"The call is the expression of the nature of the One who calls, and we can only recognize the call if that same nature is in us.... The call of God is not a reflection of my nature; my personal desires and temperament are of no consideration. As long as I dwell on my own qualities and traits and think about what I am suited for, I will never hear the call of God.... The majority of us cannot hear anything but ourselves. And we cannot hear anything God says." Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 16.
There is so much in my head right now, I'm not even sure I know where to begin processing all of it. Recently it's been so overwhelming that I just haven't even tried. I'm tired. For the past few months I've felt a lot like Elijah in 1 Kings 19. Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel in 1 Kings 18 when God sent fire from heaven. There was an amazing showing of God's power, and in the very next chapter Jezebel promises to kill Elijah, and so he flees to Horeb.
This is the same mountain where Moses met with God and received the the Ten Commandments, as well as the instructions for the Tabernacle and the items within. This is a a place where God has met with man before. His power showed up in thunder and lightning which terrified the people. Elijah has just witnessed similar power on a different mountain. He comes to Sinai, and finds a cave where he sets up camp. God comes to him and asks what he is doing? The mission was to proclaim the message of God to the people and help Israel turn from pagan worship back to God. He begins the work, sees God do something amazing, but at the first sign of resistance, he runs away. On the mountain, God speaks to Elijah.
1 Kings 19.11-12, "So He said, 'Go forth and stand on the mountain before the Lord.' And behold, the Lord was passing by! And a great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking 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. After the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of a gentle blowing."
God tells him that He is passing by. There is a wind that is smashing the rocks and breaking apart the mountain, but God is not in it. There is a earthquake which is shaking the foundation of the mountain, but God is not in it. There is a fire, which consumes the vegetation on the mountain, but God is not in it. Then, after all of the power and chaos, there is a gentle blowing, and now God is on the scene. Elijah covers his face, and leaves the cave to meet God.
Up to this point, God is seen in power. He speaks with thunder and lightning, He splits the Red Sea and the Jordan River. City walls collapse, giants fall, fire descends from heaven. God shows Himself in mighty ways, doing the impossible, and yet here, Elijah meets God in gentleness and tenderness. The mighty forces of nature that demanded his attention did not captivate him, because God was not there, but when God shows up, Elijah goes out to meet him.
Right now I feel like my focus is on the wind of missing my family, the earthquake of what everyone is telling me to do, and the fire of everything I feel like I need to figure out. There are so many things that grab for my attention that I cannot hear the gentle blowing of God showing up and wanting to speak. God is mighty and powerful, He shows Himself in mighty ways, but He is a gentle, compassionate, loving Father, who desires to nurture and comfort His children. I feel like so many people involved in this are focused on the wind, earthquake, and fire in their own lives, that they are not hearing the gentle blowing of God. I feel like that is often the case in life. There are so many distractions, so many personal feelings and emotions that get in the way of what God is wanting to say. Chambers said it, "The majority of us cannot hear anything but ourselves. And we cannot hear anything God says."
I'm trying to figure out how to silence everything else, or at the very least look past it and tune it out. I feel like for far too long I've been focused on what everyone expects of me, how everyone sees me, and who everyone sees me to be. I don't want to listen to anything but God. I don't want anything else to captivate my attention. I want to be like Elijah, who knew the voice of God, and when He showed up, responded and went out to meet Him. I want to hear what He says, no matter what that message may be, and I want to respond in full obedience. I want all the voices but His to be silenced.
Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
Showing posts with label My Utmost for His Highest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Utmost for His Highest. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Alone
"When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken relationship, or a new friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.... Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with Him." -Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, January 13.
How often am I really alone with God? Not simply by myself, but intentionally focused solely on Him? Back in college it happened all the time. There was a small prayer room that I spent countless hours in. There were periods of time where I had no roommate, and so I had the dorm or apartment completely to myself. There was a gorgeous chapel, with stained glass windows, and I would spend early mornings there, as the sun poured in through the colored glass. Those were some of the best moments of my life, times alone with God. Sometimes He would speak, sometimes He would listen, and sometimes we could just sit in silence, enjoying each other's company. It was a fantastic time, but I feel like I took it for granted.
I remember saying, like so many people did, "Life will be so much simpler once school is over. When it's just a job and not five different classes to focus on, it will be so much easier to connect with God." There are so many times since then I have wished I could go back to the simplicity of college. There have been so many times I have wished to just go sit in that prayer room at 2 AM. I have even driven down just to pray in the chapel. I miss those alone times with God. I miss the deep and intimate friendship we had.
