisper to your heart? What is he wanting to create in you in the midst of all this? What is he wanting to create in your sphere of influence through you?

Be still. Wait.

This is going to be good.

Silence

On By Charis PsalloIn Mountains, Photography, WaterLeave a comment

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How can you expect God to speak in that gentle and inward voice which melts the soul, when you are making so much noise with your rapid reflections? Be silent and God will speak again.
– Francois Fenelon