Resting and Standing

A couple months ago I read in a New York Times Health article that the majority of the pleasure one takes in a vacation actually does not occur while on the vacation but in the preparation and time leading up to the vacation. And I've been thinking about this health study as I have been preparing for my own summer vacation, mainly I've been thinking about this article as various and random obstacles have arisen in my planning. It might be worse, come to think of it, that I know that the majority of the pleasure in a vacation actually occurs in the planning stage. Good grief--I hope that's not true!

But I trust the Lord much more than I do the New York Times, I hope, and I am called to believe that the Lord's plans are good. I find it ironic that as I plan the perhaps singlemost important and potentially restful period of my entire year, I've been challenged, yet again, to think about what "rest" really is, which just happens to be at the core of UCO's Summer Household teaching program on Ephesians.

I find that the Lord is filling out my understanding of rest through the challenges I've been facing with my vacation plans. True rest comes from trusting in the Lord, and this true rest, as one friend put it earlier this week, is to be fought for, needs to be fought for. They were right to point out that my rest has been under attack, and that God is calling me to fight for it.

Summer Household is wrapping up, and so we've been focusing on "standing" in the Lord, chapter 6 of Ephesians: standing up to the Enemy, spiritual attacks on our identity in Christ. As I "stand" in this fight to "rest," I am reminded that the "rest" I fight for is much more significant than a vacation in July; the rest I fight for is a more eternal rest which comes from the conviction that God's promises are true, that He has good things for His children, that He is to be trusted, that Jesus Christ died and rose again for our salvation. But it's creative on His part to make this fight tangible, to teach me this lesson about rest, through this very real situation of planning a literal vacation, with all its practicals, communications, financial aspects, etc. That is our God. :)

And God never promised me the world's version of a peaceful vacation; He actually promised me just the opposite: "Peace I leave, peace I give to you, not as the world gives." So, we shall see just how peaceful this July vacation is. I think it may be epic, if the grief leading up to it has been any indication of how restful it will be. This vacation may just prove the NY Times wrong.

Uncompromising Discipleship

Another excerpt from My All for Him:

For a long time I could not find the key, the solution, to my questions: What is true discipleship? What does Jesus want? On the one hand, He calls us to an uncompromising discipleship. He calls us to forsake everything, to lose our lives for His sake. He calls us to leave father and mother. On the other hand, we are supposed to honour our fathers and mothers...

...I wondered. What did God want?...I wanted to tread His path, no matter what it cost...He had to make me see the truth about myself before He could show me the right way. He had to show me that I was a poor sinner...The Lord granted me a penitent and crying heart. This experience drove me into the arms of Jesus...It was He Himself--not any particular teaching or any religious doctrine, but rather He Himself who was the answer.

...Yes, all my questions had been answered and all my problems solved. Now I was truly free....I now had part in everything that belongs to this earth and to the whole universe. My love had become all-comprehending, but my love had also remained close to God and bound to the centre of creation.

Just as my life had been unhappy and torn with inner conflicts before I found this answer, so everything was much more happy and more natural afterwards. My life was filled with joy, because I had found the One who loved my soul and whom I was permitted to love above all else with all my soul, with all my strength, with all my being. I found in Jesus my greatest Love, my most intimate Friend, and for almost thirty-five years since then I have gone through life with Him, and over and over again I have told Him how much I love Him, who is my Bridegroom.

Good Christian teaching is a good thing, and I've been blest to be surrounded by it. But sometimes, there's a temptation to put the teaching before the Teacher. The Teacher, Jesus, sometimes, often times, confounds us with His ways. We want to quickly figure out the 'lesson' He's trying to teach us. But sometimes, there's nothing we can do but wait for Him to reveal the 'lesson' in stages, sometimes painfully slowly. It's not that we're failing the school of Christianity. It's not that we're flunking out as disciples. It's not a matter of sin or not sin; it's not black and white. God, in His mercy, just blows our minds, and shows us, time and again, that He is God and we are not. When we can learn to rejoice in this, we will know that we are rejoicing in Him and not in our own self-knowledge, intellect, and self-will. B. Schlink says she "was filled with joy" not when she understood 'teaching' but when she realized how much she didn't understand, and this admission humbled her and brought her to Jesus. Then, she was filled with joy and love and freedom.

Do we want to love God so that we might understand Him and have our way, or do we love Him and want to know Him simply that we might love and worship Him?

There are many things each of us does not understand about God and His mysterious ways, but this unknowing need not prevent us from going deeper with Christ and loving Him fully. It was Adam's and Eve's desire to fully know that brought about the Fall. Can we surrender to this unknowing, and count it as God's security rather as a reason for us to be insecure? It's a challenge in the world we live in today and as Fallen individuals. But God gives us His grace and His Son, that we might be content in being the Father's children, taken care of by Him:

We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. -Romans 3: 22-4.

God is good. Amen.

