When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.
-Henri Nouwen
Tag: inspiration
In an Abundance
But He poured His grace over me,
and I was flooded in an abundance
of the grace and faith and love
that can only be found in Jesus the Anointed.
(1 Timothy 1:14 The Voice)
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The Author Who Benefits You Most
“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.”
— Oswald Chambers
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While He Lay Dying
I’ve been helping (in a small capacity) my daughter and our beloved son-in-law write their story. The book is titled While He Lay Dying and is the story of one little family in a small city who saw the love of God through the worst circumstances, as a young husband and father lay comatose, and on life support, his body shut down from toxic shock after contracting flesh-eating disease. The odds of his surviving were 0%. For a long time he lingered as near to death as his doctors had ever seen in a person who survived. His recovery was nothing short of miraculous. There were angel sightings, reconciliations, revelations, heart-healings and far too many co-incidences to be co-incidences, but it was not an easy time. Every day our emotions rode a roller coaster.
Going through proofs with them has stirred up a lot of feelings for me. They tell their story honestly, candidly and dare to boast in the lessons God showed so many during that time, as tens of thousands around the world joined to pray with perseverance for the life of one man. A physician on the team also contributes his account of witnessing this event and a pastor shares profound insights that are significant for the universal Church –the Body of Christ.
I am overwhelmed that the Lord allowed me to be a part of this story, and even though I like to think I am a writer, words fail me. Today I use some of my images to describe the feelings of those days with music by Vitali.
From the Foreword by Bishop Todd Atkinson:
Jesus trusted His Father and gave Himself over to death on the cross,
Then followed a long Friday night and a long Saturday…
And while he lay in the grave, His followers asked,
“What was that all about?”
For some of you it’s been a long wait…
Something died years ago.
Some part of your faith died.
Some part of your hope died.
Some promise you were holding on to died.
We cannot raise ourselves out of that…
But we’ve got a Father who is able to.
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Doubting It
“Doubt is not always a sign that a man is wrong; it may be a sign that he is thinking.”
— Oswald Chambers
I’ve met lovely, honest people who tell me that they wish they could believe in a loving God of grace, but it is a struggle for them. I’ve also met people who believe in God but are not sure that Jesus Christ is the only way to make contact with him. I’ve met people who believe that Jesus is real and He was willing to lay down his life for them, but they don’t want to get close to an angry Father God. Others think God is great but they have trouble with the whole history of “Christian” behaviour thing.
Others believe in Christ and do all the expected life-style things, but are skeptical that he talks to people today or heals them or miraculously intervenes in their lives because, after 40 years of doing church, they have never seen it.
Some of us journey on this road doing the best we can with the doubts that make us feel too small for the task. When we read expressions like “man or woman of God” or “giants of the faith” we know that it is not referring to us.
Sometimes it’s a matter of needing our hearts healed or enlarged until we can receive. A child whose birth dad left on her second birthday is going to find it hard to believe that a heavenly father promises to stay involved in her life. A boy whose parents were impossible to please will likewise assume that God is angry and disappointed in him. A person who was betrayed by a so-called Christian, especially an older brother, or worse a clergyman, will wonder where this so-called loving self-sacrificing Jesus disappeared to when the going got rough, and if this a set-up to be used again. A person who has been lied to will not buy every story they are told, and if believing every ancient account of events in the Bible is a requirement for a relationship with God they have a large fence to climb.
Here’s the thing. Walking by faith does not require truckloads of faith. Faith is exercised; that’s how it grows. It starts with baby steps. As we take risks and find that God is not like authority figures who berated, beguiled and betrayed, we can take another step. When we give up trying to appease an angry God, and he doesn’t smite us, we take another step. When we see an important lesson in one of Jesus’ stories we take another step. When we dare to pray to him to find lost car keys and have a picture in our minds of them lying under a shrub by the back door, and there they are, we take another step. When we trust another person on this road and are nakedly open about our own scarred story of pain and they treat it like a precious privilege to be protected, we take another step. We are healed inside bit by bit and enlarge our capacity to think and feel differently.