For over four months I have found myself alone. There have been times of connecting with God, but also, and far more often, a lot of distractions that have still been allowed to consume my time. In some ways I feel that God does not care, and then I am reminded that this is part of the forging process. I have felt that He is absent, and then I am reminded of a class on the book of Job, where the professor said, "God's silence is not equivalent to God's absence."
It's amazing how even when we are alone we can still find so many things to distract us from God. Over the past four months I have learned a lot about myself. I have learned the things that make me tick, and the things that set me off. I have learned about the deepest yearnings of my heart, and by extension, the things that cause me the most pain. One of my pastors who has been walking with me this entire time had me make a list of how I feel during certain situations. From that list I was able to identify five central themes that all of the items on the list stem from. I shared them with another pastor who challenged me to combat those five things with the truth of scripture, and in doing that find out what God has to say about each of them. He then had me get a piece of paper, and at the top write "Dear Bill," at the bottom "Love, Jesus" and in between listen to what He has to say about each of these five things.
One of them was a desire for intimacy, and feeling that no one wants intimacy with me. As I looked at scripture and began to listen closely to the voice of Christ He made it clear that intimacy with Him is available, that it is something He longs for with me, but that it must be something that I desire with Him.
James 4.8 says, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded." God says that if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. If we seek intimacy with Him, He will not reject us or turn us away. But intimacy requires effort on our part, cleansing through Christ, and purity through intentional focus. Intimacy with God means shutting out all distractions, and allowing Him to be the only one in the room that you notice.
For a long time this has been hard for me. The more time I have, the more this seems to get put off. The more responsibilities I take on, the more I tend to brush this aside. I'm either too busy, or have too much time on my hands. But I'm finding that God is the only answer to each of those.
Intimacy with God is the only answer to the five themes that everything else in my life falls into. It is only through intimacy with God that He is able to speak into, and fulfill each of those needs and desires. He is the only one that can bring true meaning to each area, and He desires to, but it is only if I am willing to get alone with Him, and take advantage of being alone with Him, that He will teach me the things that He wants me to know.
"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
How often am I really alone with God? Not simply by myself, but intentionally focused solely on Him? Back in college it happened all the time. There was a small prayer room that I spent countless hours in. There were periods of time where I had no roommate, and so I had the dorm or apartment completely to myself. There was a gorgeous chapel, with stained glass windows, and I would spend early mornings there, as the sun poured in through the colored glass. Those were some of the best moments of my life, times alone with God. Sometimes He would speak, sometimes He would listen, and sometimes we could just sit in silence, enjoying each other's company. It was a fantastic time, but I feel like I took it for granted.
I remember saying, like so many people did, "Life will be so much simpler once school is over. When it's just a job and not five different classes to focus on, it will be so much easier to connect with God." There are so many times since then I have wished I could go back to the simplicity of college. There have been so many times I have wished to just go sit in that prayer room at 2 AM. I have even driven down just to pray in the chapel. I miss those alone times with God. I miss the deep and intimate friendship we had.
For over four months I have found myself alone. There have been times of connecting with God, but also, and far more often, a lot of distractions that have still been allowed to consume my time. In some ways I feel that God does not care, and then I am reminded that this is part of the forging process. I have felt that He is absent, and then I am reminded of a class on the book of Job, where the professor said, "God's silence is not equivalent to God's absence."
It's amazing how even when we are alone we can still find so many things to distract us from God. Over the past four months I have learned a lot about myself. I have learned the things that make me tick, and the things that set me off. I have learned about the deepest yearnings of my heart, and by extension, the things that cause me the most pain. One of my pastors who has been walking with me this entire time had me make a list of how I feel during certain situations. From that list I was able to identify five central themes that all of the items on the list stem from. I shared them with another pastor who challenged me to combat those five things with the truth of scripture, and in doing that find out what God has to say about each of them. He then had me get a piece of paper, and at the top write "Dear Bill," at the bottom "Love, Jesus" and in between listen to what He has to say about each of these five things.
One of them was a desire for intimacy, and feeling that no one wants intimacy with me. As I looked at scripture and began to listen closely to the voice of Christ He made it clear that intimacy with Him is available, that it is something He longs for with me, but that it must be something that I desire with Him.
