Beauty

I often feel like when I try to tell people about God, when I try to explain what He’s really like, no one is interested.  No one wants that God, they want another one.  One that is friendly rather than fearsome.  One that is kind rather than crushing.  One that embodies mercy more than judgment, One that proffers grace more than accountability.  Often times, when people come face to face with the God that the Bible describes in Scripture, He seems foreign to them.  They don’t want a God Who sometimes answers a prayer for healing with continued sickness.  They don’t want a God who disciplines His creation through their circumstances.  A God Who, when we ask for faith, He gives us a trial.  When we ask for beauty, He blesses us with failure and rejection.  A God like this doesn’t make sense to most people who imagine God to be something He is not.  As I sat in my prayer chair next to my bed the other day and contemplated Who I know God to be versus what many people seem to imagine Him to be like, I wrote this poem:

I asked God to make me beautiful,

So He let me fail.

He let me sit in the darkness alone.

He let me weep in despair.

He let me wrestle dragons and stand against scorpions,

He let me cry out to Him for help.

He let me doubt and question,

He let me wallow in the depths of human ignorance.

He let me climb the peaks and suffer the valleys of human emotion.

He let me be rejected, He let me be tempted, He let me be disappointed.

He allowed me to be sifted.

Challenge after challenge, test after test, 

The waters rose until my feet could touch no more.

Then wave after wave tried to take me under,

Until at last, 

I sat on a deserted beach, 

Alone.

As water dripped from my face,

I looked up to heaven and cried out,

“Father, I prayed for You to make me beautiful!”

And He answered, 

“I did.”

Beauty in the eyes of heaven is a faith that is tried and tested, and yet endures.  Beauty in heaven is seeming defeat on earth, yet the unwillingness to let go of hope.  Beauty in heaven is tenacity in the face of relentless discouragement and persistence in the face of relentless persecution.  Beauty in heaven is running and not growing weary, it is walking and not fainting.  It is the resolve to hold onto God despite the silence, despite the shame, ridicule, rejection, fear, sorrow, and disappointment.

Beauty in heaven is a heart that has withstood the furnace of both human ruthlessness and heavenly refinement.  Because it is both the intensity of the flame and the unrelenting hammer that makes the sharpest swords.

"Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you like wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:31,32)

"For I will give the command, and I will shake the people of Israel among all the nations as grain is shaken in a sieve, and not a pebble will reach the ground." (Amos 9:9)

"He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem. Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed." (Isaiah 53:2-5)

Pursuit

"Many are the pursuits of mankind's hearts, but there is only one pursuit that will genuinely satisfy. All other pursuits only lead to more hunger. The heart of mankind is insatiable with regard to all other pursuits but one."

This is what the Holy Spirit laid on my heart after my prayer time today. One of the things that the Spirit is currently burdening my heart with, is how we so easily deceive ourselves. There are many in the church who have convinced themselves that they are pursuing God, but what they are really pursuing is success, recognition, acknowledgement, their own ambition, validation, a comfortable version of Jesus, wealth, prosperity, power, control over their circumstances, and many other things that are the true treasure of their heart, rather than Jesus Christ the person, Who calls us to die to ourselves and stand naked before Him.  Too many of us want to bring our own clothing with us, our good deeds, our noble pursuits, our successful endeavors we have accomplished in Jesus' name.  But what we don't realize is that our own clothing is like filthy rags before the throne of God (Zechariah 3:4,5). Our white garments must come from the Lord, and the Lord alone (Rev 3:18), because it is only His righteousness that is truly worthy. Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor in spirit.." (Matt 5:3) because they are those who realize and understand their spiritual poverty without the benevolence of God.

Many of us are willing to accept Jesus-plus-the-thing-we-want-Him-to-do-for-us. We are willing to accept Jesus, as long as it's on our terms. But what we really need to understand is that we must be willing to accept Jesus alone, on His terms alone. This is because anything we add to our pursuit of Him will eventually get in the way. Jesus, alone, is worth forsaking every other pursuit of our heart. That is why He said, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field" (Matt 13:44). We pursue many things to satisfy our hearts, and many in the church pursue much in Jesus' name, but all He truly wants us to pursue is Him.

