“Call unto me and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty [hidden or unsearchable] things which thou knowest not.” -Jeremiah 33:3
When I was fresh out of high school, I was in Santo Domingo, which is the Capital of the Dominican Republic. We went to a small church somewhere in the heart of the city and listened to a sermon in Spanish, so naturally I was not able to actively engage in what was being said, especially since my Spanish is pretty much limited to adding an O at the end of English words. However in this little church there was a lavishly painted wall with an engagingly large banner painted as a mural behind the preacher. On the banner was a verse in Spanish (of course), and the scripture address, which I was able to recognize. It was the above verse.
I looked it up and to my surprise; I had never heard anyone quote it before. It seemed a rather novel concept to me at the time, so I did exactly what it said. I spent the sermon just praying that God would show me great and unsearchable things. I think I remember that my motive at the time was to gain a lot of bible knowledge so that I could impress other people with it. It was a rather carnal and selfish prayer I think. What is even more surprising is that God answered this prayer for me. He has answered it hundreds, if not thousands of times over in my life. The irony is not that he answered it, but rather…how he did it.
The one thing that is more unsearchable than all things is the human heart.1 It is above all things, deceitfully wicked. We obviously understand that when the Bible speaks about the heart, it is speaking meta-physically. Some have argued, and I happen to agree (though it is not a hill I would die on) that the heart probably speaks of and indicates the culmination of what he is compiled of that cannot be seen or measured. Or the seat of his emotions, his psyche, and his personality.
God has faithfully shown me the self-deception of my own heart. He shows me, time and time again, through his word, and through the Spirit’s conviction, and through brothers…sisters, my wife…family members, even my dog. He brings to light unsearchable things. In order that I may repent from them, and allow my nature to be displaced with His own. I believe that when these events occur, God is plucking logs out of my eyes and sometimes it takes a mighty collision.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Psalm 111:10
“The fear of man bringeth a snare.” Proverbs 29:25
Though we may deny it every one of us is, at any given point living in fear. The question is not, “Are you afraid?” The question is rather, “Who do you fear?” Scripture addresses these two fears, the one that is default, and the one that is supernatural. “The fear of the Lord,” we are repeatedly told, is the origination point of all wisdom. Anything claiming to be wisdom which sets itself against God and the fear of him is actually the antithesis of what it claims to be. The fear of the Lord is the one fear we need to embrace!
In opposition to this is another type of fear altogether, “The fear of man” which we are told “bringeth a snare.” This type of fear trips you up unexpectedly and then imprisons you forcefully, something none of us would want; but here’s the amazing thing, we frequently choose to live in this type of fear while rejecting the fear of the Lord at the very same time.
Scripture is saturated with tales of the fear of man ensnaring and imprisoning men under its iron fisted tyranny. From Aaron’s beloved golden calf to Pontius Pilate knowingly condemning the only innocent man who ever lived; Gideon’s Ephod, Peter’s denial of Christ, Paul’s imprisonment…the list goes on and on. Can any one of us examine our own lives and find good fruit from this twisted tree?
The fear of the Lord will always lead to good and the fear of man will always lead to sin. We need to realize the fear of man isn’t a bad habit we need to cut back on, it is a sin we must repent of if we ever want to live an abundant life. For the man who trembles before God will never grovel before men!
A number of years ago, my wife and I experienced a tragedy in our lives as we witnessed the still-birth of our daughter seven months into her gestation. She had a genetic disorder called triploidy. According to healthline.com, the longest an infant with this condition has ever lived outside of the womb is ten months. Attempting to explain the range of emotions I felt that day as I watched my daughter enter the world already dead is impossible. To even look at her was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. And it has taken me years to now even be able to admit that.
Triploidy is a complete genetic fluke. What it meant was that rather than having two sets of chromosomes in her cell structure, her chromosome sets were tripled, hence the name. The severity of retardation that occurs under this kind of situation is genetically apocalyptic. Thus it is a mercy of God that children who are born with it do not live. Were they to do so, their lives would be complete and total misery.
You can then imagine my reaction when my wife told me that someone inferred to her that the reason our child was dieing was because we did not have enough faith in God. For the record, I completely forgive this person now and have no bitterness, however it really begged a question…what exactly is faith? Is, as this individual suggested, faith some exasperated internal force of will that makes God our marionette? I know that we see God’s hand move in response to the faith of men, so I can say that I understand the tension of this question. However I will say that God responding to our faith will always have His purposes in mind as the ultimate end of His response rather than our own self-gratification…period.
