Reflection

My Redeemer Lives

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. Job 1:25

The reason why Job could go through everything he did and still rejoice in His God means that we can too. He was able to rejoice because we serve a God who is very much alive……He is fighting for you today.

This lesson was brought home again to me in prayer this morning. I went out, my prayer journal and Bible in hand, lit my candle, sat down ready to hear from God in the silence, except I didn’t hear silence, I heard the hum of construction. It may as well have been as loud as a set of drums. It was all I could hear.

Then I decided to write a prayer in my prayer book. This is as far as I got before my penlight went out……”I am standing in prayer for Elaine today…….” No more light. So I said the rest of the prayer for her. I felt the particular helplessness of knowing that my best friend is in a pit slugging it out with the enemy and wanting to help her out of it. The best way is prayer…..

But the hum was so distracting. I decided to go and get my head phones. I could still hear the construction hum so I put a song on. This is where God was leading me all along.

Nicole C. Mullen singing, Redeemer

The message was heard loud and clear……….

Who taught the sun where to stand in the morning?
and Who told the ocean you can only come this far?
and Who showed the moon where to hide ’til evening?
Whose words alone can catch a falling star?
 
Well I know my Redeemer lives
I know my Redeemer lives:
Let all creations testify
Let this, life within me cry
I know my Redeemer lives, yeah.

Tears came…….He has already given us the victory by raising from the grave, thank you Lord, how could I ever forget, even momentarily…..My prayer this morning was answered…..

After I heard the song, I went out and saw an impossibly bright star toward the Superstition Mountains…..”He who has named all the stars and hung them in space has the power to bring us through…..thank you Lord! I rejoice in God my savior this morning.

Rhythms of life…..

Greer, Arizona

Ah……Finally there is a chance to “feel” Fall. Crisp days and cold clear nights are something we wait for anxiously here in our part of Arizona. While most of the U.S. is dealing with their first snow storms and freezes, we are feeling like October in November. Finally I am getting in the mood for pumpkin pie and chili, and Christmas baking, and warm fires. It’s funny how even though you move away from a place, that place stays with you. I am remembering Northern California and stacking wood with my Dad and sitting on the floor cracking walnuts with my Mom, getting the worn flannel shirt out of the closet for the first time. Endless leaves in profusions of color, wet and soggy from the rain, sticking to everything they touched. Bach’s concerto number 3……which to me only and always means fall.

When I moved here I thought that maybe I would lose the rhythm of the seasons entirely. But I have been here for years, and I have noticed that a pattern of seasons all its own emerged anyway. Fall here means something a bit different than what I grew up with. It means sowing the winter rye if you have lawn, and buying flowers you can’t grow in summer…..There is a rhythm, really, to the whole universe wherever we are, we carry it with us. It’s a part of Gods grand design. There is a steadiness to dawn and dusk, summer and winter……reassurance that all will go on as it has before.

Since I started having a regular morning prayer time, I have noticed a pattern emerge within myself. It feels steady, and right…..it’s as if I am mirroring the bigger pattern that is happening all around me. It’s a way of setting things right in my own world, or rather, laying everything at God’s feet once again, my small offering of praise.


Tlaquepaque Chapel, Sedona Arizona

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

Marching orders……

I would like to wish all veterans past, present, and future a blessed Veteran’s Day, we love you and we appreciate your sacrifices to preserve our freedom and protect us all…..We thank you, our prayers are with you!

Really, we are all fighting in a war of some kind or other. No one has to tell you that, we all feel it. The Bible compares the Christian life to a war, and a race. Nobody goes to fight a battle without a battle plan, or a directive, some marching orders. Jesus said right before He went to the cross in His agonizing prayer in the garden, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” He knew that the war was almost won….

He gave us our marching orders too. How many times I have struggled and asked God for that one definitive thing in my life that He wants me to do, and yet all I have to do is open the Bible and it is laid out plain and simple. “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

And then there is this……

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Matthew 25:34-36

Sometimes I remind myself of my little cat. If he sees a bird outside or hears a strange noise, he won’t go directly to the source right away. He will walk all around the perimeter of the room until he gets right underneath it then he slowly raises up and sets his sights on it. He really thinks he is sneaking up on it, and it’s kind of comical to watch. But really it’s quite smart. This approach works when you are entering into battle, but not when you are skirting what God is telling you to do.