Paul, the guy who distrusted the stories about this Jesus of Nazareth character so much that he had his followers dragged off to prison, later wrote that his prayer was that people, who were like he once was and who have huge doubts, would be strengthened with Jesus’ power in their inner being enough to have the capacity to be able to start to be able to comprehend his love. Our wounds have left holes in our hearts that love just pours through. We all need him to move first. So he did.
Jesus understands and is relentlessly kind. He is not shocked by our doubts, and understands the barriers religious people have left in the way in attempts to protect themselves from their own doubts.
If all you have is one tiny little speck of faith it’s all you need to start this journey. Eventually it will move mountains.
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Darkness is Only Threatened by Light
The Darkness is not threatened by religion,
spirituality,
doctrine,
loud music,
preaching,
crowds of Christians,
spiritual warfare,
prophetic conventions,
or revivals.
Darkness is only threatened by Light,
and to the extent that we have Light,
to that extent the Darkness loses its power over us.
When we abide in perfect Light then Darkness has no power whatsoever.
And light is nothing more or less than the revelation of Christ in His Glory.
—Chip Brogden
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Cultivate Faithfulness
A heavy frost has already finished off most of the plants in the gardens at Fort Steele Farms, but I was surprised to see a row of Swiss chard (or “squished hard” as one of my grandchildren calls it) glowing in the sunlight. It was the inspiration for this work. It was also the inspiration for remembering this scripture:
Trust in the Lord and do good;
Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
(Psalm 37:3,4)
Cultivating faithfulness with joyful, trusting vulnerability leads to the freedom to become who God knows you to be, full of life and delightful colour long after others have given up in adversity. Perseverance builds hope -the kind of hope that does not disappoint.
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A Thin Silence
I can’t hear normally right now. A nasty cold has tormented my sinuses for almost a month and has now taken up residence in my ears. For several days my left ear has not been giving my brain the usual messages. Voices on the phone sound like they are coming through a kazoo on the other side of a heavy door. I can’t hear the sound of my feet on the trail, or the wind in the trees. At the same time normal noises are painfully loud. I avoid nerve-jarring distorted noise at the level of normal conversation, and run from loud sounds that feel like a slap to the ears, yet I strain to hear the quiet things, like the little ping that tells me I have a message on my cell phone. I feel like I am shut up inside my own head (where the sound of chewing my breakfast crunchies is like giant aliens devouring some hapless metropolis in a sci-fi flick.)
What an odd and uncomfortable feeling – especially for someone whose lifestyle has focused on hearing the fine nuances of music for so many years. It’s taking its sweet time clearing up, this wretched infection, but in the meantime maybe there is something to be learned (or un-learned) even in this.
I thought about Elijah’s still small voice experience again today. After a tremendous victory on Mount Carmel in which the Lord rained down fire, and sent the rains at his request, he ran from the ugly threatening voice of the King’s wife. He ran all the way back to the place where Moses has his trumpet blast and fire on the mountain experience.
There he came to a cave and lodged in it. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
And he said, “Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord.”
And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire the sound of a low whisper [or a sound, a thin silence]
And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.(1 Kings 19, 11 -13 ESV)
I think it was straining to hear a soft voice today that reminded me of the story. When I looked up the Hebrew words describing this “still, small voice” I found it was stiller and smaller than I thought. It was still like a calm sea after a storm. It was small like a particle of dust, less than a hair’s breadth, barely perceptible — except to a prophet who recognized it.
David wrote that the voice of the Lord thunders. Sometimes we can hear Him loud and clear. Moses and the children of Israel certainly did, and it scared most of them half to death. But sometimes his voice can only be heard in thin silence.
In thin silence there are no other sounds competing for attention. No other voices playing anything-you-can-preach-I-can-preach-louder – and which then add electronic amplification.
In thin silence we are forced to lean in closer, to wait for a particle of sound, the Voice that speaks in stillness.
Charis: Subject to Change 