A Heart for God

When he was 22, Norman D. Vaughan had a passion and a dream.  When he was 88, he also had a passion and a dream.  And the last passion and dream were related to the first.  You see, in 1927, at age 22, Vaughan was a student at Harvard when he read about Admiral Richard Byrd's proposed expedition to the South Pole.  Although he'd never met Byrd and had received no invitation to join the expedition, Vaughan decided to quit school and go with the Admiral.  Two years later, as they crossed Antarctica toward the Pole, Byrd named one of the mountains they encountered Mount Vaughan.  In December 1994, Vaughan returned to the icy continent to climb Mount Vaughan.  Days before his 89th birthday, the intrepid explorer stood atop the 10,302 foot mountain and declared to all the world, "Wow!  Everywhere you look it's tremendous!  And the best thing I can say about conquering it, if you call it conquering it, is that I dared to fail.  And the one message that I think I want to send to the world is dream big, young and old, dream big and dare to fail."

When I heard that crusty old gentleman say these words on National Geographic Explorer, I thought almost immediately of another "old man" who at 85 conquered a different mountain.  His name is Caleb, the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite.  Standing atop his mountain, Caleb would have said, "Dream big and dare to trust."  For most of his life, that kind of spirit dominated the man so that at age 85, Caleb could scale a mountain where giants dwelt in fortified cities, drive them out of their cities, and take possession of their mountain.  And Caleb accomplished all these deeds in the power of God because he had a heart for God and because he had dared to trust in God.

Caleb allowed nothing to deter him from his faith in God.  Two things shine in his testimony: his spirit and his heart.  Virtually every day of his life, Caleb focused his heart on the Lord and on the things of the Lord.  He walked with God consistently.  Please note, when God says something even one time, you know it's important, right?  While it's true He doesn't say very much about Caleb altogether, not less than six times God says of him that "he has followed the Lord fully."  In fact, the first time He said it, He was offering all the land of Hebron to "My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully" (Numbers 14.24).  There you see both rays of testimony shining, his spirit and his heart for following God.

Look at the spirit first.  God said, "he has had a different spirit."  What does that mean?  God had sent twelve spies to spy out the land of Canaan, and all twelve spies brought back the same report.  That's right!  All twelve reported essentially the same thing.  Check it out. In Numbers 14, God gives us the details of their report:  (1) The land really is as rich as God said it was, a land flowing with milk and honey and lots of good things (v. 27).  Two of them actually brought back proof.  One single cluster of grapes.  And it took both of them to carry it on a pole across their shoulders.  Can't you just hear the response?  "Man!  Wouldn't you like to see the vine that one came from?"  (2) The people are strong.  (3) The cities are fortified and very large (v. 28).  They all also reported that (4) giants, the descendants of Anak, lived there (v. 28).  Then the report changed.  Like Goliath centuries later, the giants had altered their perspective, intimidating them.  Ten spies added the interpretation, "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us" (v. 31).  Caleb, on the other hand, declared, "We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it"  (v. 30).

What makes the difference?  Spirit!  The ten spies had a spirit of fear.  Caleb (and Joshua) had a spirit of faith.  The ten saw the enemy and their own impotence.  Caleb saw the Lord and His omnipotence.  The ten had the spirit of the world.  Caleb had the Spirit of God.  It was in Caleb's heart that God was fully able to give what He had promised.  And He had promised the land of Canaan with all its blessings to Israel.  All they had to do was take the gift.  I can just hear him say, "Let's go get 'em!"

God also said that Caleb "followed the Lord fully."  It doesn't mean so much that he followed God as a puppy follows its master, but rather it describes the condition of his heart.  His attitude.  His affection and desire.  The Medieval Rabbi Rashi interprets it this way, "He hath filled his heart (to follow) after Me."  He filled his heart after God.  His heart was so full of God there was no room in it for anything else.  His heart was so filled with God there was no room in it for any one else.  A slave in Egypt, he filled his heart after God.  When he spied out the land, he filled his heart after God.  Wandering in the wilderness, he filled his heart after God.  Finally, standing before Joshua, he has the same testimony.  No wonder he can say, "Now, therefore, give me this mountain!" (Joshua 14.12, KJV)  His heart was so tuned to God's he wanted only what God wanted.  And that was actually given to him forty five years before in an irrevocable promise of God.  Since God is glorified in the keeping of His promises, Caleb glorified Him by claiming the promise.  As a result, of all the children of Israel, he is perhaps the only one to fully claim the promise and to fully enjoy the blessings of the Lord.  Because he dared to trust in God; because he had a heart for God.

