Pressure Turns Carbon, and Faith, to Diamonds

One of the strangest aspects of being a Christian, in my experience, is being caught between heaven and earth . . . trying to remember the glory of what will be when surrounded by troubles now. Our role is to somehow believe that the glory of what will be comes, not just in spite of, but from the grief of what is.

Sometimes, in a quiet place with God, as I worship Him for all His goodness and promises and faithfulness, I laugh, for it feels that nothing could ever be wrong again. How could there be such thing as disaster, when such a loving and faithful God oversees it all? Then other times, I am sick with despair . . . when the same old enemies still afflict me or my loved ones; when mountains don’t seem to have moved, when beloved ones are still STILL in bondage to destructiveness, after so much advice, so many tears, so much prayer. Then it is crushing to think of all the other people in the world under God’s righteous wrath, trapped in the enemy’s lies and their own self-centeredness, pride, indulgence, desires. Perversion permeates, wrong prevails, ambitions fizzle, Christians fail. How can I rejoice, when I pray so long and desperately, and this is what I see?

But I know. God is still the Lord mighty to save. He is blessed forever, meaning He will accomplish His good pleasure. He will be faithful to complete His work in Christ Jesus. He who created us for His glory, gave His Son that we may be made like Him, will not see this purpose fail. Surely He has not done all this in vain. Every tear will be wiped away, our hope will be seen, and the kingdom will be spectacular. Then we will see the truth of what we try to convince ourselves of--that the destruction that ravaged the Lord’s chosen ones has not kept Him from making us a beautiful bride for Himself. That the prayers that seemed so fruitless have perfumed every corner of our new home; that from everything that was working for evil God has made into something good indeed.

But, for today, my God, let more of Your grace be poured out . . . to give our elders dreams, our younger soldiers Your Word, our persecuted brethren steadfastness, us as free believers boldness. Give us that bitterly convicting grace to take away every excuse we try to make. Oh, God, humble us in prayer. Give us vision, wisdom, patience, perseverance, devotion. Oh, Lord, purify us! And please help me continue to believe that You will make all things new in time.

Ashira l'adonai ki ga'oh ga'ah
Ashira l'adonai ki ga'oh ga'ah
Michamocha, ba-elim adonai
Michamocha nedar-bakodesh
Nachitah v'chasd'cha, am zu ga'alta
Nachitah v'chasd'cha, am zu ga’alta
Ashira, Ashira, Ashira...

Translation:
I will sing unto Adonai for He has triumphed gloriously.
I will sing unto Adonai for He has triumphed gloriously.
Who is like You, O Adondai, among the gods?
Who is like You, glorious in holiness?
In Your mercy, you lead the people You redeemed.
In Your mercy, you lead the people You redeemed.
I will sing, I will sing, I will sing...

(from The Prince of Egypt)

Currently New Way to Be Human By Switchfoot Only Hope see related

Learning Psalm 41:10, over and over

Those of you who knew me through college knew me basically as a workaholic. I tried to spend as much quality time with people as possible . . . while acing all my classes, working, and volunteering for BSM and church activities right and left. The beginning of three of my four summers that followed each year of college, my appetite and enthusiasm decreased. I was so used to being as busy as a person can be (averaging six hours of sleep a night, if I was good), that having so much leisure time made me feel that my life was in the doldrums. That’s when I would know that God and I needed a reflective talk. Because if I felt I was living for nothing without my activity, then I was obviously not living for the God who speaks in stillness.

            Even though the things I was doing were good things, ways I intended to serve God, I eventually would wind up doing them for my own satisfaction, not for Him. It is so frustrating when serving God has come between God and me. It is confusing when what I believe God wants me to do in some way becomes an idol replacing God Himself. The scary part is how long a Christian can live under this deception without realizing that anything is wrong. How can one tell the difference, then? I have found that a lot of it has to do with satisfaction. If you are living for something less than God Himself, you need more of it than you can handle, or else you will quickly feel unsatisfied. I, for instance, had to have enough responsibilities to push my physical and mental limits in order to feel satisfied.

            If one gets his satisfaction from work, drugs, adrenaline, entertainment, or anything else coming from this world, the longer we draw from it, the less it pleases us. That is why Jesus said He is the Living Water, and all who drink of Him shall never thirst (John 4). Yes, our thirst for Him continually increases. The difference is, He is like pure water that truly hydrates, and enables us to grow, ever growing more and needing more. And He is the Fountain that never runs dry. The more we need Him, the more He satisfies. Everything else is like salt water, which one may drink and drink, and only become more dehydrated.

            Blessedly, I worship a Jealous God. He will not let me keep drinking from something else, both for His sake and mine. He has started to heal my obsessiveness towards things which once seemed critical, but are truly inconsequential. I no longer necessarily have to wait for quiet before I realize I have been striving after noise. The striving itself becomes empty. Having known the delight, the sweet fulfillment of the smallest pure devotion to God, the emptiness of striving after something else becomes more noticeably miserable now. “Let Thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee”—the more I surrender to the goodness of God, the more unbearable the misery of joyless idols becomes.

