Tag: spiritual growth

Something Else

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Water4 Comments

 

IMG_6293 lazy lake rock tower 2 ch

 

 

“When we lose sight of God we become hard and dogmatic. We hurl our own petitions at God’s throne and dictate to Him as to what we wish Him to do. We do not worship God, nor do we seek to form the mind of Christ. If we are hard towards God, we will become hard towards other people.”
— Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

 

Disappointments in life come because we had expectations. Not dreams. Expectations. When we have a picture of love in our heads it can become our definition of love. We may not all say it out loud to parents, or potential partners, or even friends, but we all think, “If you love me you will ____________.” It’s a test that we ourselves mark. And sooner or later we are disappointed. Sometimes profoundly so. Either the false expectation goes, or the relationship slips into the slow death of lost hope.

Sometimes we think we are praying when we are actually putting God to a test. We are saying, in essence, “If you love me you will ___________,” or “If you are really God you will ___________.” When we put someone to a test we have decided in advance what the right answer is. We are putting ourselves in a position of judge over someone when our expectations must be met for them to pass the test. We make ourselves superior.

God doesn’t play that game. You may have noticed.

We have expectations that if he loves us he will give us a good marriage, robust health, intelligent grateful children, a rewarding career, financial security, a life of peace with reasonable neighbours, and a good reputation that reflects our glory. When God doesn’t meet these expectations of our own design it is easy to allow disappointment to harden into resolution. Instead of finding out who he really is we create another false god, one who is uncaring, or capricious, or inaccessible or hard and dogmatic – at least this god doesn’t disappoint us. Instead of searching for God’s true nature we build our own constructs and dogmas, then we preach that god with our actions and attitudes. We can become hard, graceless, or apathetic.

I think disappointment and loss of hope is the greatest pain known to mankind. We can forge through almost anything but hopelessness. Without hope, what’s the point? It takes the courage of hope to take the risk of pursuing God through the pain of disappointment, to humbly admit that we do not hold the answers, to seek the mind of Christ. Sometimes the ultimate form of worship is simply to make an offering of our pain and say, “You are God and I am not.”

When Moses (who up until that point had settled into the disappointment of his life’s circumstances) asked God to show himself, the aspect God chose to show was his goodness, which was so overwhelming Moses had to be hidden in the cleft of the rock. God’s goodness doesn’t always fit our definition. It is something else, because God is Something Else – holy other, entirely unique, and worthy of seeking out. We don’t come to him so that he can reflect our glory, but so that we can reflect his.

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance.

And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.

And this hope will not lead to disappointment.

For we know how dearly God loves us,

because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

(Romans 5:3-5)

When the Master Speaks

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, Photography10 Comments

lundbreck sky bw 3 ch

Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty
The earth belongs to You
We’ll prepare to go with You, Lord
But until the day we do, Lord,
Minute by minute, we’ll continue in the story
This mystery, Christ in us the hope of glory

– Marty Goetz (from “Hope of Glory”)

This song has been playing in my head for the past two nights. I’ve been thinking about hearing God’s voice, the means he uses, and the discernment he develops in us to know when the voice is his and when it is not.  This line particularly was on repeat in my dreams, “Glory to glory, even by His spirit, moment by moment, when the Master speaks I’ll hear it.”

I talk about learning to hear God’s voice, but honestly hearing a little bit leaves me feeling frustrated that I can’t hear more.  I want the unmistakable thunderous voice from the clouds giving explicit directions. I know one fellow, equally frustrated during a period of unemployment, who stood under thunder clouds with a metal rake balanced on his head and shouted to God, “Talk to me!” I know the feeling.

On the other hand the Bible tells the story of that time when God spoke in a loud booming voice from the sky. Some heard him clearly but others said all they heard was thunder.

The thing is, for his re-born, Spirit-filled sons and daughters the voice is no longer up in the sky. The voice is in us.

