"God is of no importance unless He
is of supreme importance."
~~Abraham Joshua Heschel
Monday, October 26, 2015
"His Joy in My
Spirit"
On the kitchen counter in my home there once stood a
plastic container labeled "New Fresher Lemon Scent Joy." Why should
anyone want to call a dishwashing detergent "Joy"? I suppose to
generate good feelings; because if you're doing dishes, you need all the good
feelings you can get. However, neither that label nor the bottle's contents has
ever made washing dishes any more enjoyable for me. But not long ago, while
washing the dishes, I began to think again about another kind of joy.
My thoughts turned back to a fifth Sunday evening worship
service at Sagamore Hill Baptist Church (before we changed locations and
dropped the "Hill" part of the name) some years ago. At the close of
a lovely testimony of the grace of God in her life, a singer names Gayle said
these words: "I have the praise of the Lord on my lips, His joy in my
spirit, and the passion of His love for me in my heart." Powerful words. Words that penetrated my
spirit, lingered there all this time both to encourage me and to challenge me
in my own relationship in the Lord.
What is this thing called joy? Many of us relate joy to
happiness and define them both as if they were the same. But joy is not
happiness. Happiness often depends on circumstances, on events, or on happenings.
When something good happens, something pleasant and beneficial as well, it
brings us happiness. Alternatively, if something bad occurs, something also
unpleasant and not so beneficial, it results in unhappiness. You see, happiness
is kin to happenings, both descending from the same root word, "hap,"
which means luck, fortune, or chance. If you're lucky, you will also be happy.
If you're not lucky, well, you get the picture. Not so with joy! Joy does not
depend on luck or circumstances.
What, then, is this thing called joy? "O send out Your light and
Your truth, let them lead me; Let them bring me to Your holy hill And to Your
dwelling places. Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy;
And upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God." (Psalm 43:3-4)
The psalmist takes us
into the presence of God to show us that joy is the Lord Himself; it is part of
His very nature. For us to discover joy, we must abandon all searching for it
and go searching instead for the One who is Himself joy to see, to know, and to
love. Seek His face and you will discover not only joy but "exceeding
joy," a phrase meaning actually "the gladness of joy" or
"the delight of joy." And in your seeking, you will also discover
that real joy is a deep, abiding sense of the presence of God in your life.
Very often we perceive
His presence only when we discover the wonder that God has built into the daily
experience of our lives. In the beauty of a sunset, for instance, I see the
Lord. The rose bush beside my house once produced one yellow rose; and in its
fragrance, I sensed the Lord's hand. In the warmth of a smile, the refreshment
of a cool breeze, the exhilaration of worship at Sagamore (or anywhere else),
in the joy of helping another--everywhere I turn, I sense God's presence and
thrill in the joy of it. God is a God of joy. And this life--this day--this
moment is His gift of joy because He is in my life and in this moment.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
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.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
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!
Thursday, August 6, 2015
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)