You are There

I'm a big fan of most of John Wayne's westerns---El Dorado, The Searchers, The Undefeated, The Sons of Katie Elder,  to name a few. One---Chisum---was loosely based on the true story of a New Mexico cattle baron in Lincoln County, John Chisum.

The movie closes with an interesting and refreshing dialogue between Chisum (John Wayne) and his foreman Pepper (Ben Johnson). Addressing Chisum's niece, Pepper says, "There's an old saying, Miss Sallie: There's no law west of Dodge; and no God west of the Pecos. Right, Mr. Chisum?"

"Wrong, Mr. Pepper," Chisum replies. "Cause no matter where people go, sooner or later, there's the law. And sooner or later, they find that God's already been there." (Scene 38)

Not a bad message in a secular movie even though made many years ago (1970): "God's already been there." We Bible students can revise Chisum's observation slightly. God's not just already been there, but He's still there. In fact, a basic tenet of Biblical doctrine declares God is essentially everywhere. We call this doctrine the omnipresence of God. Okay, it's a technical term, but it means essentially that God is present everywhere in some way we can't understand. But it is nevertheless true because He is God.

The gentle psalmist David expressed it this way:

            Where can I go from Thy Spirit?

            Or where can I flee from Thy presence?

                                                Psalm 139:7

David is not necessarily trying to hide from God. He's merely asking a rhetorical question, such that, if I tried to hide from You, where could I possibly go that You're not there?

In the next three verses, David stresses this idea of God's omnipresence:

            If I ascend to heaven, You are there;

             If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

            If I take the wings of the dawn,

            If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,

            Even there Your hand will lead me,

            And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

                                                Psalm 139:8-10

Bottom line: Wherever you may go, seeking the Lord or running from Him, you will run into Him because He is already there!

Elijah discovered this in a very remarkable, interesting way. He stood firm on Mount Carmel against at least 450 prophets of Baal. Possibly another 400 prophets who ate at Jezebel's table were also there. In any event, Elijah showed them and all the people of Israel who was the true God. Then he led them in the execution of all the prophets of Baal. But... then he ran from one treacherous woman, Jezebel.

Elijah ran all the way to a cave at Mount Horeb. It apparently took him forty days and forty nights to get there; but when he arrived, he took up residence. And he discovered the Lord was already there!

The Scripture states,

            Then he came there to a cave and lodged there; and behold, the word of the Lord

            came to him, and He said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

                                                                                                                        1 Kings 19:9

Note, God does not say, "What are you doing there?" instead, He says, "What are you doing here?" God was already there! He was already waiting for the prophet to arrive. Why? Because He is omnipresent. Although the contexts of both of these passages (Psalm & Kings) seem a little negative, they actually offer positive encouragement. God is there wherever we may go. God is with us wherever we may go. God will never leave us nor forsake us wherever we may go. (cp. Hebrews 13:5) He is there for His hand to lead us. He is there for His right hand to hold onto us. What a loving Father He is! Thank you, Lord, that wherever I may go,

                                                            You are there!

Come Down from the Mountain

Two inches of snow covered the ground as we spread our tents that December afternoon at Worth Ranch Scout Ranch. When the tents were up, the fire pit dug and fueled, and the boys organized for their afternoon hike, I took a hike of my own to a site called Point Davis not far from our present camp. Point Davis was situated on a ledge overlooking the Brazos River valley. On this day, the river was icing over and all the juniper and oak below were reaching barren fingers skyward in a mosaic of crystalline beauty. A winter wonderland spread out before me, not a picture in a travel magazine, but the real deal. At this moment, no one there to appreciate it but the Lord and me. Wow! What a scene!

This was a real mountaintop experience--on a real mountaintop. I stood about two feet from the edge about three hundred to four hundred feet above the forest below. Maybe not much of a mountain; but for me, a mountain nevertheless. And in those few moments of wonder over the scene spread out before me, I experienced the Lord Himself in ways my city life back east had never imagined.