James 4.8 says, "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded." God says that if we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. If we seek intimacy with Him, He will not reject us or turn us away. But intimacy requires effort on our part, cleansing through Christ, and purity through intentional focus. Intimacy with God means shutting out all distractions, and allowing Him to be the only one in the room that you notice.
For a long time this has been hard for me. The more time I have, the more this seems to get put off. The more responsibilities I take on, the more I tend to brush this aside. I'm either too busy, or have too much time on my hands. But I'm finding that God is the only answer to each of those.
Intimacy with God is the only answer to the five themes that everything else in my life falls into. It is only through intimacy with God that He is able to speak into, and fulfill each of those needs and desires. He is the only one that can bring true meaning to each area, and He desires to, but it is only if I am willing to get alone with Him, and take advantage of being alone with Him, that He will teach me the things that He wants me to know.
"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
Friday, January 8, 2016
Who He Is
The biggest problem we have in the world today is how we view and approach God. Let that sink in for a minute.
Think of the way people refer to God. The Big Guy. The Man upstairs. Is such a casual response really appropriate? Think of the reasons people often seek God. "God, help me with ...", "God, heal me of ...", "God, give me ...", it turns God into an ATM, a medicine cabinet, or Santa. We casually approach Him with our needs, hoping He will solve all of our problems, but we never offer Him the reverence and honor that His very nature demands. God exists to serve us, take care of us, and handle all of our problems. It makes us central and God secondary.
I'm amazed at the arrogance, and I'm guilty of it in my own life. So often my prayers dive right into what I need God to do for me, how I need His help. Over the past few months I have spent a lot of time pouring out my needs and requests to God, and every time I'm reminded of how Jesus instructed us to pray. "Pray, then, in this way: 'Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.'" (Matthew 6.9-10) Prayer is to begin with God being acknowledged and honored for who He is. Prayer is to begin with a focus on God's desire and God's plan.
Galatians 4.9a says, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God" and that is why prayer is to begin as it does. It is not a big deal that I know God. He spoke the universe into existence. He created light itself from the words of His mouth. He invented the scent of a rose, the colors of the rainbow, the sound of water falling over rocks. God formed man out of the dust and breathed into Him the breath of life. When man disobeyed and sinned, He immediately went to work at restoring him to righteousness. He came to earth as a man, lived a perfect life, modeling how He intended for life to be lived, and then died in our place to pay for sin. He rose from the dead and sent us His Holy Spirit so that we could be empowered to live as He showed us. It is not a big deal that we know who this God is, we should, but the fact that this God knows us, loves us, and died so that we could have a relationship with Him is a big deal. It is not a big deal that we know Him, but that fact that He knows us, that is huge.
This year I have felt led to read My Utmost for His Highest. I read it years ago in college, and its been moved from shelf to shelf over the past ten years, but with my current life situation and the focus that God is trying to give me, I have felt the need to work through it again this year. On January 1, Oswald Chambers said,
"But before we choose to follow God's will, a crisis must develop in our lives. This happens because we tend to be unresponsive to God's gentler nudges. He brings us to the place where He asks us to be our utmost for Him and we begin to debate. He then providentially produces a crisis where we have to decide - for or against. That moment becomes a great crossroads in our lives. If a crisis has come to you on any front, surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably."
This is where I find myself right now, dealing with crisis. In hindsight, I've seen how God has been making gentle nudges for years. The last few times I've read Wild at Heart and The Way of the Wild Heart I felt the need to explore the subject more, and begin the process of masculine initiation. I had no idea how, and felt like I was very alone in the process. Because of the feelings I shared yesterday it was difficult to ask for help, and so I made the mistake of trying to figure it out on my own, and ended up settling for a theoretical head knowledge of masculinity.
I don't know how many times my wife suggested that we do marriage counseling together, but again, the same feelings that wouldn't allow me to seek the guidance of men prevented me from seeing the issues in my marriage that I couldn't fix. My wife and I became more and more distant because I didn't want to take the gift of God's nudging. And so this past September the crisis occurred. God's nudging had done all that it could, but I had not responded to any of it.
Since then I have been on a journey, one that in all honesty could have happened much differently had my approach to God not been so casual, and arrogant. It has been an experience of learning who He is and who I am. On January 2, Chambers wrote, "God does not tell you what He is going to do - He reveals to you who He is." This is where we need to live.
