"In Constant Touch"

One of those weeks, one of those days, nights, moments....years. Everything blurred together and nothing to grab onto. Plenty of: "abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks". Yet in all of it He stays here. Right here. My Shepherd calls and I answer through the blur..."When do I end? Can't you just take me out of me? You can do anything!" But it isn't the easy road that makes me remember. It isn't the "gift to the Lord that costs me nothing" that sticks with me. What costs, I become. What aches, delivers. What shifts and shakes and turns underneath me brings me to steady ground.

If there were no words in our language for how we feel, if we had no way to express our anguish, exhaustion, joy, fear or relief, He would still know it all. What refreshment it is to me this morning (the morning after the long night) to know even if I can't open my mouth He will hear me. He will "groan" for me. Even my lamentation will resolve and dissolve itself inside of Him. Big, big God. Big, big grace. Simple like a child's song but no less powerful as we believe Him.

"Because of the extravagance of those revelations, and so I wouldn't get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan's angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn't think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then He told me, "My grace is enough; it's all you need. "My strength comes into it's own in your weakness." "Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ's strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size--abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become."

The Message
2 Corinthians
(page 388)

Dirty Work

"Fixing one's thoughts" takes diligent effort. I can't be naive about the graphic evil and filth of this world, but I'm also not asked to ruminate in that shadowy place. We have this Scripture so we know God knows we can't survive in a constant state of "saving the world". He hasn't required that of us. He knows if we internalize the images of grief, injustice and carnality we are hit with every moment we live in this world it's only a matter of time before we self-destruct. I have been given permission to live in heaven now, it is not demanded of me that I undergo some self-absorbed mental/spiritual initiation. Jesus Christ already went to hell and back. He does not ask me to go to hell and live there, so that I can somehow become strong enough as to be as invincible as He is. He is the only one who could have entered darkness and shadow and lived through it all. We think we have personal tabs on the depths of evil. We are cocky to run ahead so rashly. Our pride is only fuel for hell's sulfuric fire.

What I am asked for is humility enough to hide myself in Him, to realize the evil but not to be sidelined. To be invincible because I have been given the privilege of living in heaven right now, and there are no precursors other than simply knowing Christ. The more I know Him, the more of His purity, honor and loveliness abide within me for my access. Then, the paralysis (like chloroform) the enemy holds over our senses is knocked off. When we can see heaven, we can see the actions of God. We are not defeated any longer because we have given up replaying and planning our own heroic attack on the bowels of hell. This practice is useless because we know we will not be successful, for what human power can stand? In human strength we see ourselves rendered helpless even in the best blustering daydream we can muster.

In the "precious lifeblood" (1 Peter 1:19) of the Lamb we have the power to suffer earth because we're living in heaven. As we live in heaven, the Holy Spirit will impact earth through us. The actions we are to take on the behalf of those God is calling will be clear. We will not be overtaken by evil but we will respond, alive and well, with good. The trust of simple children, so grateful that Daddy does the dirty work, will release the power of heaven to devastate and regenerate the slimiest pit imaginable.

"And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you." Philippians 4:8

Recklessly, Messily

God's reckless love for the brokenhearted is coming. I am in for the ride of my life. I cannot presume to know everything, and I plead that I will not use past experience as my guide when this love begins to overflow me. Love is not an office schedule I make sitting in my high-rise. There will be plenty of moments when I am so full of God's compassion I will not even know how to proceed. How could I know this love that is completely inhuman? My response is to bow down low. Human love will never be perfection. God's love is perfection. In His presence my own downheartedness will become the "perfection for which He possessed me." In His presence I am safe in this abandonment. If I am afraid that I will make a mistake in loving someone, I will remain human in my love. If I am compelled by God, I will not even be afraid of someone else's motives, because I know in the end the greatest thing I will ever do is to be a reckless lover of God. When he loves me with heaven, I have been consumed, I have been overtaken. I am not loving humanly anymore. There are no formulas. Each person needs a stellar personal touch from God...in which God is the Star Performer. May I never believe that I have my own needs, or someone else's needs all figured out. When I am hurt, when I am broken and when others are hurt around me, the Spirit of God is hovering. Oh may I not run beyond those precious open moments. They are the portals to God-given wholeness. When I cry out to Him He begins creating with His love on earth. We are all here with God to be recklessly, messily consumed. This is what God has always had in mind as He loves us.