What is the treasure of your heart? What are you pursuing? Are you clothed in your own garments or His? Ask God to examine your heart.  But many of us may first have to pray for the courage to face what God finds.  God doesn't need us to build bigger churches, grow larger ministries, accumulate wealth and influence, fix our political system, or any other thing we convince ourselves that God has "called" us to do.  Many of the things we do in Jesus' name are things He never asked us to do in the first place.  He simply said, "Follow Me."  And when we walk alongside of Jesus as He walked, we find that His path led not to the satisfaction of His own ambition or comfort, but to a rough-hewn cross.  Sometimes God just wants us to sit still long enough to let Him do His work in us.

As they traveled along, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet, listening to His teaching. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations to be made. She came to Jesus and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord replied, "you are worried and upset about many things. But only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part and it shall not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)   

Let Go

One of the hardest things for us to do is to let go.  This fear of loss seems to be unbearable.  The thought of letting go of our vision of how life should be, or how we should be, or how others should be, or how God should be, is like a looming boogey monster.  But when we let go, we come to a place where true faith in God’s goodness and trustworthiness can begin to take root in our heart as He replaces our own vision with His.

There was a book that was popular when I was a little girl called, “Where the Red Fern Grows.”  It’s a tear-jerker about a boy and his dogs. As Trump would say, “It’s a really terrific book, a fantastic book, everyone agrees it’s a great book.” There is a part in the story where it describes a trap devised by the boy to catch raccoons. A large hole is drilled down into a log and then tack nails are driven in, along the rim of the hole, all at an angle pointed toward the center.  Something shiny and desirable is placed in the bottom of the hole and then the trap is set. When the coon comes along and sees that shiny thing in the bottom of the hole, it reaches in, closes its fist around it and won’t let go. Its closed fist is too big to fit back out the hole because of the angled tack nails, which pierce the closed fist every time the coon tries to pull it out. No matter what, the coon won’t let go. Neither hunger nor approaching danger will cause the coon to release its treasure.

Satan uses this same sort of tactic.  He entices our hearts and imaginations to reach down into his trap to grasp at the desirable thing and close our heart and mind around it like a fist. But when we try to move forward with it, we find that we are trapped and become stuck because we won’t let go. Like the coon, all we have to do to be set free is to let go of the desirable shiny thing, and like the coon, we refuse. Like the coon, we hold onto the vain illusion even if it means we die while still holding onto it.  Our desire to hold on is stronger than our desire to be set free.

Jesus came to set mankind free.  He came to heal our hearts of their sickness.  He offers us a cross that will set us free, but many would rather hang onto the shiny thing that Satan has enticed their heart with. I’ve been down this road, I’ve struggled with holding onto what I envisioned my future to be versus letting go and allowing God to replace my vision with His. I’ve struggled with letting go of the image I tried to live up to, versus the image that God wanted to shape in me. I’ve struggled with letting go of who I wanted God to be, versus Who He truly is.  I’ve watched others vainly pursue human desires both outside the church and within it, since none of us are immune.  Satan works by luring us down a road of empty promises, a path lined by the desires of our own heart.  Humanity must know and understand that Satan weaponizes our own heart against us.  That is why it is critical that we allow God to examine it, so He can reveal to us the things that Satan could weaponize against us.

All Satan needs to succeed in his work against us is to keep us reaching for his lies instead of God’s truth. All he needs to succeed is to keep us reaching for our own vision, instead of God’s.  As the darkness continues to close in around us, and it will, we must let go of whatever shiny thing we have been holding onto.  We must let go and allow God to sift our hearts and replace our own vision with His.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick--who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart; I test the mind to reward a man according to his way, by what his deeds deserve." (Jer 17:9,10)

"What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in His Father's glory with His angels, and then He will repay each one according to what he has done." (Matt 16:26,27)

"You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.  I will be found by you," declares the Lord. (Jer 29:13,14)

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will fine; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." (Matt 7:7,8)

Sending Out An SOS

Ground control to Major Tom:

I live among a people that are indoctrinated with happiness, comfort and success.  A people who have been inoculated with an inert version of the Gospel that has no power to save and only serves to immunize them towards the power of the one that does.  