God does not exist to solve our problems, we exist to know Him. God created us to have fellowship with Him and worship Him. He did not create us because He was bored and needed something to do, and so He made a bunch of needy humans to occupy His time. We were created to know God so that we could glorify Him. And the most amazing thing is that God desires for us to know Him. He is so far above us, and yet He does not look at us with arrogant disdain. He looks on us with unconditional love, and invites us to know Him.
It is not a big deal that we know God, but it is huge that God knows us, and invites us to know Him intimately. My hope is to come to know God more, and to exist solely to know Him and glorify Him.
"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
Think of the way people refer to God. The Big Guy. The Man upstairs. Is such a casual response really appropriate? Think of the reasons people often seek God. "God, help me with ...", "God, heal me of ...", "God, give me ...", it turns God into an ATM, a medicine cabinet, or Santa. We casually approach Him with our needs, hoping He will solve all of our problems, but we never offer Him the reverence and honor that His very nature demands. God exists to serve us, take care of us, and handle all of our problems. It makes us central and God secondary.
I'm amazed at the arrogance, and I'm guilty of it in my own life. So often my prayers dive right into what I need God to do for me, how I need His help. Over the past few months I have spent a lot of time pouring out my needs and requests to God, and every time I'm reminded of how Jesus instructed us to pray. "Pray, then, in this way: 'Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.'" (Matthew 6.9-10) Prayer is to begin with God being acknowledged and honored for who He is. Prayer is to begin with a focus on God's desire and God's plan.
Galatians 4.9a says, "But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God" and that is why prayer is to begin as it does. It is not a big deal that I know God. He spoke the universe into existence. He created light itself from the words of His mouth. He invented the scent of a rose, the colors of the rainbow, the sound of water falling over rocks. God formed man out of the dust and breathed into Him the breath of life. When man disobeyed and sinned, He immediately went to work at restoring him to righteousness. He came to earth as a man, lived a perfect life, modeling how He intended for life to be lived, and then died in our place to pay for sin. He rose from the dead and sent us His Holy Spirit so that we could be empowered to live as He showed us. It is not a big deal that we know who this God is, we should, but the fact that this God knows us, loves us, and died so that we could have a relationship with Him is a big deal. It is not a big deal that we know Him, but that fact that He knows us, that is huge.
This year I have felt led to read My Utmost for His Highest. I read it years ago in college, and its been moved from shelf to shelf over the past ten years, but with my current life situation and the focus that God is trying to give me, I have felt the need to work through it again this year. On January 1, Oswald Chambers said,
"But before we choose to follow God's will, a crisis must develop in our lives. This happens because we tend to be unresponsive to God's gentler nudges. He brings us to the place where He asks us to be our utmost for Him and we begin to debate. He then providentially produces a crisis where we have to decide - for or against. That moment becomes a great crossroads in our lives. If a crisis has come to you on any front, surrender your will to Jesus absolutely and irrevocably."
This is where I find myself right now, dealing with crisis. In hindsight, I've seen how God has been making gentle nudges for years. The last few times I've read Wild at Heart and The Way of the Wild Heart I felt the need to explore the subject more, and begin the process of masculine initiation. I had no idea how, and felt like I was very alone in the process. Because of the feelings I shared yesterday it was difficult to ask for help, and so I made the mistake of trying to figure it out on my own, and ended up settling for a theoretical head knowledge of masculinity.
I don't know how many times my wife suggested that we do marriage counseling together, but again, the same feelings that wouldn't allow me to seek the guidance of men prevented me from seeing the issues in my marriage that I couldn't fix. My wife and I became more and more distant because I didn't want to take the gift of God's nudging. And so this past September the crisis occurred. God's nudging had done all that it could, but I had not responded to any of it.
Since then I have been on a journey, one that in all honesty could have happened much differently had my approach to God not been so casual, and arrogant. It has been an experience of learning who He is and who I am. On January 2, Chambers wrote, "God does not tell you what He is going to do - He reveals to you who He is." This is where we need to live.
God does not exist to solve our problems, we exist to know Him. God created us to have fellowship with Him and worship Him. He did not create us because He was bored and needed something to do, and so He made a bunch of needy humans to occupy His time. We were created to know God so that we could glorify Him. And the most amazing thing is that God desires for us to know Him. He is so far above us, and yet He does not look at us with arrogant disdain. He looks on us with unconditional love, and invites us to know Him.
It is not a big deal that we know God, but it is huge that God knows us, and invites us to know Him intimately. My hope is to come to know God more, and to exist solely to know Him and glorify Him.
"Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
To God alone be the Glory!
Strength and Honor
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