Oswald Chambers, page 570, "That Which is Perfect"
Philippians 3: 12
1 John 4:18
Image by Heart-A-Day, Gretchen

Journal of a Judge (Me)

I looked across time and space and caught in my eye someone who deserved to die
I planned the time and place I would carry out what was just and right...in my eyes
I wanted to make sure he got what he deserved
I took a life who's soul I had not created and did not know
I made that life mine to dissect and scrutinize
He was so free, he did not have a care in the world
He seemed always to look out and beyond Himself, as though He knew a secret I did not
And it irked me
I wanted to penalize everything about Him that made me feel less controlled, less important
I was afraid that if I let Him off the hook, I would lose what I had worked so hard my whole life to convert...I found a way to make something out of nothing...my own way
And it had worked for me
I could stand over Him and be completely composed...I knew what would happen all the time
And I knew why
This was my world...And Oh, I had power! Such power...I never worried, because I always came out on top, my life always made sense
And this time was no different
I planned it, I drafted the moment of payback
I knew exactly which moment would be mine, to watch Him suffer and gloat
To pull out His beard, poke at His eyes, dribble my own spit over His cheekbones...He so deserved this treatment: to be under my thumb
Someone had to do it
I would be the one
Because He never tried
He never had to strive the way I did, life came naturally to Him
He saw people and they saw Him...He was full without effort
I had to catch Him or else...the world would see my hollow shell
I wanted to make Him nothing, small and helpless in my hands, my slave...dead or alive

But when I made Him suffer, my plan writhed in my hands like lightning in the sky
I had no control
My punishment made Him gracious
My pounding made Him prayerful
My beating made Him sweeter
My death blow brought Him to life
Humiliation was His comfort and consolation
Judgment was His mercy

He encompassed me, every time I hit him I felt smaller and smaller
Panic choked me...my worst fear realized
My plan was failing...I couldn't give Him what I was so sure He deserved
He would not take from me
I could not defeat His Source
Though covered in wounds I had afflicted,
He seemed to live beyond demands for retribution, He took me and held on
He asked me if I wanted this: the life of a judge
Knowing I was bested I looked at Him, a good long look...a cold calculating stare
Was there any way out of this?
He understood me
Then I saw Him for the first time...who He really was, because the light in His eyes opened up
I was drawn over time and space to a moment all my own
All His own
He was not deserving, I was
He had done nothing, I had done everything!
Surprisingly enough to me, my barrenness did not detain Him
I saw myself for the first time
I saw Him want me...I saw Him pull me out from rubble...In His eyes
I saw Him do all necessary to secure me
So I would not have to secure myself

I am the judge receiving mercy from my unjustly accused
The judge who came through violent reckoning to sit close and tight with intimacy
The judge who is now Beloved would not dare decide an end
Beloved now filled with beginnings...endings made for beginnings

Cleave

I am among those blessed with physical pain. How can I use the word blessed in such a context? I remember now reading Elizabeth Barret Browning as a student and being deeply drawn to her immutability and passion despite her permanent set of disturbing circumstances. If ever there was a Job...still, she is recalled as having stood for something(1). She was also not without the blessing of God. I have been asking the oldest human question standing on a new plain: what do I do when "it" doesn't get better--ever?

Extended pain and/or deep grief is the kind of seemingly helpless experience that motives a person to start compartmentalizing and formulating out of sheer exhaustion. A person in real pain will feel no shame about trying every solution imaginable. "There is nothing new under the sun" by the way(2). King Solomon wrote that. (This coming from a guy who could have literally anything he wanted). I'm not sure whether he ever had physical pain, or if his problem was simply chronic boredom. Mindlessness is a sort of pain in itself; a disassociation from the reaches of God and the nonconformity of living in Him.

I see this offensive stance we take towards our pain as a normal human response to suffering. When there's discomfort, we fight it. Sometimes we even enjoy the fight--this makes us feel worthy. If we have to go through it, we'll stick some placebo in to mask the absence of real appeasement. I am no longer shocked by my inability to be composed during pain; I find there's nothing wrong with honest questions in the midst of maladies. These attempted judgments against our Maker only become infectious when we have seen them and continue to recline about with them. Unless we move towards God, they eventually become bedsores or gangrene and then we are terminal and must lose a leg or an arm to see bitterness go. The questions themselves are really just opportunities. We don't have to wait so long as to be engulfed by them. Questions are intersection points for action. If we fight this way, pain can't win.