I live among a people who do not realize that, for the most part, the devil does not deceive and ensnare us with bad things, but with good things.  He drowns us in an avalanche of good things so that we cannot climb our way up to the best thing.  He blinds us with good things, he offers us good things and we take them and settle for them, completely unaware that there are better things.  

Then when we are told that there are better things, we don’t want them because we are comfortable with our good things.  When we are told that we will have to sacrifice our good things for better things, we are not interested because sacrifice is uncomfortable and our good things keep us comfortable.  

Why should we endeavor to hold onto a rusty nail when we can hold onto our comfort?  Why should we strive for a splinter of wood when we can receive prosperity and blessing?  Why should we share in the sufferings of Christ when our innocuous gospel says we don’t have to?  Our innocuous gospel keeps us safe and happy and our faith is in its promise that safety, happiness and comfort are the meaning of life.

 

I don’t write this for my generation, because my generation rejects it.  I write this for a generation to come, as a warning, as a plea, with hope that another generation to come will have the wisdom and humility to receive it and benefit from it. 

This is ground control to Major Tom:  the devil didn’t overcome my generation with sorrow and suffering, he overcame my generation with happiness and comfort.  With prosperity and blessing.  We didn’t lose this battle because we fought hard and lost.  We didn’t lose this battle because we fought a superior foe.  We lost this battle because we didn’t fight at all.  Because the enemy convinced us that we didn’t have to.  Because the enemy became our friend.

Hireling

There is an occasion during Jesus’ ministry where Jesus heals a blind man, which causes an uproar among the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were the ones who taught the common folk the Scriptures, but despite being teachers of God’s word, they were hypocrites.  Outwardly they seemed to “follow all the rules,” but inwardly their heart was full of junk:  pride, lust, selfishness, ambition, greed, ego, gossip, sanctimony.  They loved the recognition and approval of other people, they sought greatness, they wanted followers, they wanted to be seen as important and well-learned.  They wanted large ministries and notoriety, and they did it all in God’s name, deceiving themselves that they were doing God’s work.

On this particular occasion when Jesus healed the blind man, the Pharisees condemned Jesus for doing it on the Sabbath, and therefore refused to acknowledge that the miracle that took place was a work of God (John 9:16).  So Jesus tells them that one of the reasons He came into the world was to judge them, “so that those who do not see may see, and those who think they see will become blind” (John 9:41).  It is this episode that sets up the context of what Jesus says next in the Parable of the Good Shepherd at John Chapter 10, which is also the point of what I’m about to share with you.

When Jesus gives the Parable of the Good Shepherd, He is not only explaining His own faithfulness and trustworthiness to care for His flock, but He is also condemning those He refers to as “hirelings” or “hired hands” (John 10:12).  Hirelings are those who may tend sheep, but they do it for the wrong reasons and they are more interested in their wages than any self-sacrifice for the sheep.  Jesus says that when hirelings see the wolf coming, they flee and leave the sheep, and “the wolf snatches them and scatters them” (John 10:12).  When things begin to look their bleakest, when the wages run out, when the paycheck stops and the bricks of their own efforts begin to crumble down all around them, the hirelings abandon the sheep.  Jesus lays His life down for the sheep, but hirelings flee, “because he is a hired hand and is not concerned about the sheep” (John 10:13).  Most of the Pharisees were hirelings, because their motives for serving the people were self-centered and more due to their own ambition, rather than any genuine calling of God.

At Ezekiel Chapter 34, God tells the prophet to “prophesy against the shepherds of Israel” (34:2).  God condemns Israel’s shepherds for being more concerned about themselves than their flock.  He says that they have not strengthened the weak, or healed the diseased, or bound up the broken, or brought back the scattered or sought for the lost; but instead, they were more like those who drive cattle, than those who tend sheep, and because of that, God’s flock had become prey to the wolves (34:4).  God said they were more concerned about feeding themselves than feeding the flock, so He said, “I am against the shepherds and I will demand my sheep from them and make them cease from feeding sheep, so that the shepherds will not feed themselves anymore, but I will deliver my flock from their mouth so that they will not be food for them” (34:10).  Compensation had turned into career, and the sheep had become food for the shepherds.