I go round and round, trying to figure out a less painless way to do what God tells me plainly to do in Scripture…..Asking God for His will for my life when He has already given me my marching orders! I look for a way involving less sacrifice or even no sacrifice, going for that other angle instead of the direct route of going head first into the battle.

Jesus last words before He ascended into Heaven gives us no doubt what we are to do:
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Matthew 28:19

 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’ Matthew 25:34-36

Making a dent in eternity

When the New Testament speaks of God’s kingdom it never, ever, refers to heaven pure and simple. It always refers to God’s kingdom coming on earth as in heaven, as Jesus himself taught us to pray. We have slipped into the easygoing language of ‘the kingdom of heaven’ in the sense of God’s kingdom being ‘heaven’, but the early church never spoke like that. The point about heaven is that heaven is the control room for earth. Heaven is the CEO’s office from which earth is run – or it’s supposed to be, which is why we’re told to pray for that to become a reality. And the point of the Ascension, paradoxically in terms of the ways in which generations of western Christians have seen it, is that this is the moment when that prayer is gloriously answered. N.T. Wright

I had a thought yesterday that has imbedded itself and I can’t let it go. It is that our prayers make a difference for eternity. When we pray we make a connection between Heaven and Earth. Our words are not just going into the air, they are going to the very throne of God. I think we will be surprised to find that when we get to Heaven, every prayer we ever prayed has preceeded us there. Every prayer gathering we ever attended, every desperate cry in the middle of the night, every anthem of praise lifted up in the early hours of the morning, every single one is counted, heard, considered and cherished by the God who never slumbers nor sleeps. The Bible says the prayer of a righteous man availeth much, not just a little!

I had noticed a shift in my prayer life over the past week or so. Some feelings crept in unannounced, and before I knew what was happening, they had crowded out my prayers! I have been hard on myself….. tallying up the things I have not done for Him, and disregarding everything else. What I was essentially saying was, “God I know I am not doing this, this, and this for you, so I don’t think I am worthy enough for You to hear my prayers. Of course I am unworthy, but I rest in the One who is!

Forgive me God, for withholding my prayers, for though I was praying with my lips, I was condemning myself with my own feelings of unworthiness in my heart….. I don’t have to measure up to my own or anyone else’s standards in order for You to hear me when I pray, I can rest in your Son alone and his total and complete work of restoration on the cross! Thank you, Lord for getting me on the right track again and for reminding me that when I pray, I really am making a dent in Heaven.

Thy kingdom come, thy willl be done, on earth as it is in Heaven…..

Photo of C.S. Lewis prayer closet taken from the movie, “Shadowlands”

Everything is a bright miracle


The footprints of God are everywhere about us. And while we can’t see Him, we can see His luminous trail like a bird that sings while hidden in a tree. As Middleton said, “The bird sings darkling.” We can’t see the bird, but we can hear her sing. God sings among His branches and sings in His universe. You and I cannot gaze upon Him, for no man can see God and  live. But we can hear Him sing His song of redemption. And we can feel the pressure of His breath upon us as we move through the world. We’ll never see things rightly till we see them as the garments of God. A.W. Tozer

Praise be to his glorious name forever; may the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and Amen. Psalm 72:19

Photo credits: Google images

Final thoughts on "Radical"

You and I stand on the porch of eternity. Both of us will soon stand before God to give an account for our stewardship of the time, the resources, the gifts, and ultimately the gospel he has entrusted to us. When that day comes, I am convinced we will not wish we had given more of ourselves to living the American dream. We will not wish we had made more money, acquired more stuff, lived more comfortably taken more vacations, watched more television, pursued greater retirement, or been more successful in the eyes of the world.  David Platt, “Radical”

I am very glad I read this book, I think. I say I think because I found certain parts about it unsettling. I was confronted with some things about myself that made me uncomfortable and that is not a bad thing. Any time you read a book and find yourself wanting to dive into Scripture and re-read verses you have read almost all your life I think it’s good. David Platt puts a spotlight behind the words of Jesus in such a way that we can no longer brush them off or explain them away and skip merrily on to the next verse. You know, the warm fuzzy verses that tell you how much God loves you. He does love us, and if we know Him, then He already has us. But there is a vast and lonely world out there that does not know Him, has never heard the Gospel, who are hungry and thirsty and sick, and may not make it through the day. God is asking…….what are you, my church, going to do about it?

God has entrusted the church with the awesome responsibility of taking His good news to everyone else on the planet, with getting it to them before they die. It is a life and death message, and its an urgent one. It won’t happen by any kind of magic osmosis. It won’t necessarily happen fast, and it may take some time. By investing in relationships long term.