Most of us don't have mountaintop experiences on real mountains. Then, where do we have them? And just what makes a mountaintop experience? They usually happen on weekend retreats or at Bible conferences. Or they happen at summer youth camps. What makes it a mountaintop experience is the presence of God. A presence that opens our eyes to the wonder of Who He is and what He has done. Wherever we are, His presence moves us to wonder at His works all around us.

The Lord was there on the Point with me. I felt His presence as an almost physical reality. I saw His handiwork in the scene all around me--on top of the mountain and in the forest and river below. I heard His voice, His Spirit within me, reminding me of the question He once asked Job, "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" (Job 38:22, KJV) Regardless of where it occurs, that's what a mountaintop experience is. An encounter with God. An experience with God so vivid and powerful it burns itself into your memory. And you don't want to forget it. You don't even want it to end.

We call it a mountaintop experience because so frequently in the Bible men met God on mountains. And the characteristics of their experiences are often similar to what I have described. I think immediately of Moses. In Exodus 24:12, the Lord "said to Moses, 'Come up to Me on the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets with the law....'" (NASB) On the mountain, God gave Moses the covenant that shaped the relationship between God and His people. God gave Moses His Word containing directions for holy living and for holy worship, directions designed to establish their relationship.

A "mountaintop" relationship occurs when God's Spirit through His Word cements our relationship with God. This is important. God only speaks to us today through His Word. (For an excellent study of God's speaking to us today, see Is That You, Lord?: The Voice of the Lord, A Biblical Perspective by Gary Gilley. Available at www.svchapel.org/bookstore). We hear God's voice today as we hear it through His Word. His Word preached in church. His Word read and hidden in our hearts through daily reading and study of the Word. And as the Spirit brings that Word to our minds in the circumstances of each day of our lives. But when we experience one of those mountaintop moments, we often get caught up in the experience and lose the sense of passing time. Or the sense of anything else but the presence of God. And we don't want it to end.

But it must end. People who go to the mountain come away changed. They begin to see with new eyes. The world takes on a different hue. The Word of God they heard "on the mountain" has defined a new path to follow in life's course. At this point, we must come down from the mountain. All that wonderful experience with God, all that adventure into God's Word, has prepared us to face the world better equipped to serve the Lord. But to serve Him, we must come down from the mountain. We must face the world in which we are to serve Him. And we must bring the Word of God with us because at the foot of the mountain there is a task waiting for us to take it up. Like Moses, for instance, we need to take up intercessory prayer for God's people. Further, we need to share the experience we've had with those who didn't go to the mountain, but who desperately need to hear of it. But share it by focusing on the God who met us there, on what He shared with us from His Word, how it affected us and changed our lives. How it can provide strength and courage for the journey through the valley beneath the mountain. How it provides our connection to the God on the mountain.

To accomplish this, my friends, we must come down from the mountain!

Joy in the World

"The Big Adventure."  It was a well-worn sign inviting Boy Scouts to the adventure of camping at Worth Ranch Scout Ranch just down the road.  As the van carrying our entire troop and all its camping gear jostled along the trail past the sign, I thought, what kind of a "big adventure" are we getting into this time?  I hardly heard the scrunch of the tires on the new fallen snow.  Where are we even going to find a campsite we can reach in the snow with all this equipment?

We did find one.  It had an open-air stone building to boot.  So we set up the two patrol tents inside the building so they'd be protected from the wind and its chill.  Real adventuresome, huh?  After we'd set up camp, however, I just had to hike down to the site we usually picked, inaccessible today because of the snow on the trails.  Point Campsite was a plateau about 75 yards below the parade grounds.  It was broad enough to provide space for an entire troop to camp there safely, and it overlooked the Brazos River Valley another 200 to 250 yards further below.

That afternoon, I encountered a winter wonderland in panorama.  No National Geographic picture.  No vacation promotional brochure.  This was real life.  Stepping as close to the edge as I dared, I gazed out over a forest of evergreen, juniper, and oak covered with a gentle white blanket glistening in the muted afternoon light.  For miles around, I beheld a crystalline world that only God could have constructed.  And gliding through it to the west, the silver ribbon of the Brazos River itself wrapping the scene in sparkling wonder.  And God said to Job, "Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?" (Job 38.22, KJV).