As I watch all this hysteria play itself out over the Corona Virus, and I contemplate the impact it may make on our economy, I can’t help but wonder what will happen to many churches when the wages run out and the paycheck stops.  At Matthew Chapter 24, when Jesus is talking about the time of His return, He talks about two kinds of shepherds:  one who is faithful, who doesn’t abandon the sheep and gives them the proper teaching at the proper time, and one who is evil because of a lack of humility and who lives a hypocritical life (24:48,49).  Something that I don’t think a lot of people understand is that when God brings judgment, He starts with His church.  He begins with His own-- those who are supposed to be examples of Jesus’ teachings, those who are supposed to be examples of faith, examples of humility, examples of meekness, selflessness, and purity of heart.  The Pharisees were blind because they thought they were in no need of repentance.  They thought that their outward appearance of “following all the rules” and their teaching of God’s word, somehow exempted them from allowing God to examine their own heart.  Right after Jesus speaks of the faithful and evil servants at Matthew 24, he tells the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins.  The wise virgins recognize God’s call to allow their hearts to be examined, but the foolish virgins ignore it.  All of them hear the “shout heard round the world” and wake up (25:6), but only half of them are ready when the bridegroom comes.

Too Many Words

Sometimes there are too many words.  Right now, everyone is seeking words of comfort, words of information, words of humor, words of distraction.  We are looking for words under every stone—in every video clip and news article.  We are looking to the government, church leaders, and each other.  We are frantically looking for words and compulsively communicating words.  But sometimes, there are just too many.  Sometimes we just need to be quiet and sit still and let God speak.  None of us need to hear from each other right now, we need to hear from God.  And the only way to do that is to be quiet and seek His presence.

At 1 Kings 19:9-18, we have an account of the prophet Elijah.  After Elijah called down fire from heaven on Mt. Carmel and defeated the priests of Baal, Queen Jezebel put a bounty on his head to be executed.  We are told that Elijah “ran for his life” and went “into the wilderness” and asked God to just let him die (19:3,4).  Elijah was tired of fighting, he was tired of running, he had served God faithfully and all he had to show for it was a bounty on his head, so he asked God to just finish the job Himself and give his soul rest.  God sent an angel to Elijah to give him food because the journey that lay ahead of Elijah was too great to travel in his own strength.  Elijah would never make it without God’s help, “so he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.” (19:8).

Once Elijah got to Mt. Horeb, he was completely alone, cut off from the world and everyone, and God basically said, “Okay, now what is it?  What’s the problem, Elijah?  Here I am, tell me what you want.”  So Elijah pours out his heart to God, he just lays it all out from his perspective:  I’ve served You faithfully, people aren’t listening to me, they are increasing in sin, they’ve killed all your prophets, I’m the only one left that is faithful to You, and now they want to kill me too, AND EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART AND I AM FALLING APART AND GOD I JUST DON’T EVEN KNOW……”  Elijah had just hit a wall and couldn’t see any way around it.  So, God told him to get out of his cave and go stand on the mountain alone, completely exposed.  No words of comfort, no words of assurance, Elijah was already fearful and God told him to leave his sheltered place and stand completely vulnerable before Him.  That wasn’t really the answer Elijah was expecting, so he just stayed in his cave.

 

As Elijah cowered in the cave, God passed by and it caused “a great and strong wind” that crumbled the mountain rocks into pieces; then an earthquake; then a fire; and we are told that God’s presence was not in the wind, earthquake or fire.  Those were just the effects of His presence, but “the Lord was not in the wind…the Lord was not in the earthquake…the Lord was not in the fire” (19:11,12).  But after the fire, there was “a sound of a gentle blowing” and when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face and went and stood at the entrance of the cave and peeked out, and that is when God spoke to Him again, “What are you doing here Elijah?” (19:12,13).  Again, God did not give him words of comfort or assurance.  He asked Elijah to search his heart and explain what he wanted from God and why.  What are you looking for Elijah?  What are you really seeking?  What do you really want from Me?

And when we see Elijah’s response, we see again, that Elijah didn’t really ask God for anything, he just repeated his same complaint:  “Everything is falling apart and I’m gonna die.”  I think it is noteworthy that God’s way of comforting Elijah was not to respond with words of comfort, but words of assurance that He is sovereign and in control.  God never pacified Elijah, He simply asked him to examine his own motives, then gave him instructions for further service.  God told Elijah that He was going to judge Israel for their sin, that there would be another prophet to help Elijah, that many people were going to die, but there would be a faithful remnant left.  That was God’s answer. 