In a dream I saw people throwing huge lasso ropes into a city that was crumbling faster than a set for a sci-fi dystopia movie. One of them looped around  a young man who was almost entirely buried in debris. I joined in pulling on the rope and hauled him out of the city of destruction. He stood up, brushed himself off and began running.

I yelled, “Hey! You’re not cleaned up yet!”

He shouted over his shoulder, “Do you recognize Christ in you well enough yet to know that he has called me?” and kept running.

Then I saw a word I had never seen before written in the air. When I woke up I googled it.

I found it could mean a tight Somalian hat, it was an acronym for a number of obscure ventures and technical terms and it was part of a rude name I’m sure the Facebook police have banned by now. I gave up and came back and gave up and tried again. Pages deep on the search something caught my attention. The entire page was in a foreign language and it included this word only once. I was about to abandon this site as well when I saw numbers interspersed with the words and something like II Korint written on the top. I realized it was a page from the Bible.

I found the verse in my own bible in 2 Corinthians 13:5 and it said: Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?

My eyes fell on a phrase in verse 3 where Paul wrote, “since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me...”

It “resonated.”

At first I felt quite privileged that God set up a riddle for me this way, the way I felt quite puffed up when I learned I was a descendent of European royalty. But just like in the way that I learned that the odds of anyone of European descent not springing from the loins of Charlemagne are one in 17 million this hearing God’s voice thing is not a unique experience. It’s for all his children. It’s matter of paying attention to the mystery of Christ in you, your hope of glory – however he chooses to communicate.

Minute by minute we’ll continue in the story.

Getting the Rest

On By Charis PsalloIn Black and white, PhotographyLeave a comment

IMG_8826 rnage road ranch pincher breek bw ch

In order to make this journey–you have to make it without baggage. You can’t carry loads of bags with weight on you in order to be free and Jesus gives you an invitation to come unto him. Now you have to come to him–you will not get rest from anybody else. If you go to anybody else you’re going to find more work.

– T.D. Jakes

Toddling Toward Hope

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Just folks, Photography3 Comments

pretty in pink gouache sm ch

I love toddlers. Honestly, it may be my favourite age. Yes, I mean the tantrum-throwing, independent, illogical, ill-informed munchkins between walking and reasonable conversation age, the ones who cause their exhausted parents’ hearts to melt when they stand over their kid’s sleeping adorableness before they head out to clean up the day’s mess.

I love to watch them learn. They are voracious readers of everything and everyone. They crave knowledge and are driven to courageously expand their universe, but at the same time want to remain at the center of it.

As a baby a little girl learns that when she hollers Daddy or Mommy come to her. As a toddler she learns the hard lesson that when Mommy or Daddy call she is supposed to come to them.

It’s not an easy transition for anyone concerned. Toddlers are also discovering free will. Anyone who has tried knows you cannot make a toddler eat, sleep, sit still, keep their clothes on or pee where they are supposed to until they decide to do it themselves. You can cut down their options, you can try to pick them up (as they do the floppy noodle) before they dash for the road, but you can’t make them keep the water in the tub or kiss Auntie Bertha or stay out of the Tupperware drawer when company is coming if it is not on their agenda. They will let you know when they have lost patience with your interference.

But I love them. I love the mileage they get out of a few words. I love the excited laughter when they discover how to open, or flush, or unravel something all by themselves. I love the way they imitate older humans and want to be like them. I love them because they are headed somewhere and every day they change. I love them because they don’t stay toddlers.

It struck me the other day that as new believers in Christ we are like a baby who needs milk, shelter, warmth, affection and our heavenly Father obliges. He provides a baby with everything she needs. She calls; He comes. She knows how the system works.

Then one day he doesn’t come when she calls. He calls and holds out his hands for her to move toward him. After she chooses to toddle to his outstretched arms and she is rewarded with kisses and hugs he takes another step back – then another and another. He is becoming more distant. The next thing you know he is withholding her sippy cup until she sits in the chair nicely – wearing a bib that is not of her choice. What a shock!