Trying to wrangle faith to the ground so it cries uncle and defines itself is a rather slippery task. If you have not noticed, scripture uses the word faith so much, and we know that faith is the only way to please God, yet scripture rarely seems to actually define faith in cerebral terms. I think the closest it gets to being defined is Hebrews 11:1.
It would probably take me pages and pages to explain what I am about to say, but for the sake of this being a blog I will just throw it out there that it seems to me as if there are a couple facets of faith, and God responding to our faith is really one facet, however, I think that the most important facet of faith I have come to understand is that it is a positive/obedient response to God.
Galatians 3:5-6 says, “He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”
Did you catch that? The hearing of faith? What in the world does that mean? I looked up numerous commentaries on this tonight and every one of them utterly dodged and failed to explain what the “hearing of faith,” even means. Verse six gives us a clue, in order for Abraham to believe God, what first had to happen? God had to say something…He, in His almighty sovereignty made a claim…He made a promise. What was that promise? Abraham would have a son. Abraham believed that God would do through him, what God had promised, and that son would bring forth a nation.
I forgave that individual because they knew not what they were saying, it seems that she, like many people in our society have imbibed more theology about faith from Yoda and Luke Skywalker lifting an X-wing out of a swamp than they do from the Bible. They think that faith is the force of personal will.
According to Galatians, faith is hearing God, and responding to His desires…this is the dynamic of walking in the Spirit, and growing as a Christian, this is what Paul is getting at when he asks, “Are ye so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” NO!!! And yet so many today have been swayed and lulled into a near demonic belief system by thinking that faith is a product of fleshly force of will.
A number of years after this tragedy, God blessed my wife and I with a healthy daughter, and not just any daughter, she is mind blowing. When she was about a year and a half old she had a fever over 105 degrees, my wife took her to the doctor’s office, and while she was waiting for our family practitioner to come in, my daughter had a febrile seizure. My wife said it went on for minute after hellish minute. We spent the rest of the day in the emergency room as my daughter lay upon my chest crying hour after hour in an almost non-coherent fashion, until the fever broke and we took her home safe.
About a week or two later, since I was not there when this occurred, I asked my wife what she was thinking or feeling when the seizure was in full swing. I had waited a while to ask her, because all the while I had been personally thinking about our first daughter, and the subject has been a very tender one for my wife over the years. Her answer utterly shocked me, “I just prayed, and thanked God for the time He gave me with her.” The implication being that the thought of my daughter becoming a vegetable or worse, dieing, had crossed her mind.
If that is not true faith, then I do not know what is. My wife, out of the abundance of her heart, simply responded to the sovereignty of God with the faith of a child, utterly, totally, completely trusting Him, regardless of the outcome.
He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.Psalm 126:5-6
We ought to tarry long on this verse and plumb the depths of it’s meaning. It’s message clearly ties together brokenness and fruitfulness, weeping and reaping. Although it’s terminology is agrarian and not theological, it is the exact same terminology Jesus used in his parables about evangelism. And since interpreting this verse in a strictly agricultural way makes absolutely no sense, I will interpret it using the parable of the sower as a cheat-sheet of sorts.
Jesus referred to the word as “seed” and and evangelism as “sowing seed”, so interpreting it through Christ’s teachings the message would go something like this: ” He who goes out weeping. bearing the word for evangelism, shall come home bringing many people with him.” When you interpret this verse through Christ’s lens you draw a strong and immediate conclusion, a bountiful harvest of souls is the fruit of a weeping evangelist. A fruitful harvest requires a grief-stricken messenger. Unless the man is broken the fruit will be nonexistent or sparse. Leonard Ravenhill put it this way “It takes a broken man to break men.”
The necessity of brokenness for fruitfulness should surprise none of us. Jesus mission on earth was to come and be broken in our place, so that we could be saved. The prophet Isaiah described Christ’s ministry this way “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 1 Jesus mission on earth could never have been completed without his being broken for us; why would we think we could successfully spread his message by any other means?
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. Colossians 3:2
We are here instructed to set our minds on things above, this implies 2 truths. 1. Our minds are not naturally set on things above. 2. If our minds are to be set on things above i.e. heavenly things, we must set them there.