On another occasion, for hours we paddled our canoes down the Brazos River from Possum Kingdom Dam to Worth Ranch Scout Ranch.  Little powder puffs of cloud dotted the sky here and there, while the sun warmed everything but the water.  Halfway to the Ranch, we stopped for the night.  When darkness dropped its cloak on the woods and the boys were finally settling in for the night, I lay back on the river bank to rest and recreate.  Folding my arms behind my head, I gazed up and gaped, speechless and in wonder.  I am a city boy, born and bred.  On the clearest cloudless night in town, the heavens would unveil only a few hundred stars at best.  But there in the wilderness, it was as if the Lord had taken the blackest, richest velvet He could find, stretched it across the heavens, and dumped all the diamonds in the universe onto it --- just for me to see.  Wow!  Truly, "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork" (Psalm 19.1, KJV).

Although a city boy, my experiences with Boy Scout Troop 83 have introduced me to a new dimension of my Father's world, a dimension of beauty, of delicacy, of intricacy, of wonder. From a goldenrod along the trail to a hummingbird's nest disguised unobtrusively as a knot on a tree limb.  From a delicate spider web to a stolid oak tree.  From a covey of wild turkeys on the river to a family of raccoons scurrying through the woods past a campsite.  There is wonder at every turn in the world my Father made.  And He wants me to experience the joy of it.

When He made it, He took great delight in it Himself.  I cannot help but think of the story of the creation of Narnia in C. S. Lewis's classic tales.  Pitch black.  So black that if you touched your nose with a finger, you still could see neither your finger nor your hand nor the tip of your nose.  Then incredible music filled the blackness.  One voice singing, rich and full.  But as the light gradually conquered the darkness, a thousand voices joined the Creator's; and Aslan, the Lion Prince of Narnia, created his world amidst a mighty chorus.  I imagine the creation of this world was not unlike that.  To be sure, God did not sing as Aslan did.  Instead, the Psalmist tells us, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, And by the breath of His mouth all their host....  For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast."  (Psalm 33.6,9, KJV)  Still, when He laid the foundations of the earth and dug out the channels for the rivers, it was a time "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" (Job 38.7, KJV, italic mine).

I have seen the joy of God in the purple peaked mountains of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.  I've watched the sun set on the Grand Canyon, splashing changing pastels along the jagged canyon walls.  I've listened to the pitter patter of rain on my tent in Colorado's Mesa Verde National Park, and gazed at the majesty of Wyoming's Grand Tetons, snow capped even in summer.  At each of these moments, I remember most of all the wonder.  Jesse Brand, pioneer missionary to India, once wrote to his son Paul, "God means us to delight in his world."  From the very beginning, God planned His creation to be a garden of joyful beauty.  In spite of the sin that crept in and damaged it, He still delights in it.  Shouldn't we, too?

Praise His Name!

One place I never expected to find myself there I was. We were visiting Eureka Springs, Arkansas. The theater we decided to attend was called Ozark Mountain Hoedown. It sounded like a hillbilly convention, but we went. And near the end of the first half of the show the lead singer in the group announced they were going to sing some Christian songs. It didn't take long for one of those songs to stand out in my heart. "Praise His Name!" And the lead singer, Bruce Haynes, was the one who wrote it.

"When you're up against the wall," he wrote, "and your mountain seems so tall...," what do you do? You praise His name. You lift Him up.  The command in Psalm 113.1 is to praise the Lord!  He is the focus of our praise.  He is the subject of our praise.  He is the object of our praise.  He is everything, our all in all.  And the command is Hallelu-Jah!  Praise ye the Lord!

But the Psalmist also says to praise the name of the Lord.  What does it mean to praise the name of the Lord?  What is His name?  Having grown up under the influence of the authorized King James Bible, I always thought God's name was Jehovah.  Not!  Imagine my surprise to discover Jehovah is not only not God's name, it is not even a name at all in Hebrew.  For fear of profaning God's name, the Hebrews contrived an artificial way of expressing it, resulting in the creation of an artificial name --- Jehovah, and almost losing sight of God's real name altogether in the process.