I am not proud to say that I have frequented the halls of doubt--not at all a great champion of faith--but all is not lost. Doubt has been the implement of God's hand in forming many faithful heroes. I confess I have "consorted with flesh" in a myriad of compulsive questions against God(3). As though I could even hope to stand in His courtroom. My questions are something to this effect: "Why is everyone else being healed and not me? Is my faith not strong enough? I've been touched by God before, why wasn't wholeness sustained?" Though I have asked and asked again my pain seems indomitable, like I've rolled in a mixture of discomfort and super-glue. To those who know pain, I have compassion for your struggle, I hope the way God has compassion for mine. You are not alone. We ask the kinds of questions that cannot be answered with a trite word or a randomly quoted scripture verse. Those in some sort of pain, realistically most all of us, know what it's like to feel starved for encouragement.

Something new has begun to wake up in me, and I want to share. Encouragement has woken up in me. I have had a new opening of my eyes from God and now I know: perhaps His eternal dreams for my faith are greater than the immediate alleviation of my temporary pain. I have often wished that my body could keep up with my heart. Now casting a look across what my life has been I see moments when I felt so incredibly broken physically, when there was nothing that I could do to work harder or faster for God and no way I could try more or accomplish more. For me this has been a remarkably frustrating phenomenon, but those intersections were the "thin places" between heaven and earth, as CS Lewis calls them. The intimacy with God that has became my portion in those times is exquisite. I can almost say--I am almost surrendered to say-- this is intimacy worth all the suffering I've felt. Suffering is a process. Surrender is a process. God understands.

Impacting in my encouragement was the brinkmanship of Jesus's miracle in Bethany where Mary, Martha and Lazarus lived(4). What I read has brought me to a yielding I can't escape from. God has tested my reliance. Lazarus died and Jesus knew He was dying ahead of time. This gave Jesus plenty of time to get to the siblings house. Surplus time aside, Mary, Martha and Lazarus were also loved by Jesus. Amplified Bible says "they were His dear friends and he held them in high esteem." So wouldn't affection be enough to motivate Jesus to give to the need of the moment? Mary and Martha hoped so. Like me their pain took hold and they couldn't deny their disappointment. They too wrestled with Jesus's sovereign will to hold off on healing those last few days. They told (asked) Jesus, to His face, "Master, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." I see here this lovely concept I've been told of is truth: we really can be highly esteemed and dear to Jesus and still struggle with His ways--to His face! Jesus's response to Mary and Martha is catalytic in stirring up their belief, reliance and trust. Jesus is asking them to "cleave" to Him. His heart for the situation is articulated earlier on when He says, "This sickness is not to end in death; but (on the contrary) it is to honor God and to promote His glory, that the Son of God may be glorified through it."

Saturated in these words of God I know He requires the ultimate in obedience and trust from me. He desires me to attain wholehearted determination towards the larger focal point of His glory. If I can cleave to Him, then all I will see will be Him. There will come a point when my own suffering will just not be consuming to me. I will have vision of a vast and good plan unfolding about me. Do I believe that He is a Good Friend and Papa? Do I believe that He raised Lazarus from the dead? Now Jesus is the One asking me questions. He so often uses questions to derail the rigidity of formulaic thinking.

On Wednesday I visited my doctor and asked Him to remove my warts. He went into a detailed explanation of what the procedure would entail and told me that I would be in a lot of pain, especially because my warts are growing out of my knuckles. He said the pain would be deep into my bones and would last long after the actual freezing had been done. I found out the process only yields the desired result, complete killing of of the tissue and hopefully the virus that causes the warts, about fifty percent of the time. Never the less, having had these warts and watching them grow and multiply for about a year so far, I told Him that I wanted to go ahead and try. Warts can take up to five years to clear on their own; the immediate pain seemed a measurable trade for ridding myself of the virus' roots in my hands. He got the liquid nitrogen ready and while chatting with my husband and I, positioned the tube to jet out over my fingers. He paused for a second and, without lifting his head, said with gravity, "this is going to hurt."

How many times have cried out to God for relief from internal and external pain being accentuated by my circumstances? How many times have I expected Him to "pony up", essentially saying, "look God, right now I have a need." I will put voice to giving Him permission to "do whatever it takes"...."go ahead God. Shoot that liquid nitrogen into my heart--I can handle it" When the ache starts in my core as God obliges me, how often do I refuse His sweet medicine to go back to an old concoction of my own, knowing full well I can do no good? We all get stuck sometimes. The old pain is more manageable to us than the new that purifies.