I came away from this book with a deeper understanding of just how much God really does love the world. He would do anything to save it, but would we? Would we be willing to sacrifice our lives to save them? Does God expect this of us? Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. Luke 9:23, 24

What are we clinging to so tightly that we wouldn’t give up for Him? There are testimonies in this book that tell of people, despite great fear and trepidation, trading in their old lives of stress and endless accumulation, only to find that He was right there waiting to bless them with something far better than anything they ever had before! The inexpressible and glorious joy that God meant for us to have all along.

I found myself questioning my giving. Do I give sacrificially or out of my excess? Do I give away what I don’t want anyway, and write a check to a charity so I can sleep better at night?  How much does God expect? I always felt so bad for the rich young ruler who comes to Jesus and left with such sadness, but for the first time I was confronted by the fact that there is a bit of the rich young ruler in myself. Maybe much more than I care to admit.

What happens when the church starts to look so much like the world you can no longer tell the two apart? Does the world dislike us? Why should it when there is little or no distinction between us, when the church is seeking and striving after all the same things the world does?

If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. John 15:19

Why would God send His people to a place where sharing the gospel means certain death or imprisonment? Doesn’t He want us safe? What about people who have never heard the gospel? If they have never heard it then won’t they get a “go directly to Heaven pass?” But as I read, I kept thinking of Jesus words…..”I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 12:24  I don’t think He was just talking about Himself.

These are some of the questions addressed in the book and I think they are valid questions. The fact that this book was on the New York times bestseller list makes me believe that many in the American church believe that something does needs to change. I have heard and read many testimonies of people who have not been afraid to look into their hearts and ask themselves the hard questions. People who felt the Spirit lay a burden on their heart to make a drastic change, to sacrifice for the good of others. I think of successful author Lisa Samson. After a missions trip, she and her husband sold their luxurious home in the suburbs and moved to the inner city to minister to the poor. She now feels blessed beyond measure.

Having said that, this is not a book meant to indict the rich, but to encourage those who have much to turn around and bless others to the glory of God. It is also not a book that says that you have to sell all you have in order to be saved.

The conclusion of the book left me with a choice and a challenge. I thought about pretending I had never read it because now I feel a response is necessary. I am grateful for it, because there are some things I needed to question. Despite how sobering I sometimes found the book, at the end I experienced something that was totally unexpected, a kind of wild exultant joy. I couldn’t help but be captivated by thinking how it would be to enter into that life of radical faith and see what God could do through little scaredy-cat me.

I leave this book with my faith strengthened and I find comfort in the words of Peter after some of the disciples took off and Jesus asked if he wanted to leave too “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter knew that whatever he had to go through, living without Christ was unthinkable. I am going forward with an open and prayerful heart and I am thankful that David Platt had the courage to write it.

If any of you have read the book I would be interested to see what you thought about it!

Slowing things down……

Our lives are frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify…..Henry David Thoreau

Where did October go? One of my favorite months of the year and it was gone before I could turn around. They have started the warmup and it is working it’s way to a fever pitch……It starts earlier and earlier each year. The advertisements pitching their stuff. Better stuff than last year, faster stuff, smarter stuff, more clever stuff, but stuff all the same. I have nothing against stuff, but it is the way they assault us with it that bothers me, and the fact that they use Christmas to do it. It makes me want to say……STOP! Even before it starts.

I am putting the breaks on right now. I will think, dream and pray about Advent and what it means. I will pretend I am in a cabin in the woods, alongside my stack of books and journal, watching multicolored leaves twirling outside the window. And hoping against hope for snow. Mentally I can do this. I will also not berate myself for being behind on Christmas baking. I will conciously make a decision to take pressure off, not put it on. I will look forward to the turkey and not get distracted by what comes after.

I will do some things for others…..Most of all I will enjoy these fleeting months, because they will never come again just this way. I will praise the Lord for all He has gotten us through this year, and know He will still be there at the beginning of the next.

I saw two shooting stars yesterday, ever seen two in one day?

I should finish “Radical” today so tomorrow or the next day I will post some concluding thoughts…..

