The Weight of the Past

My husband and I love to look through old magazines. We have a small, musty collection that contain recipes calling for lard, egg yolks, and white sugar, advertisements for cigarettes claiming to improve health and concentration, and happy couples standing in front of white, picket-fenced homes with two smiling children and a well-behaved dog.

The other day I was looking through an old magazine from the 60’s and saw a picture of a newly married couple leaving the church in a car that had tin cans tied behind it. Despite the fact that this was an advertisement for a particular make of car, I started thinking about what this scene represented.

This used to be a common scene - shouts of joy, the honking of horns, and the noise of the cans rattling behind. As I looked closer at the picture, I noticed the contrast between the pure radiance of the bride’s expression and pure white dress with the dirty commonness of the used tin cans. What a contradiction. It made me start to think about all the contradictions there are in my spiritual life. What worldly habits or tendencies do I have dragging behind me, weighing me down? Do I live with the dirty habits of my flesh clinging to the purity of my spirit?

Wouldn’t it be great if the night before a person’s wedding, instead of bachelor parties or stressful rehearsals, the bride and groom spent that time labeling those old cans with words that represented the things they needed to leave behind that would intrude upon their new life, all the sinful restrictions of the past. Words like: absent father, overbearing mother, disastrous past relationships - anything that could shade and diminish the strength of their new relationship would be written across the cans.

They could then tie these cans to the back of the car the night before, laying them on the ground as a sign of their laying down of the past; then just before they drove off, the minister would cut the strings in the name of Jesus as a symbol of them leaving behind the captive regret of their experiences, dreams, and judgments.

So I ask: How different is my “marriage” to Christ?

What past experiences or habits might be intruding upon my relationship with God today? What have I allowed to enter into this spiritually unique relationship that has negatively affected my Godly affections?

Father-God, You consider the church Your bride. I recommit myself to You and renew my “vows.” I lay down and offer up anything that has intruded into our relationship.

Check out: Song of Solomon: 8:7

Week Twenty-One Question

Am I allowing my natural life to be slowly transfigured by the indwelling life of the Son of God?

“God’s trust is that He gives me Himself as a babe. God expects my personal life to be a “Bethlehem.” God’s ultimate purpose is that His Son might be manifested in my mortal flesh.” – Chambers May 31

My Response:

My life a Bethlehem – the place where God is born in me. Jesus manifested in and through me. The starting place. But to what end? There is a novel titled Blessed Child by Ted Dekker. In it friends of a famous, terminally ill evangelist have brought Caleb, a very unique child, to come and pray over him for his healing.

This man says, “Miraculous or not, walking in the Spirit means stepping into the kingdom of God, and most Christians aren’t willing to walk there. They enter the kingdom at their rebirth but they take few steps. Those who do walk in the kingdom have far more power than you would ever guess. It might not be the straightening of bent spines…but believe me, the power of the spirit-filled man is quite stunning. Whoever said that a straightened hand was more dramatic than a healed heart anyway? You’re just not seeing the rest of it with your eyes-the fruits of the spirit, the power of love, the color of peace. What you need is to have your eyes opened.”

Lord, open my eyes to what it means to live out the fruits of the spirit - to give out the fruits of the spirit. Transfigure my life.

Week Twenty Question

Have you reached such an intimacy with God that the Lord Jesus Christ’s life of prayer is the only explanation of your life of prayer? Has our Lord’s vicarious life become your vital life?

“The idea of prayer is not in order to get answers from God; prayer is perfect and complete oneness with God. We are not here to prove God answers prayer; we are here to be living monuments of God’s grace” - Chambers  August 6

My Response:

Intimacy with God.  His desire to be known by His children is as great as His love for them. This intimate love is the very thing that holds together the foundation of my relationship with God.

Reciprocating this kind of intimacy requires a seeking heart. Seek and you will find is a spiritual principle. God says that if we seek Him with all our hearts, we will find Him. But what if we’re seeking something else such as personal empowerment or personal satisfaction? What if we’re really seeking something that agrees with our own spiritual agenda? And what if we’re only half-looking?

So what does God say about intimacy? What is God’s perspective and is it at odds with our perspective?

Looking in the Bible, it may, at first, be difficult to narrow down a search for specific verses about God’s perspective on intimacy. The truth is that everything that God does and says in His Word displays His intimate love for the human race. There is not a word of scripture that does not shout the desire of the Father to have deep fellowship with His children, to become intimate with them so they can experience the fullness of Christ in their lives.

It is because God reaches out to us with His desire for intimacy that we, His children, are able to reciprocate that desire back to Him. A heart that has allowed the deep intimacy of God to take ownership reveals and reflects it back.

That’s when the “deep calls to deep” principle goes into effect. This phrase comes from Psalm 42:7. If you look at it in the original, it becomes clear. The word “deep” means: bottomless or anything too great or deep to be measured. The word “calls” means the idea of accosting a person met, to encounter, not calling from a distance, up close and personal calling.

Literally this means: measureless, bottomless depth intimately encounters and accosts measureless, bottomless depth. There is great depth to God, a never-ending story, but sometimes we want the Reader’s Digest version, and then wonder why we are weak, distracted, misdirected, and fearful.