This is not an idea, or a suggestion, it is a command. Notice Paul does not say “God sets the minds of his elect on things above when, and where, and to the degree he wishes.” No! He commands us to set our minds on these things. This is no monergistic act of God; it is either a willful or synergistic act of ours. This is not something we wait for God to do; this is something he is waiting for us to do.
Now herein lies the challenge for 21st century Americans, there are innumerable things vying for our attention, attempting to draw our eyes away from the eternal and onto themselves. We must intentionally separate from these things in order to focus on the eternal. What am I getting at? Merely listening to contemporary Christian music, praying before meals, or reading a 5 minute daily devotional will not give you an eternal mindset or perspective.
So how do we set our minds on things above? Reading your Bible and prayer are a good start but there’s more to it than that. In the following verses Paul lists sins to put away, and godly things to replace them with, this is getting closer. Then he adds the final piece of the Puzzle, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you . . .“ To have a heart for God you must have a heart occupied by God. Without His indwelling, a heavenly mindset is impossible to gain or maintain. If we desire to be his disciples, and see things as he does, we must have a relationship with him.
“Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever.”
-Psalm 125:1
A mountain is strong, and no mountain more strong than the mountain the Spirit says will abide forevermore. Solid with the ancient rock and dust sifted through the movement of the creation. If God cares deeply about the mount of Israel, the mount of Zion whose steeps David conquered, whose rocks housed the temple of Solomon, where many have called it the navel of all creation. To this sturdy lasting edifice, one must look no further than see an illustration of what value trust in God has.
This mountain has been trampled by the feet of many men. Its humble peak been redolent with the fragrance of crushing throughout the tests of weathers time. Hammer upon her, pave her, build foundations upon her…she will not be moved. Neither will those whom trust in God.
Oh but how the wicked one would desire to ascend above her, scale the sides of the north and exalt himself above the most high…The Lord shall prevail, he will cast down and annhilate all hope of such wicked imaginings. By God’s grace we will be more than conquerors, through faith…be as a mountain, be sure, be steady.
. . . I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. John 15:31
Every believer eventually reaches a point of profound love for God without obvious expression. When worship alone cannot fully display your love, what is a saint to do? Paint a painting? Plant a tree? Sing really loud? To show love for your wife you can buy flowers and chocolates. To show love for a child, offer them ice cream. But how do you show God your love? Jesus tells us howhis love for the father is evident . . . obedience. I know this is a four letter word among Christians today, but I bring it up because Jesus did.
Please do not misunderstand me, we are never told that it is possible to earn a spot in heaven, but we are repeatedly told to live a life that pleases God. Our hearts are wrong when the idea of living a holy life causes us to recoil in horror. According to Jesus, obeying God is of the best ways of expressing our love for God.
Using Christ’s measurement for love, our love for God should not be hard to gauge because its fruit is visible, obeying gods commands. Much obedience = much love, little obedience = little love, no obedience = no love.
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” John 14:21
In II Kings chapters 6-7 we read about a terrifying famine, one induced by fear of a marauding army of Syrians, who by attrition were attempting to starve out Samaria, a city of the Israelites. The king of Israel, the one who is supposed to have it “all together,”is leaning on the hand of a captain who speaks on behalf of the king, and questions the words of God’s prophet. He expresses doubt that God will do what the prophet Elisha claimed . . . words he would inevitably regret. The king and the captain are fretting for good reason however; there are women in the city who are fighting over equal share to one another’s children for cannibalistic consumption. This is certainly a situation not a single reader of this article could likely relate to. Elisha, familiar with the workings of a prophet, is having just another crazy day on the job so to speak, another day, another catastrophic apocalyptic uttering, you know…pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. Which sets the unlikely heroes of the story, in a crazy contradistinction from all the rest of this cast; they are four pathetic lepers who leave the “comfort” of their famine prison, with nothing to lose.
These are the weakest of the weak, the rejects of rejects, no-one would be haggling or fighting over their flesh . . . as it was abominable, flagging, and falling off of their wasted bones. As they give up hope in their leaders, having not heard the prophecy of Elisha, they leave the gate of Samaria, which seems to mean certain death by starvation, and place their hands in fate where at least they have a fifty-fifty chance of living. As they leave the city behind them, the distance between this pathetic gaggle and a king who had no clue what to do but moan in sackcloth, grew great.
