Ground

Do we really need to select an analogy for that on which we place our feet?
It is not a playground.
It is not a battleground.
It is simply ground.

The ground is never the same if you don’t stay in the same place. It can be luxurious like a grassy meadow with maybe even a rainbow. It can be steep and rocky like a mountain side with maybe even some conflict to make you slide. It can be hard and fast like a concrete highway, moving so fast it is hard to focus.

We were not built for a specific type of ground. We were built to move, to progress, to transition, to grow but never to hide. We do not do well when we dwell too long on one type of surface. We cannot sustain the battles of the rocky ground indefinitely. We cease to function if we refuse to leave an oasis’ respite once recovered.

We do not do well when we cling to a type of ground because we have ceased traveling. If we don’t move, we cannot claim to be living. Living is loving the destination, the experience of something new in which to sink our toes, the longing for what is over the next ridge, around the next corner, the knowing that we are not home.

We need not worry about the ground we are on. We are not here to build a residence. We are passing through time. Nothing of the ground will last. We need not worry about the ground we are on, whether urge to flee from an uncomfortable occurrence or linger in the comfort of security. Look up from the ground, this is not your home. Look all around, this is not your town. You are a nomad, flowing through time. You have a residence but it is not on this ground. Be curious about the future, hold fast to the hope that will last. Trust that the ground under your feet will transition into something new, but above all stay on the move and enjoy the journey of true living.

Promiscuous Mind

This is the time of year that Spotify provides the summary of your listening habits for the year.  I have started to see these posts from friends and family Instagram.  Therefore, the timing was perfect to run across this quote by Epictetus.    

I look at the hours devoted to specific podcasts and muscians and I wonder if we haven’t just handed over our minds. I have not gotten my Spotify summary yet, so I am not judging or confessing. I am making a plan. I know what I will be looking for when my summary comes in.

Have I had a promiscuous mind?

I am not against intellectual inquire, but let’s be honest, that is not what Spotify is primarily about. It is mostly about entertaining, amusing, distracting, and simply filling the time. Consider who you have handed your mind over to? Consider who has become your primary influencer? Before we ever offer the parts of our body to sin, we offer up our minds.

QUOTE (Tim Keller) – Troublemakers

I have been listening to Tim Keller’s sermon series on wisdom. He referred to his devotional book during his sermon Knowing God. So, I bought God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life. Yesterday’s devotion struck me as so relevant to today’s issues that I wanted to share it. It is hard to make a case that our culture is getting wiser.

THE TROUBLEMAKER. Another kind of fool is the troublemaker. The mark of this person is constant conflict (Prov. 6:14). This is the opposite of the peacemaker (Matt. 5:9), the bridge builder whose careful, gracious answers (Prov. 15:1) disarm and defuse tensions. The troublemaker instead stirs them up. This is not the person who disturbs the false peace with an insistence on honesty. Rather, this is someone who always feels the need to protest and complain rather than overlooking a slight or wrong (Prov. 19:11). When troublemakers do contend, they do not present the other side fairly. Their corrupt mouths produce deceptive omissions, half-truths, and innuendo. Their body language (winking, signaling) creates a hostile situation rather than one that leads to resolution.

Troublemakers tell themselves and others that they just like to “speak truth to power”. But disaster will overtake the troublemakers (Prov. 6:15). As time goes on, it becomes clear that the troublemakers themselves are a reason that conflict always follows in their wake. They can be permanently discredited by events that expose them for what they are. But the ultimate reason for their downfall is that “the Lord hates…a person who stirs up conflict in the community” (Prov. 6:16, 19).

Tim Keller, God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life, Page 11

Lost Meaning – Isaiah 1

What is this noise in my sanctuary?
This prattle sung in rythmic repetition.
Why these whispers during solemn prayer?
Hushed gossip of trivialities.
Where is My Word in this Sunday TedTalk?
Bells muting divine meaning and knowledge.

Stop bringing all this meaningless worship!

Light-shows manipulate emotions impure.

Your media productions are detestable to me.

