O, that we might know the Lord. February 18, 2010

today feels like a tender kiss.  i am doing this new thing right now that i am calling “the Beloved fast.”  there are a number of things i am fasting from.  among them?  tv and any books apart from Scripture.  for six months.  feels like a coming adventure.  so what’s the why?  well, i’m glad you (in theory) asked.

so, why?  well mostly because i’m tired.  i’m tired of getting caught up in love stories and adventures other than the one that is present (and eternal) reality.  and also because i’m desperate.  desperate to believe God.  i want more.  i want more of Him.  i want to know Him like i know no one else.  i want to cherish and treasure Him with the deepest seat of my heart’s affections.  i want to love Him like i can’t breathe without Him.  mostly because He’s worthy… and mostly because i can’t… breathe without Him.

i feel like i’m the young noah in that scene from The Notebook where he firmly declares, “so it’s not gonna be easy.  it’s gonna be really hard.  we’re gonna have to work at this every day, but i want to do that because i want you.  i want all of you, forever, you and me, every day“… except i’m saying it to Jesus… and partially to myself as this kind of “buck up, it’s only half-time!” speech.

i’m frustrated with my pride and dissatisfied with my divided heart.  so i’m setting about with a fixed purpose.  i want to be of undistracted devotion to the Lord (from 1 Corinthians 7:35).

it is a terrible thing to wait sometimes… as in, it is terribly difficult.  it can feel like hope wrapped in agony.  particularly i am speaking to you single gals out there.  though i know that waiting of all kinds can feel like lying on a bed of nails, this is the kind of waiting i’m most acutely aware of and familiar with during this season of my life.  and so i write.  and you know what beloveds?  i know, sweet sisters, that it is difficult.  i know that you hear all kinds of counsel from all different perspectives… some horrifically wrong and some with the best of intentions that actually inflict the deepest wounds.  and i know–especially when it feels like everyone all around you is talking about it and promising it to you (i know you’ve heard it… that response of, “what are you talking about, ‘if God has marriage for you?’  of COURSE God has marriage for you!”  ugh.  makes me want to puke a little at times… if i’m being honest… and you know me… gotta be real) and when it seems like everyone around you is telling you you’re going to meet your future spouse (aka “mr. right,” aka “the man of your dreams,” aka “your soulmate,” aka “the One He has purposed for you,” aka… well you get the point) any second now–you can oh-so-easily find yourself taking into consideration every single single guy you meet. wondering.  curious.  hopeful.  looking.  waiting.  hurting.  lonely.  but dear ones, this is not as it should be!!!  how quickly your motives in things become tainted!  how quickly you become about the show!  beloveds this is nothing but the lies of Satan coupled with the work of our flesh!  this particular place in the heart is so vulnerable to a unique twisting and perversion of what God deemed and intended to be beautiful!  UGH! I HATE THAT!

so, beloveds, what will we DO about it?  what will we DO with these hearts so desperate to worship and love and cling to and come up under authority and blossom and thrive under the protection of tender strength? 

GO TO THE KING!!  RUN TO HIM!! GAZE UPON HIM!!!  FIX YOUR EYES UPON HIM!!!  FOR HE IS THE ONE YOUR HEART IS MEANT FOR!!!!

beloveds i do not write as a stranger to these things.  i know the pain, the agony, and the anguish.  i know what it is to get caught up in something with your heart and suddenly be left there alone, reeling, and wondering confusedly “what that was all about.”

so press in, sweet ones, press into the King of Majesty.  let’s seek undistracted devotion together, shall we?

i want to be so in love with Jesus that i am totally oblivious to any man unless he stands before me and makes his intentions absolutely unflinchingly clear.  don’t you?

and if it is singleness.  if it is singleness He has, well then praise be to God.  still and forever.

i do not want to be a woman who, at the end, is left standing, devastated and ruined with a mournful heart crushed beneath the weight of loneliness and hope deferred because she spent her whole life–though she loved and followed after Jesus–longing for a man in the deepest part of her heart to such a degree that Christ did not have it all.

“i’m so bored of little gods while standing on the edge of something large, while standing here so close to You, we could be consumed.”   (How Great, david crowder band)

let’s move away from lesser gods, beloved ones.  let’s destory them!  let’s ruin them!

and if i am to be devastated or ruined by anything!, may it be the love of Christ!