            I first chose to follow Christ because I believed what I was told about Him, that He loves and died for me, and without Him I would go to hell. Later, I followed Him because His ways made sense to me, and He gave me grace to believe Him in the instances which did not. Now I follow Him, even more closely, because I cannot bear not to. There is nowhere else to turn that would not suffocate me. I am obsessive, and any other obsession would kill me, not so much with its relentless demands as with its void. Addicted as I have been to perfection, approval, and activity, when I remember the Lord, these things become worthless.

Currently Mansfield Park (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) By Jane Austen see related

Eternity in the Heart of the Mundane

            We in the Western culture are taught to invest our time as our most precious resource, and make sure we are spending so as to ensure we live for what is really important. Particularly, Christians are urged to remember that the things of earth will pass away, and that we must do the work for God that will last beyond our lives. Amy Carmichael compellingly urges us to do this in Things as They Are, in which she writes of a dream that the world’s lost are blindly walking to the edge of a cliff, and many believers neglect turning them back from falling to their deaths because we are too busy making “daisy chains” (p. 41-44). Certainly, then, it seems a sin to work on things that will fade like the flower when eternal fates hang in the balance.

            Yet it is possible, and eventually depressing, to take this idea too far. After all, it was important enough for God to make flowers, even though they fade. Indeed, He placed us in a life of tediousness, “vanity,” as the Teacher of Ecclesiastes says. Then is it impossible to make eternal importance of what we do with our everyday lives? No. Look at 1 Corinthians 3:12-16,

Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work. If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.

But what is this gold and silver which remain? I think that can be found in 1 Peter 1:6-9,

In this [hope of an inheritance in heaven] you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which perishes, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and glorified, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

That’s kind of an involved passage, but did you catch what it said is proven more precious than gold tested by fire? Your faith. That faith will bring glory at the end. That, I believe, is where mundane things can become eternally important, because faith is often manifested in small, apparently temporal actions. In a mother who manages not to yell at her kid, even though she’s worn out. The nurse who cleans up, medicates, and talks to the nursing home patients who won’t remember it tomorrow. The shut-in who resolves never to complain, but rather be a joy to everyone around. A father who takes a few extra minutes to linger over a game with his children. A secretary who determines to add a little brightness to every part of the business she runs. A body shop repairman who chooses to love his work, sanding entire vehicles by hand. On this tedious world of dust where God has chosen to display His glory, it becomes a blurry line between the mundane and the supernal.

            C.S. Lewis in “Learning in War-Time” points out that God created us with the desire and need for things like knowledge, beauty, humor, and society, and the need often intensifies for those facing war, or any such circumstances that ostensibly would overwhelm such trivialities. Being put in a right relationship with the Creator of these things certainly does not exclude them (unless we have made them somehow hinder our obedience to Him):

 . . . it is clear that Christianity does not exclude any of the ordinary human activities. St. Paul tells people to get on with their jobs. He even assumes that Christians may go to dinner parties, and what is more, dinner parties given by pagans. Our Lord attends a wedding and provides miraculous wine. Under the aegis of His Church, and in the most Christian ages, learning and the arts flourish. The solution of this paradox is, of course, well known to you. “Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest: and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not. . . The work of a Beethoven, and the work of a charwoman, become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly “as to the Lord.”—“Learning in War-Time,” The Weight of Glory and Other Essays.

One might say that these things take on eternal significance if one witnesses to lost people while doing it. But I think the witnessing isn’t exactly it. Witness is powerless without evidence of God’s hand—without the abundant life we are testifying to. The joy at all times, the peace ruling in our hearts, the grace we show at every opportunity—that is the eternity, the heavenly, in our lives. That is what makes witnessing meaningful, when we can, not just tell the way to heaven, but show heaven to a lost person. That is one of the more difficult tests facing the more sincere Christians in America—how to offer to God those necessary things that don’t seem important, and thereby live heaven in our stressful, repetitious lives. In the Bible’s meditation on the temporal and toilsome nature of life,

Solomon’s insistence is on the haphazard. These things—food, sex, money, and mother earth—must always have their place in the life of any man of God, and they either make men and women devils or make them what they should be. The man of God uses these things to express his relationship to God; whereas those who do not know God try to find lasting good in the things themselves.”—Oswald Chambers, Shade of His Hand, “Time, Death, and Trifles”

So why does the Eternal God make temporary things? Furthermore, why has He put mankind in a temporary world, and yet set “eternity in their heart” (Eccl. 3:11)? Perhaps we won’t truly get the eternal things down until we get the temporal down. Perhaps we wouldn’t understand how to cultivate a disciple until we know how to water a vegetable patch. Perhaps we can’t really work for our reward, unless it is as if for no reward. Perhaps we learn obedience for its own sake by doing things that don’t seem to have a purpose.