Your striving for personal gain, purpose, and self-improvement, I cannot bear.

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.”

Isaiah 1:18

Where has the meaning in your worship gone?
Come now, return the meaning to your praise and worship.
Let you worship flow from true reality, from sins that have been washed clean.
Let your Sunday morn be a time of meaning in all sincerity;
Worship with meaning is pleasing to Me.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a prophet. I am not claiming to have a word from God. I am always hesitant in writing narrative for God or implying that what I have written is in fact from the mouth of God. The above is my application of the Word of God through an actual prophet, Isaiah. This follows along with the thoughts of DID ANYONE NOTICE.

Do You Know Him? – John 17:3

“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

I wonder do you know him?

I have heard criticism that people like me make too much of Jesus.  That people like me focus too much on the person of Jesus Christ rather than the teachings of Jesus Christ.

I wonder do you know him?

I have heard arguments that the obsession of people like me, on the person of Jesus, is too exclusive of the beliefs of others.  That people like me should accept Jesus’s teachings on the intellectual bookshelf, amongst the other great moral philosophers of the ages.

I wonder do you know him?

I have heard reasoning that people like me have made too much of the great historical figure that Jesus was.  That people like me have been duped by history’s charlatans into believing that Jesus was something more than a mere mortal.

They don’t know him!

Jesus did not reveal himself to be studied. He revealed himself to be known.  I can study historical figures and learn about their actions, motivations, and philosophy but I will never say that I knew them. Jesus continues to be a topic in many lectures.  His teachings are analyzed in countless books. I can learn everything about Jesus but I will never know him until I actually follow his teaching and believe what he said about himself.

I wonder do you know him?

Faith is the prerequisite to knowing God and Jesus Christ, whom he sent.  God did not reveal himself for intellectual praise.  God revealed himself through his son, Jesus Christ, to demonstrate his mercy and grace by saving a people who believe in him, as he revealed himself.

I wonder do you know him?

God doesn’t save people who are intellectually aware of his historical teachings.  God doesn’t award merit to the strict adherence to rules given in the wilderness.  God saves those who believe in him, love him, know him.  People like me.  

I know him because he saved me. I cannot help making too much of Jesus. The person of Jesus Christ is worthy of too much focus because that is what love does.  God is exclusive.  He always has been exclusive.  He is a jealous God.  He is exclusive to those who receive his free gift.  He is exclusive to people who know him.

I wonder will you know him?

“For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” John 16:27

https://ref.ly/Jn17.3 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Explain Yourself – Job 23:4–5

“I would lay my case before him,
and I would fill my mouth with arguments.
I want to know the words with which he would answer me,
and I want to understand what he would say to me”

I have a day ahead in which I must be braced.  I must engage in a conflict required of my position, but a responsibility that I hate.

I must fire an employee. 

I have done it before, so I know how it usually  goes.  I will provide my explanation for termination, and then allow for them to lay their case before me, and fill their mouth with arguments,  and then I will communicate, hopefully to their understanding, my response.  

This process, I believe, is reasonable and necessary in my role as employer.  It is a process as old as Job.

However, I am reminded that I am not God.  

I am reminded that God is not an employer.  

God is not required to follow the reasonable and necessary procedures of an employer. It is a requirement that Job tried to impose upon God, which didn’t work out too well for him.  God is never required to explain Himself because…

He is God.

My meditation for the day is the Sovereignty of God.

https://ref.ly/Job23.4-5 via the Logos Bible Android app.

QUOTE (Victor Hugo)

“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.” ~Victor Hugo

In honor of Victor Hugo, a French author best known for his novels Les Misérables  and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who was born on this day in 1802.

Resources:
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo>Quotes

WORSHIP WEDNESDAY (Chris Tomlin)

Christian faith is ever to be growing and transforming to the end of life for those who are in Christ Jesus.  Transforming faith reaches the depths of the heart, untangles the tentacles of affection, and reforms the very form of a child of God’s soul.  The maturation of faith awakens early and often under the clear understanding and belief that the God of the Universe, the God of Creation, the Great I Am, is the Best Father of those who are His. The essence of Christian faith is not the general adoration of the unknowable.  The child daily abides with the Father whom he knows and loves.  Within that relationship, the divine power of Spirit transforming faith is released.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!  Luke 11:11

I worshiped this morning to this reminder from Chris Tomlin to the reality of who God is – a good, good, Father.