The toddler Christian is accustomed to feeling that God is there to fulfill her agenda. Now it turns out he has an agenda of his own. Now there is this obedience issue to cope with. It’s a tough transition to make, and that is why many churches are filled with people who never grow beyond two or three years maturity level. It can be fun, but it can also be a wretchedly frustrating stage of growth because it means taking ourselves out of the center of the universe and putting God there.

The Bible says Jesus learned obedience. He grew in grace and in favour with God the Father and with people. When he laid down his Godhead privileges to experience everything we have he also learned as a human child that he had free will. As an adult he demonstrated that he was not doing the works he did because he was incapable of doing otherwise, but because he chose to. He listened to his Father’s plans. From his baptism, to his following the leading of Holy Spirit into the wilderness, to changing water into wine at his Father’s bidding – and definitely not his mother’s – to his battle with his free will in the Garden of Gethsemane he did nothing he did not choose to do. I believe he understands our struggle because he sweat drops of blood before he could say, “Not my will but Yours.” In the end laying down his life at the cross was his choice.

“No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” (John 10:18)

I’ve heard it said that being part of the family of God means never being led into the wilderness (times away from his felt presence to discover and establish our identity as sons and daughters); it means never seeking God’s agenda but brazenly declaring our own want list; it means never being driven by frustration with our old habits to plumb the depths of his grace that changes us, but instead it presumes on our own definition of “grace” that enables stunted growth and self-centered living.

There is power and provision for a hope that does not disappoint, but this is not it. Of course God still loves to give good gifts to his children and to respond to them. Maturity means changing the way we think until we realize it’s not just about God answering us when and how we want him to; it’s also about us responding to him when he calls.

I love toddlers because unless something has gone horribly wrong, they are people in process. If we, as those growing up in faith, never get out of our strollers, demand ice cream for breakfast and holler every time events do not go according to our desired design and timetable, we will not be loved any less and our needs will still be met, but we will miss the joy of mature relationship with our Father God.

I love toddlers because they teach me to keep growing.

Save

Dangerous Proximity

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, Mountains, PhotographyLeave a comment

IMG_1927 canmore mountains pan watercolor ch

I want a lifetime of holy moments. Every day I want to be in dangerous proximity to Jesus. I long for a life that explodes with meaning and is filled with adventure, wonder, risk, and danger. I long for a faith that is gloriously treacherous. I want to be with Jesus, not knowing whether to cry or laugh.

– Mike Yaconelli

Provoked

On By Charis PsalloIn Art, PhotographyLeave a comment

winter leaves gouache thorns ch

 

“We pray, ‘Lord, change me.’ To answer that prayer, He will often allow circumstances or people to offend us. Our fleshly reaction spotlights the specific area where we need growth. Thus, the Lord initiates change by offending the area of our soul He seeks to transform. He does not expect us to merely survive this adversity but become Christlike in it.”
– Francis Frangipane

Out of the Box, Out of the Phone

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers7 Comments

IMG_2217 hot house flowers colour nursey

I remember my aunt’s Kodak box camera that required her to look in the top at just the right angle or she would decapitate the heads off her subjects in the image. She kept her brownie box camera long after others had moved on to other cameras that used colour film. Photos were precious in her time – and expensive and time-consuming to make. Making up her photo album required my aunt to mail the whole camera away to have the film extracted and developed and then sent back. Kodak obliged.

This past weekend, my young granddaughter used my phone camera to produce a video of her little cousins sliding down the curved stairs at my uncle’s house. The same day I posted it on Facebook and friends across the country commented on it.

Changes.

This article from Holy Soup  by Thom Schulz on “The Church’s Frightful Kodak Moment” fits with what I am sensing. Photography has taken off in the last few years. More people have better access (even on phones) and quality has improved enormously. It’s not left just to the professionals anymore. There is freedom to make mistakes and forgive ourselves by hitting delete or re-framing and re-lighting the experience with a photo editing program. It’s about seeing worth in the moment and making meaningful images we can enjoy and share in the future.