Or maybe we see too dimly. Maybe, in being so frustrated with some who neglect the weightier things (Matt. 23:23), certainly the more glaring sin, some of us despise the small things (Zech. 4:10) that God rejoices in.

Let us, then, be about building the worldwide, everlasting kingdom, but without despising the miniscule things. One day, we may see that the response of our faith to the temporal things has indeed left an impression on eternity.

*Note: I'm going to try to write a blog about this long every week now. I need to keep my writing skills sharp and build a portfolio. Hope you enjoy. And if anyone has any ideas for subjects (*Nudges Sarah*), feel free to leave a suggestion, and we will see if I have something to say about it.

Currently Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future By Rosenberg Joel C. see related

Give more when it hurts

What is our personal responsibility when things get tough? It’s our first instinct, even common sense, to hold back, take it easy, take care of yourself first. But I am reminded of a dialogue in Fiddler on the Roof,

Beggar: Alms for the poor, alms for the poor . . .

Lazar: Here, Reb Nahum, is one kopek.

Beggar: One kopek? Last week you gave me two kopeks.

Lazar: I had a bad week.

Beggar: So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?

Of course, that passage is supposed to be funny, because as a beggar, he should just be grateful for any charity he can get. But charity, where it meets real needs, indeed suffers when givers have less money than last year. For instance, the Southern Baptists’ mission board cannot afford to send nearly as many missionaries as before, even though the harvest has never been riper, and they have more qualified applicants than ever. I imagine other organizations that are trying to bring a little blessing to the world are having similar difficulties. So I believe that we have a responsibility, even when we are having difficult times, to give financially all the more, because there are so many people suffering far more difficulty than we.

This principle also applies to prayer. When I am suffering a little, I never forget to pray for my alleviation. But I believe that instead, it should move me to pray for those suffering even more than I am. A dear friend, Linda, first told me about practicing this. This kind of prayer reminder may be especially applied to today’s global economy—we may want to pray we still have retirement, but should we not pray all the more for those who don’t know when they may eat next?

So, I challenge you, and myself—pray for the suffering around the world as much as your own. To anyone serious about the cheerful giving God calls for in the Bible, dig a little deeper and give a little more to meet the intensified needs of this suffering world. Don’t know where to pray or give? Locally, there are churches, food pantries/homeless shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, and teen mentoring. Maybe you can give time rather than money to these. Internationally, there are humanitarian relief organizations (World Vision, Red Cross, Salvation Army, and World Relief, to name a few), and mission organizations (SBC’s Cooperative Program, Serving in Mission [SIM], The Navigators—again, a small sample!) There are also more specialized charities like Voice of the Martyrs and Care Net. If there is any cause you feel passionate about, please let your difficulties remind you of the even greater ones facing these ministries, and not cause you to shrink away from being involved. Yes, if you give money once, you will endlessly be solicited for more. But I take that as yet more emphasis on the need for people to be willing to see the pain of others. I also take it as a blessing, for even if I don’t respond to each solicitation financially, at least I am reminded to pray. After all, no other giving is effective without prayer.

So I appeal to you most of all, pray, not just for Americans’ security, but for restoration among those suffering in ways with which we are not even acquainted. Pray for the poor, the lost, the hungry, and the ministries reaching out to them. Being involved with the needs of others puts our own in perspective and, I believe, draws us nearer to the heart of God.

“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

Because the LORD has anointed me

To bring good news to the afflicted;

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives

And freedom to prisoners” Isaiah 61:1

Currently Hinds' Feet on High Places By Hannah Hurnard see related

"My Path is Hidden from Me"--LotR

It's a strange feeling, to someone so used to success. This is the point where hard work won't always cut it.

Nothing I want to succeed in now is anywhere near sure.

Writing: Got my second rejection letter yesterday. I'm not that bummed, because I know it's part of the process--it's just the wondering, how many more are to come before I can get published consistently?

Fiddler on the Roof: Most of you don't know, but the college where my Dad works is putting on the musical, and Daddy and I were both going to try out. I really really wish I could do a lead with him. With my musical immaturity, I'll be lucky to get a chorus part, though.

Missions: I just found out, IMB has had to cut way back on sending missionaries. They told me today that they won't be considering anybody else until January, and even then they will be taking far fewer candidates than normal. But I really can't imagine doing anything else, anymore. So I'm left to wonder--wait? Or try to find another venue for missions?

I could freak about all this, but I won't. God knows what He wants to do with me now. I just have to trust that He knows where these wishes, "ifs," and "maybes" will get me to turn, and make sure He puts what He wants in front of me.

Lord, help me to listen. I just want to be where You want me to be. And I know You're smiling right now, because You're thinking more about where I am in proximity to Your heart than my next occupation.