Further thoughts on "Radical"

“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Luke 13:24

Some statements Jesus made trouble me. I always find myself asking, “Am I one of those people He was talking about?”  I think it is healthy to evaluate our Christian walk, in fact the Bible says that we are to watch our life and doctrine closely. It is easy to get off track, to believe something you have heard all your life from the pulpit, especially when it makes you rest a little easier in the pew, so to speak. Now that I am halfway through David Platt’s book Radical, I can say that this book has challenged me in a very personal way. I have found myself sitting in silence at odd moments more than a few times ever since I started it.

Beyond just taking an uncompromising look at some areas where the American church has fallen short, he gently points the way back to his own shortcomings as a Pastor and church leader. Ultimately, and more importantly, he invites us to take another look at the words of Jesus. It is not a book that has made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and yet it has made me feel, in a deeper way, just how radically God loves the world and to what length He is willing to go to reach it. Not only that, He wants every follower of Christ to have that same love and be willing to take some personal risks in reaching that world, whether it be across the street or across the globe.

I have questioned anew some things that I have heard in church that don’t match up with Jesus last command just before He ascended back to Heaven…….”Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19,20

We can say that we are not called to do this thing or that thing, but isn’t that really our way of saying we don’t feel comfortable doing it? These are the questions I have been asking myself. I believe there are people anointed to teach and preach and who are gifted in certain areas as the Bible says, but not one of the disciples was exempt from spreading the Gospel and making more disciples. In Jesus great commission to us all, He doesn’t say “If you are called you are to do these things, if we belong to Him, then we have already been called.

That challenge still stands, and in this book David Platt echoes it as he invites himself and his church as well as you and I to go forth in a new adventure with God, no holds barred. I am looking forward to what the next half brings…..

What does it mean to follow Jesus?

“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:33
Consider the cost when Christians ignore Jesus’ commands to sell their possessions and give to the poor and instead choose to spend their resources on better comforts, larger homes, nicer cars, and more stuff. Consider the cost when these Christians gather in churches and choose to spend millions of dollars on nice buildings to drive up to, cushioned chairs to sit in, and endless programs to enjoy for themselves. Consider the cost for the starving multitudes who sit outside the gates of contemporary Christian affluence.
David Platt, “Radical” Taking back your faith from the American Dream
I started reading this book last night, and all other books immediately went on hold. In the first Chapter we get an eye-opening glimpse into the underground church in Asia, where believers are indeed losing all for the sake of following Christ. In this book, David Platt raises a challenge to the American church today. He asks: “Do you and I believe Him enough to obey him and to follow him wherever he leads, even when the crowds in our culture–and maybe in our churches–turn the other way?”
This book has already driven me back, with a prayerful heart, to the words of Jesus, and what it really means to “pick up my cross” and follow Him. I have a feeling this will be an interesting journey and maybe a troubling one as well…..

The Wildness of God

“There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.” John 1:6-9
There is an unsolicitious and ungenteel quality about the desert Christians that makes them especially attractive in our current climate of sentimentalized, “feel good” spirituality…….The desert, as a place where one expects nothing, becomes the source of the hauntingly unexpected: this unpredictability formed the robust spirituality of the desert monks.
Not surprisingly, their God was no different from their place. Theirs was not, as John Crowe Ransom once described, a “God without thunder,” having been thoroughly housebroken and made presentable to the cultural elite of the day. Their God remained mystery–feared certainly, and much loved, but never understood.  Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes

Nature is wild and untamed……it mirrors something of God because we can’t control it. I think that is why we are so attracted to it. We must also realize that we need to have a bit of healthy respect for it as well. The desert I live in has been tamed, groomed to be fit for humans. We have lawns, watering systems, good roads, every convenience we could ever want. It resembles little of the barren and empty place it started out. And yet, just on the edge of where I live is a vast and lonely place where coyotes cry and desert critters thrive and survive….God has taught them how. He will speak to us in this place if we are quiet and still enough to listen. I have heard, when I get away from the freeway, the traffic, the noise that people make, when I close my eyes I can hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness carried across the desert winds…..

“Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough places smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.” Luke Chapter 3: 4-6

Continuing to count blessings today and show gratitude for all the ones who went before to show me God’s ways……Sunday school teachers who volunteered their time. People who took an interest and answered questions I had. Parents who showed me God through nature and through their lives, and through the Word. Friends who have prayed with me through the years. Countless Pastors, Pastor’s wives who have faithfully preached in season and out of season. Bible study leaders who open their homes and their hearts. The Holy Spirit, teacher of all truth. Bloggers who write what God has layed on their hearts to share. #517-526


“In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world.” John Muir

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