“The child asks of the Father whom he knows.
Thus, the essence of Christian prayer
is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition.
The right way to approach God is to stretch out
our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

“DILATED SOUL” – Jan. 20

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”  John 1:4-5

The door swinging shut was like plunging into an abyss.  I stood for a moment in the stunned shock of a lost sense.   A long repressed fear manifested in a disquieting shiver as the gloom of darkness seeped into my being.

In the disorienting gloom, my hands spring out as like the sudden sensory loss might cause me to crash into a surrounding wall.  I groped for a wall.  My fingers, landing upon textured drywall, immediately began sweeping the surface as if trying to read indiscernible Braille.  My eyes strained against the blackness in a futile attempt to distinguish the outline of the light switch.

I knew the switch had to be somewhere near the door, in its usual place.  My hands began to swing in large radii in the desperate attempt to find light.  My search was going disconcertedly nowhere.  In mounting frustration, I paused.

In that pause, my eyes adjusted to the lack of light.

The pupils of my eyes dilated to a degree that captured all the light available.  I had not noticed any light when the door had initially closed.  However, my eyes now collected a sliver of light that was penetrating the door at the threshold.  It was not much light but it was enough.

Having opened up to the light, my eyes were able to distinguish the faint outline of a switch right in front of me.  I flipped the switch without thinking and immediately was hit by a rush of light into my wide open eyes that nearly dropped me to my knees.

My floundering in darkness reminded me of the amazing nature of the eye.  The eye is a marvelous organ for the regulation of light.  The iris of the eye has two types of muscle.  There is a ring of sphincter muscles that encircle and constrict the pupil down to a couple of millimeters across to prevent too much light from entering.  There is another set of dilator muscles that can expand the pupil in low light.  The function of the iris is to pull in all the light necessary so that we are not blind.

The human body was created for light.
We were specifically designed to let light in.

I wonder if our soul isn’t similarly designed.

We were designed to have the true light of the world within us.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  John 8:12

Yet, sinful man sits imprisoned in the gloomy darkness of a closed off soul.  The sinful desires of the flesh have constricted their soul, preventing the light of the world from entering in.  They grope about in search of the light but they cannot find the source.  Yet, the source is all around them.  They cannot see because the pupil of their soul is closed.

I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.  Isaiah 42:6-7

Every person needs God to dilate the pupil of their soul.  God overcomes the power of sinful flesh in order to open our souls to His penetrating light; He opens the eyes of the blind.  The light of the glory of God flowing into a dilated soul drops every sinner to their knees.

The Christian life is merely learning to live in the light; learning to live with a dilated soul.  Our sinful nature continues to want to clamp down and close out the light of the world; it has malfunctioned into regulating the amount of light that can be let in.  Repentance and following Christ is a continual process of yielding to the dilation of our soul.

We were created to have the light of life.  Thankfully, God has not left us in the darkened prison of our closed souls.

“The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.”  Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

PRAYER: Lord, thank you for not leaving me in darkness.  Thank you for sending your Son, the light of the world, to lead me out of the dungeon of my own darkened soul and into the light of life.  Father, continue to dilate my soul; continue to open up my heart to your light.  Do not let the cares of this world constrict my desires and prevent your light for entering into me.  Help me to walk in your light in all things and at all times.  I pray this in the precious name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen

WORSHIP WEDNESDAY (Rend Collective) – Jan. 13

Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.  Nehemiah 8:10

A joyless spirit saps our strength.  Our joy in the Lord extends beyond superficial feelings of happiness.  Joy produces strength, and strength produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to same.

We must never lose our joy.

If you are not feeling the joy of the Lord, then you may need to go back to the Word.

And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing because they had understood the words that were declared to them.  Nehemiah 8:12