If Jehovah is not God's name, what is?  God's name is sacred, but God wants us to know His name.  Why else would He command us to praise the name of the Lord?  And His name is Yahveh, abbreviated sometimes as Yah or Jah.  The Lord Himself revealed His name to Moses, when He told him to "say to the sons of Israel, 'Yahveh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.'  This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations" (Exodus 3.15).  Later Moses confirmed this in a song of praise.  When he witnessed thousands of his enemies fall under the judgment of God, he sang, "The Lord is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation; This is my God, and I will praise Him; God of my fathers, and I will exalt Him.  The Lord is a warrior; [and here it is] The Lord is His name" (Exodus 15.2-3, my translation).

In the Biblical culture, a name was more than just a tag for identification.  It was an expression of character.  God's name identifies His nature, so that a request for His name like Moses made, such as, what is Your name? is equivalent to asking about His character.  It is a succinct, yet overflowing revelation of who He is.  To praise the name of the Lord, according to Charles H. Spurgeon, means to "extol His revealed character, magnify every sacred attribute, exalt in all His doings, and reverence the very name by which He is called."

So, brothers and sisters, praise His name! Make it part of every day to praise the Lord even if no one is listening except the Lord Himself, especially if no one is listening except the Lord Himself.  Whatever your circumstances. Praise His name! However you feel. Praise His name! Remember who He is! And Praise His name! Like the Levites, whether you're in the choir or not, sing His praises, and sing them to the Lord.  Praise  the Lord!  baruk ha shem (praise the name!)!

The greatness of God rouses fear within us, but His goodness encourages us not to be afraid of Him. To fear and not be afraid--that is the paradox of faith."    ~~A. W. Tozer

Hallelu-Jah!

"Why are we here?"  We had just finished a weekly choir rehearsal that had gone very well that night.  Before dismissing the choir, however, it was the practice of the director to take a few minutes at the end of rehearsals to discuss things like worship, praise, hymns, and other types of music and their function in the church and its ministry.  We spend hours every week involved in all of these things, praise, worship, etc.  So he naturally wanted to make sure we understood what they're all about, and our role in relation to them.  Tonight, he turned our attention to the choir itself and its role.  Hence, the question, "Why are we here?"

Silly question, some of us thought.  We're the choir.  We're here to lead the congregation in the worship and praise of God --- right?  Not exactly.  King David gave us a hint when he laid plans for the temple.  Although God would not allow David to build the temple, the king could design it, organize its services, and finance the building of it.  First, he took a census of the Levites, the God-appointed ministers of God's worship.  Then he assigned them specific tasks with regard to the temple.  Some were keepers of the gates.  Some were assigned to the actual service of the temple itself.  Others the king organized into a choir, who were "singers, with instruments of music, harps, lyres, loud-sounding cymbals, to raise sounds of joy" to the Lord  (1 Chronicles 15.16).  Altogether he had appointed to that choir 4,000 Levites who were just "praising the Lord with the instruments which David made for giving praise."  (1 Chronicles 23.5)  It didn't matter if anyone else were present in the temple to share in the praise.  This choir just praised the Lord continually.  They spoke His wonders.  They praised His name.  They told of His glory.  They sang of His works.  They honored His name.  They ascribed greatness to Him.  They sang to the Lord (cp. 1 Chronicles 16.7-36).  And that's why we're here --- not just our choir, but everyone who is called by His name.  We're here to praise the Lord!

Take a look with me at Psalm 113.  Its opening words, Praise the Lord!, continue to echo through my heart.  We've already seen that it means to be boastful of the Lord, but it means so much more.  It comes from a family of words that expand and elevate its meaning.  For example, its Arabic relative means to "appear on the horizon," kinda like the glow that precedes a sunrise.  I remember my first camping trip to Worth Ranch with Scout Troop 83.  We camped on a cliff on the side of a hill overlooking the Brazos River Valley spread out below us.  Early the first morning, I crawled out of my tent to the aroma of fresh coffee and the slender glow of light outlining the mountaintops to the east.  And the glow grew and grew until it blossomed into a full sunrise.  Hallel, praise, is like that glow and the sunshine, because one of its relatives also means to make shine.  When you focus your attention, your words, your heart, your songs on the greatness and the condescending goodness of God, you make Him shine!  That is praise!

And that is why we're here.  To make Him shine.  The command in Psalm 113.1 is to praise the Lord!  He is the focus of our praise.  He is the subject of our praise.  He is the object of our praise.  He is everything, our all in all.  And the command is Hallelu-Jah!  Praise ye the Lord!