Elizabeth Barret Browning retained her effectiveness in life despite a chronic problem with her lungs, spinal injury at a young age, tyranny of her earthly father and loss of her brother. Through all of these circumstances God lifted her up with a remarkable ability to write and with love she experienced through her devotion to God and in her relationship with her husband. She "saw the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living(5)" despite apparent hindrances. God is not asking me to despair of all miracles as though He will never make good on His promises. Jesus wept before Lazarus's tomb and He was troubled over the suffering He saw. He is compassionate. He is not without genuine pathos. He is asking me to trust His deeper work in me. If He desires this pain remain for this earthly season, He assures me it is only temporary. Pain well worthwhile, pain for His glory: deeper faith, love, purity and anointing. If I can cleave to Christ, walking steadfastly, I will see the dead rise in my own life and the life of my beloved companions who also suffer. This will come in God's timing, when all spiritual ground in my faith is ripe to receive His glory. I will be His testimony and His letter will be written on my heart. I must keep believing my Abba, no matter how badly I hurt.

Sources:
1)Poets.org
2)Ecclesiastes 1:9
3)Galatians 1:16
4)John 11
5)Psalm 27:13

Father God

Father God, I say, You will have to show me who You are because even though I'm trying I don't know You, I can't see You.


I see a giant rainbow with red hot color sparks flying out as God's hand strikes it in the sky and hear THIS IS FOR YOU.

I see a million different animal species and enjoy their beautiful uniqueness and stand on a mountain road and overlook a vast display of trees and hills and hear THIS IS FOR YOU.

I see myself scooped (a naked baby) out of a cast-off mud puddle and robed clean and adopted

THIS IS FOR YOU

I see my heart held firmly in the grip of a strong and tender hand through every beating life has rendered me

THIS IS FOR YOU

I see my Savior Jesus crawl across the ground on His hands and knees in the dirt with his skin torn and scabby and blood dripping and I feel His heart in humility and obedience expand to take all of the sickliness and abuse imaginable to me

THIS IS FOR YOU

Heaven Roars

I'm sitting in my quiet house on Tuesday morning. Everything seems normal, as if today is just another day. We see so little with our eyes. I can say this because it is true--and I own it for myself. There is a whole other realm carrying on while we sleep. Only when we beseech God does the door open. Only when we really want the answers does the deep knowledge start to come. What we have to understand about God is that He knows whether or not we really want the answers. He is not like Santa Clause. Maybe we could fool Him into thinking we have always been good, but God is not so easily fooled. He interprets us even beyond the point we can decipher ourselves.
I am in an unavoidable battle I become weary of because I do not see. I choose blindness to the heavenly armies awaiting my intercession, callousness to the peace and calm of God's glassy waters, indifference to His mighty Holy Spirit. Yet He is always moving. His power quakes around me more tremendously than the movement of any earthly shift. It is a wonder there is even a Kingdom He calls His own. I think perhaps He does that for my sake more than His. The universe and beyond is His home, but that is a bit too big for me. Since He wants me as His friend and lover, He understands and lays His life down for me (and you too of course). He knows how much it means to us to belong as part of a family and home, so He promises to make this special place for us.
Now here is the catch: if I want to come home to this amazing inheritance, I must also adopt the sorrows of Christ and embrace the sacrifices of His battle. A young bride is intertwined as her husband goes off to war and she is faced with the dilemma of love moving out..it is really no catch at all since I am already in the battle whether I like it or not. Blind as a bat or conscious and alert I am marching. "Which way?" is the question to be asked.
People are looking for a limitless show of power and protection. Even those in this world who have never confessed Christ as Lord know someone's gotta help us--and quick! This longing for a larger-than-life mutant being to emerge from the ground, sky, shadows, light...is blatant. Just go to the movies. What is our obsession with superheroes, really? Not that I don't thoroughly enjoy Spiderman's antics; does anyone know where His power comes from? And don't say a spider bit him. That is the apparent answer. No spider I know on earth could have that effect on a man. Who cares where this hero comes from, right? As long as he comes. I am really at that point, we are really at that point. (The point where we'd take power on any terms) I agree. I am, we are, desperate. Do we know who we are worshiping? Do we know where limitless power and protection truly comes from? We should beware counterfeits. One power will protect us, and one will surely betray us.
So I decide: I am in this battle. I want to rub the sleep out of my eyes. I don't wish to grope around with my vision blurred as though any pair of Wal-Mart specs will suffice. I need my prescription. And those of us who wear glasses and contacts know, only one prescription will do. Only one Power will never lead us to slaughter. Only One will always protect us, even to the point of laying down His life. Jesus would die before seeing our ruin.
I am not wise. I see dimly. I need help to see what is true. I need vision in the haze of this life. To find the goodness of God and bank my whole life on Him. Listen, look. Can you see and hear the heavenlies today? They roar. God's army marches out for love. Which way are we going? We can be certain, we are going one way or another, whether we like it or not. But God's great gift to us: we decide our direction. As we traverse this war-torn pathway, may we direct ourselves to shelter beneath only Him.