Sometimes we will get to a place in our lives where the journey that lays ahead of us is too great to travel in our own strength, and the only way we will be able to do it is by the bread of heaven.  Even then, we may find that our journey leads us to a place where God asks us to look at our own heart, to examine our own motives.  We want God, but then God brings us to a place where He asks us, “Why do you want me?”  We find that instead of giving us comfort, He brings us to a place of examination.  “What are you looking for?  What are you really seeking?”  And sometimes we find out that God’s way of comforting us is to simply remind us that He is sovereign and in control, even when the world seems to be falling apart, even though we may go through the wind, earthquake and fire.  He doesn’t save us from the wind, earthquake and fire, but He will walk through it with us and speak to us in a still small voice if we get quiet and sit still and let Him speak. 

Promised Land

When God led Abraham to the Promised Land, He told him to leave his country and his relatives and to go forth “to the land I will show you” (Gen 12:1).  God didn’t tell Abraham where he was going, He just told Abraham to “go,” and Abraham went.  The writer of Hebrews says, “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.”  Listen to me brothers and sisters, Abraham did not put his faith in where he was being led, or how he imagined it would turn out, or in his circumstances at hand, Abraham put his faith in a Person.  Abraham put his faith in God, regardless of his circumstances and regardless of his anxious anticipations.

Hundreds of years passed, and many things happened from the time that Abraham took his first faithful step toward the Promised Land, to the day that Joshua led the nation of Israel across the Jordan River to finally settle there.  But Abraham’s act of faith in God eventually led to the day that Joshua stood before the nation of Israel by the East bank of the Jordan River and told them, “When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God with the …priests carrying it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it. Then you will know which way to go, since you have never been this way before…” (Josh 3:3,4).  The ark was God’s visible presence among the Israelites, and just like Abraham, the nation of Israel had to follow God along a path that they had never traveled before.

They didn’t put their faith in where they were going or how they thought things were going to turn out, they put their faith in a Person. They put their faith in the presence of God among them, and followed Him along a way that they had never been before.  Joshua told the Israelites that they would know which way to go by keeping their eyes on the ark.  As they crossed over the Jordan into a land that was unknown to them, they pointed their eyes toward the presence of God, not their circumstances or destination.

After many years in the Promised Land, Israel turned away from God and God sent them prophets to speak truth to them, and turn them back to Him.  The land of Israel was filled with sin, and God called Israel a “rebellious people, false children, children unwilling to listen to the instruction of the Lord.” Therefore the prophet Isaiah spoke God’s word to them, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.” Israel trusted more in their leaders, political treaties, and economy than they did in God and they were manic in their fear, “a thousand will flee at the threat of one, at the threat of five you will all flee until your are left alone.” Isaiah told them to stop freaking out and trust God because “He longs to be gracious to you, therefore He rises to show you compassion, for the Lord is a just God. Blessed are all who wait for Him.” (Isaiah 30:9-18)

Today, we now find ourselves in days similar to what Israel experienced.  We find ourselves in a situation in which we are going along a way that we have never traveled before.  We are in a situation in which we are coming face to face with the truth of what we have truly put our trust in.  God promised Israel that when they cried out to Him, He would be “gracious at the sound of your cry; when He hears, He will answer you.” God didn’t say He would deliver them from their trial, but He did promise that He would answer them.  He promised that He would meet them at their mustard seed, because it is our trials and adversities that expose the genuineness of our faith (1 Peter 1:6-9).  Isaiah told the Israelites that, “The Lord will give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, but your Teacher will no longer hide Himself—with your own eyes you will see Him. And whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear this command behind you:  ‘This is the way. Walk in it.’” (Isaiah 30:19-21)

Our faith is not to be put in anything else but our Teacher, Jesus Christ.  We don't need to know where we are going in the days ahead, because our Teacher is also our destination.  When Jesus no longer hides Himself and we see Him with our own eyes, we will be gathered to Him, because He is our Promised Land.