The distance that grew was more than a linear one; it was a spiritual distance, for these fools saw the awesome hand of God’s power to deliver. They witnessed, first-hand, the salvation of the Lord. For God reveals himself to the foolish things of the world, he does not do so to the proud or arrogant, neither does he to those who exalt themselves above God. We are never further from salvation than when we think we somehow are entitled to it. Sure the whole city had been saved as Elisha portended, however these men, these poor wracked jagged heaps of life saw the mighty hand of God, and they had the fortune to be bearers of the greatest news these denizens of Samaria had probably ever heard.
How did the captain fair? Well as most stories go, the bad guy was trampled by a mob of crazy hungry people in a gate. Why? He doubted the salvation of Yahweh.
God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, all the carnal earthly wisdom of our current day amounts to nothing (I Corinthians 1:26-28). While we in America are not currently enduring such radical travail, our leaders politically are not much different. They always seem to think they can solve the problems of the world by relying on the council of the worldly wise. And the worldly wisdom is always doubting God. Is it not apparent that one of the crowning virtues of our post modern views is doubt?
I pray that God grants his church today, the resolve and determination to become weak that He might be strong, that we may see the salvation of His hand. And that we would not fret because of evil doers and bad leaders, as Psalm 37:1 commands us.
“The wisdom that comes from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.” –James 3:17
“…And I will beautify my beautiful house.” -Isaiah 60:7b
We are weak, we are hurting, and we need revival like a sea-fairer needs vitamin C. Straight paths seem jagged, Christians are disheartened, demystified, and becoming disassociated. We are all able to see the problems around us, and the winds of change in our own nation daunt us at the prospect of having to face them. Do we plant our feet and set our shoulder against this torrent with a stern set of face? Or do we raise a sail, and ride those winds where the Lord decides to move them?
I have had numerable conversations this past year or two with many believers who share a concern about our state as Christians. One needs not to look very far on the “Christian” blogosphere to find this same sense of dissatisfaction. There are entire websites set up to make us more aware of the Idolatry occurring in American/European churches. I am beginning to fear that my heart is being hardened by these truths, more than it is being broken.
Isaiah 60:7 began to cut through the caul (Hosea 13:8 k.j.v.) around my heart this morning however. The house is the Lord’s and His house is beautiful to Him, so it is up to Him to make it more beautiful still. For His house is not in any lasting disrepair. Like Don Quixote’ he sees the beautiful woman of his heart, and he dares to dream the impossible dream. To us this house seems a shambles, but to Don Quixote’ it was a castle, resplendent with glory and hope, a place of queens and knights vigils. This house may have many in it who are only there physically, or in name, but He sees His true church, His beautiful house and within it the bride of His heart. And he will make it more beautiful still.
Satan intends all the current days evil for bad, but God intends it all for good, the state of our nations are in His hands, He alone is sovereign over all these things, he has allowed it, and not a single one of us can make better what he would stretch His arm out to construct. He alone is the master architect; we are but pallbearers when we attempt to build for God what he has not sanctioned, carrying our coffins of hope, where inside rests only death.
So we ought to set a sail, and not our feet, for if He has allowed it, should we rail against it? He may be trying to show us something on the wind, and I have suspicions as to what those things are, but suffice it to say that we need to move within the shelter of His sovereign design rather than out in the acid rain of Satan’s Hegelian Dialectic.
Oh Lord, make your house more beautiful, we long for your construction, your designs, your handiwork. Make us a people on a hill once again.
There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Luke 13:1-5
Why do we always look outward? When God calls us to repent and believe, we cry out “but what about (fill in the blank)” as we avoid doing what Christ has called us to do. We spend more time prating than praying; more time watching television than witnessing; and far more energy avoiding than obeying. This ought not to be. We are masters at avoiding God; and one of the main ways to avoid obedience is pointing at something, and saying “but what about . . .” to God, as if trying to change the subject is going to make God forget. Or end the need for us to obey.
Jesus did not take the bait and leave his calling, in order to get involved in politics. Instead he challenges them by referring to another tragedy, and telling them “. . .unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Our duty is not to inform God of things we think are in his blind spot, our duty is to obey his commands. Standing at the Judgment Seat no excuse will suffice. He calls all to repent and believe.