Father-God, Your deep love for me is sometimes beyond my capacity to understand it. As I encounter and seek You in an up close and personal way, reinforce and strengthen my very foundation.

Check out: Psalm 42

Week Nineteen Question

Would we be surprised if God came into our meeting or into our preaching in a way we had never looked for Him to come?

“Always be in a state of expectancy, and see that you leave room for God to come in as He likes” – Chambers Jan. 25

Who do I think Jesus is? What do I expect Him to do? Have I pigeon-holed Him into a religious icon forever stuck to a cross that adorns the front of a church? How has my belief about Jesus affected how the world sees Him? How does scripture reveal this God-man? And who does He say He is?

John Eldredge in Beautiful Outlaw:

“What enormous good would it do in the world if churches were known as playful, witty, fierce, humble, generous, honest, cunning, beautiful, and true? When we hold fast to a bland Jesus, we get a bland church. A two-dimensional Jesus equals two-dimensional Christians…that is the tragic effect of the religious Jesus…”

“The secret of Christianity is something else altogether-the life of Christ in you. Allowing his life to become your life. His revolution is not self-transformation, but his transformation of us, from the inside out, as we receive his life and allow him to live through us. Vine, branch. Anything else is madness.”

Father-God, as You reveal Yourself through Your word and Your Spirit, may we all lay down our preconceived religious notions and agendas to receive You – the real You.

Week Eighteen Question

Week Eighteen Question:

Have you been bolstering up that stupid soul of your with the idea that your circumstances are too much for God? It sounds so easy to talk about “resting in the Lord” and “waiting patiently for Him” until the nest is upset-until we live, as so many are doing, in tumult and anguish, is it possible then to rest in the Lord?

“Resting in the Lord does not depend on external circumstances at all, but on your relationship to God Himself. All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God” - Chambers July 4

My Response:

There is nothing about my life that God does not know – nothing. There is also nothing that touches my life that God does not approve – nothing.

Am I willing to accept His rest when everything around me is in chaos?

Am I willing to believe that He can walk on my raging seas, to step into my boat and sit beside my fears?

And am I willing to receive the “message in the storm” when the waves are high and the skies are dark and ominous? Willing to listen and learn, even if I don’t understand?

Father-God, Lord of the “all” of my life, You are there. You are able. And You are willing.

Week Seventeen Question and Response

Week Seventeen Question:

…can God’s love hold when everything says that His love is a lie, and that there is no such thing as justice? – can we not only believe in the love of God but be more than conquerors, even while we are being starved?

“It does not matter what actual troubles in the most extreme form get hold of a man’s life, not one of them can separate him from his relationship to God.” Chambers  May 19

My Response to Week Seventeen Question:

Chambers’ words from My Utmost for His Highest, dated August 26, echoes my heart and says it all:

“Are you painfully disturbed just now, distracted by the waves and billows of God’s providential permission, and having, as it were, turned over the boulders of your belief, are you still finding no well of peace or joy or comfort; is all barren? Then look up and receive the undisturbedness of the Lord Jesus. Reflected peace is the proof that you are right with God because you are at liberty to turn your mind to Him. If you are not right with God, you can never turn your mind anywhere but on yourself. If you allow anything to hide the face of Jesus Christ from you, you are either disturbed or you have a false security.

Are you looking unto Jesus now, in the immediate matter that is pressing and receiving from Him peace? If so, He will be a gracious benediction of peace in and through you. But if you try to worry it out, you obliterate Him and deserve all you get. We get disturbed because we have not been considering Him. When one confers with Jesus Christ, the perplexity goes because He has no perplexity, and our only concern is to abide in Him. Lay it all out before Him, and in the face of difficulty, bereavement and sorrow, hear Him say, 'Let not your heart be troubled.'”

Lord of all my days, I fix my eyes on You and lay my burdens before Your holy throne of grace. You are my life, my desire, and my peace.

May I Have This Dance?

I had a dream last night. Images from my past – high school days and friends – mostly just silly fleeting faces and situations. But toward the end of the dream, I was sitting on the ground at a gas station playing my guitar. Someone heard me and stopped their car by the side of the road and made suggestions about how I might change the tuning to make the sounds more substantial. I agreed and started to play a song that I made up on the spot.

During what I remember to be the chorus, I heard sweet harmonies blending with my voice. Although I don’t really remember all the words, I knew that the song was a sorrowful love song – I was singing the depths of my heart. I could hear myself sing the last words of the song – “Why don’t you dance with me” as clear, now awake, as when I was dreaming.

In the morning as I thought about my dream, the words kept mulling around my heart. When I sat down to spend time with the Lord, the words kept coming back to me – “Why don’t you dance with me?”

My heart stared to break when I realized that it was the Lord’s voice asking me this. He wanted to “sweep me off my feet” and take me in His arms and rejoice not only with me but in me.

You speak to me: “Come away with me, just for a while. Let me take your weary hand in mine. Let me hold you close

Lord, I release my hold on myself. I repent of the way I’ve delighted in the dance of the world.

I close my eyes and see You take my hand in Yours. The music begins. You hold me close and whisper in my ear, “May I have this dance?”

Jeremiah 2:2: I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert, through a land not sown.