Hosea 6:1-3
¹“Come, let us return to the LORD
For He has torn us, but He will heal us;
He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
²“He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day,
That we may live before Him.
³“So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth.”

Longing for a heart that forsakes all pride. February 5, 2010

God has stirred me from a long slumber it seems.

He is showing me much and reminding me of much.  He has been showing me more of my pride and the “works righteousness” bent of my heart… and, by His blessing and grace upon me and by His Spirit within me, causing my heart to grieve over my pride and adopt a posture of repentance for that.  a posture of humbling myself before Him and of coming before Him in glad subservience (meaning “useful in an inferior capacity” or “serving to promote some end”).  He has been bringing before me this concept of what it is to be a “bond-servant” of Christ for Jesus’ sake.  and last night, through a dear friend, d., He reminded me that Jesus says in Matthew 20:28 that “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”  Jesus did not come because He needed me, but because i desperately needed Him.  i am needy and weak and broken and Christ is the All-Sufficient One.  all of my service when my heart is full of pride and the belief that i can or must earn the merit and favor of God (or, ashamedly i must confess: of man) is, at best, worthless, and at worst–and truly it is indeed!–sinful and in direct opposition to God, only deserving of His wrath.  i feel the words of Paul in Galatians 3:3 when he cries out, “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?”

i needed to be served.  i am needy.  and, again i say, Christ is the All-Sufficient One.

and yes, Christ calls me to a life of service–to a life of living for Him and losing my life for Jesus’ sake and the Gospel’s (for, in doing so, my life will be saved)… a life of obedience, yes.  but He is and always has been firstly concerned with the heart.  He desires and is pleased with and delights in and rejoices over obedience that flows from the heart.  and, as my friend d. wrote, “only AFTER that will our imitating Jesus, our helping others, be done well.”  obedience that flows from anything other than an obedient heart is not obedience at all.  that kind of obedience is really just feigned deference that seeks after the accolades and praise of man or self–that desires, above all else, not the glory of God but for self to be held in high regard.  and Scripture tells us that God opposes the proud!  may God forbid it in me!

one sunday a man stood up before the Church and said “i am like a Pharisee.”  i, too, must say that my heart strikingly and terribly resembles that of a Pharisee.  please pray for me, Beloveds, that the Lord of heaven and of earth humbles me sufficiently for His glory and for His use of me for His glory.  i see the Spirit’s work in my life and heart in this area today, but pray for it all the more that “Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Phil. 1:20).

hearts bound by cords of pride and fear
are freed by Christ’s own drawing near.
lives marked by guilt and sin and shame,
now saved by the Remover of the stain.
humbled, for they have no choice,
for He Alone called them by His Voice.

matters of the heart. January 29, 2010

it is, to be sure, a difficult thing to navigate through matters of the heart.

i have seen Him change so much in me and yet, again and again, i encounter places in my heart that i, in my flesh, can be tempted to wonder, “will this ever change?  will this ever be different?”

i must cling to His promise in the first chapter of philippians, that He who began a good work in me will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus (phil 1:6).

i recognize in different seasons, too, that there are still parts of my heart that believe (and how foolish!  and–indeed!–sinful!) that i have to earn God’s favor and salvation.  or, still more pridefully, that i don’t need grace, that i can do it on my own, that i am “good enough.” or, what’s more, that often what i do and how i do it become less about God and more about people and garnering the favor and praise of man.

i am often surprised (and yet not surprised at all) at how entirely capable i am of forgetting all about Jesus–of placing this great King of the universe, who fashioned the stars and knit my body together and died and rose again for me and breathes life into my very soul, in a box on a shelf in the attic of my heart–and choosing in my heart to be mindful only of man, of “my job,” and of me and my perceived needs selfish wants.  and, to be honest, sometimes in view of my flesh and the foolishness of my heart, i begin to wonder if i am truly His.

but in all this i am reminded all over again that i cannot trust my heart.  i really have no choice but to trust Jesus.

and it makes me so very glad of God putting romans chapter 7 in the Bible.

and, too, jeremiah 17:9…
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

i’m gonna be real with you, dear ones, i surely do not.

and i look forward to the day when all the parts of my heart will be in agreement that Jesus is Lord… when all the parts of my heart will eagerly come up under His authority and my flesh will be no more.

and all, and always, to the glory and praise of God.

amen.

pride. January 29, 2010

sometimes i think i might die of embarrassment.  usually it is because my own folly is exposed.  i do, indeed, fear man.