But Kodak missed it because it saw only one expression of photography. Nothing wrong with print. I still use Kodak paper but 99% of what I do is digital photography and artistic expressions using those photos on the computer now.

I feel something like this is happening to the church – something out-of-the-box is about to take off, improve in quality, be more accessible, offer greater grace to grow, and thrive in ways we never imagined, but we can miss it if we measure success in terms of sales of traditional product (aka bums in seats on Sunday morning.) I am meeting more and more people who love the Lord deeply but who are finding the current structures and expectations of the institutional denominational church-in-the-building are limiting their ability to pursue the desires God has placed in their hearts to know Christ, and to know who He created them to be, and to be placed in true family. There is more. I know it.

It’s about worshiping God, enjoying Him forever, making disciples – and loving one another.

I have not read the author’s books, nor have I seen his documentary (although I will probably be checking them out). We may disagree on what this out-of-the-box thing looks like. I don’t know. My attention was just grabbed by the comparison to Kodak and rather than feeling despair that church attendance is falling in North America, I am filled with hope that soon all the promises in Christ will become more accessible to the ordinary folks He loves – and they will know they are the church.

Showers of Blessing, Seasons of Refreshing

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, Sky2 Comments

IMG_2727 sunset shower

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. (Ephesians 1:3 NLT)

The main character on the old TV show “Maude” had an expression: “God is going to get you for that.”

It was funny in the way death and taxes and old age jokes are funny, because behind a lot of humour there is a vault of anger and feelings of helplessness. Some people who want to be in the business of speaking for God must be taking Maude more seriously than she took herself, because there are a lot of God-is-gonna-get-you-for-that doom and gloom prophecies abounding on the internet lately. Lots of shoulds with no hows. Given the dire predictions that God is fed up with our behaviour (and voting patterns apparently) and is going to switch from showering us with blessings to dumping nasty judgments on us, I have to stop and ask, Is that God? What does the voice of God actually sound like?

Lately I was totally rattled when I heard the voice of condemnation saying, “You are not good enough… you are a disappointment… you have failed… who do you think you are…”

All those things were factual. I have failed and disappointed people.  I had not lived up to even my own standards. I felt shame (more than “I did something wrong,” but “I am something wrong”) and I didn’t know how to fix it. I spiraled down rapidly. I stood on the precipice of depression again.

Then, in His kindness, the Lord brought words of correction into my life through a random podcast and when a page fell out of my journal He reminded me that this part of the journey is about learning to better discern His voice for myself.

“The fruit of the Spirit,” said the speaker, “characterizes the way the Holy Spirit speaks.” I understand that to mean that it’s His fruit, not something I have to conjure up on my own. It is His character. He is love. He is peace. When He speaks He speaks with the voice of love, of kindness, of the reassurance of His faithfulness in seeing me through and does not reject or condemn me. His tone is gentle, kind, patient and peaceful because that’s who He is.

A question: Even if it was firm, was the voice that told you that you are a failure gentle, patient, kind, joyful, inviting you to a deeper relationship? If not, it was not Him. Wrong voice. If God is asking you to change the way you think so that it shows up in your choices He gives you access to His patience and self-control. With every challenge that will help you grow there is a provision set aside – a spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms – that will enable you to change. You need to keep your eyes on Him to access it.

Of course we reap what we sow. That’s a universal principle so obvious that even toddlers get it. Pull the cat’s tail and there is a natural consequence. Act in a self-centered manner and there is a consequence. But the voice of God doesn’t condemn and leave us there. It goes beyond should to how – and the how is all about relationship and drawing closer to Him. His voice shows us how to hit the refresh button, to agree that we have been wrong and want to change the way we think, and to feel the joy of knowing we are forgiven and starting fresh.

Instead of “I am going to get you,”  He says, “Don’t worry. I’ve still got you – and I love you very, very much. I will strengthen you and help you. I began this work in you and I will complete it.”