Resting in Christ

My soul finds rest in God alone
All my hope I place in Him

These are lyrics from one of my favorite Christian songs, "My Soul Finds Rest In God Alone." And I was thinking today: "All my hope I place in Him." Does this mean, "I put my hopes of x, y, and z in Him?" I think more fundamentally, this lyric means to say that my one hope, my only hope, is Him. He is The Hope. When Jesus Christ is hope alone, we do not hope in vain. All reasons to fear, be anxious, and strive cease. We may want x, y, or z, but when those things are hidden in our want of Him, we find actually that "there is nothing [we] shall want."

I've been reading Sit, Walk, Stand by Watchman Nee, and he talks about how when we enter into rest with Christ, we sit with Him and in Him, like a dollar bill between the pages of a magazine. If you burn the magazine, Nee points out, the dollar bill, hidden inside, also goes up in flames. The bill's history becomes that of the magazine's. Isn't this an provocative image? I love it. The image helps us ask these questions: Can we place our desires and other hopes in the magazine? Can we place ourselves in the pages of Christ's story of salvation? How about our sins and weaknesses? Can we let ourselves be hidden in the work of Christ?

In him we have obtained our inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory (Ephesians 1: 11-2).

In a culture and society that says, "Look at me: look how important and special I am, as an individual, look at me and how different and unique I am," it's no wonder that the phrase and concept of being "hidden in Christ," of being conformed to another's image, is so foreign and maybe even seemingly shallow and easy to grasp rather than complex and challenging. Or maybe just plan distasteful. "Imitation of Christ," or imitation, as opposed to being original, is out-of-style. Our world today privileges things which were once 'secret' but then are exposed. One need only to stand in a grocery store checkout line and scan the covers of tabloids or turn on a t.v. to see the plentitude of secrets, scandals, crazy things, and shocking things which have "finally" been "revealed."

I think that oftentimes, to be "hidden," or maybe just to be normal, aware that one's life is really just one in millions, a blip on the radar, in today's society, is really not cool. We give awards to those who are unique, who do new things, who are original, who are, often, bold for the sake of being bold rather than for the sake of the Gospel. What many do not come to understand is that only those who are confident that they are the center of Christ's attention can allow themselves to be hidden in Him and in the world. Think: St. Therese of Lisieux. Mother Theresa.

This is, finally, what true rest is: trust in Jesus Christ and what He has done for us. So many times I think that rest will come to me in the form of a good cup of coffee, a pedicure, a fancy vacation, a good night's sleep, shopping, and any other number of human, fleshy, really good things. And it always takes me some time to recall that true rest does not result from self-edification but from trust in-Christ, who gives us all these good things, including good coffee!

For the Daughter of God

I found this excerpt quite inspiring and think women will appreciate it:

Together with her Bridegroom [the Bride of Christ] builds the Kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of life, of radiance and joy. Having been called to His side, she is taken up into His life. She let herself be called away from everything else, that she might go through life at the side of Him who has become her All, and so she does not have to rely upon herself. She need to calculate her talents, abilities, and personality. She does not need to consider what is available and what is possible. She has only to reckon with Him, the power of His love. Jesus, the Source of Life for all men, is the Fire of God, the Sun of the whole world, the Hearth of love. Will He not inflame the heart of His bride as well?

-Basilea Schlink, "Bridal Love--A Consuming fire," My All for Him

Seasons of Love

Today, one of my Lenten devotionals, the Magnificat Companion, said this:

"Has Lent been the sum total of my good intentions, or rather a time when I have recognized anew the presence of Christ who comes into my life?...Are you satsified, are you rejoicing, are you in love?"

On the whole, I have not, in past years, thought of Lent as the Season of "Love." I think of it as the season in which I remember what a worm I am, what dust I was formed from, etc. But I can truly say that this season, I've been thinking of Lent as a season of love. Often, and particularly in the world, love is connected to summer, warmth, bright colors, happiness, laughter, and lots of food and drink--not cold, Michigan winters, fasting, obedience, almsgiving, and abstinence.

And yet, the Lord drew two scenes together before me yesterday, two gardens: The Garden of Gethsemane and the Garden in Song of Solomon and gently encouraged me to consider that there may not be as much difference between these two garden scenes as I think. When I think Song of Solomon, I think summer, heat, intensity! When I think of Lent, I have to admit, I think: coldness, a season of measuring my distance from God, a time of looking more closely at my vices, a time for remembering just how un-Godly I am. But the Lord wanted to correct my vision. Here's the particular verse which struck me:

"Come, my lover, let us go forth to the fields / and spend the night among the villages."

-Song of Solomon 7: 12

It is this kind of love that compells Jesus to invite his closest friends to "spend the night" with him, keeping watch on the night before his death. My previous post was about the Garden of Gethsemane and about the friendship of Christ. But even the term 'friendship' falls short of describing properly the love which God has for us and the kind of relationship he desires to have with us.

Suffering, love, death, life--in the Song of Solomon, they get mixed together:

"Set me as a seal on your heart,
as a seal on your arm;
For stern as death is love
relentless as the nether world is devotion;
its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away."

-Song of Songs 8: 6-7

Imagine if we were to pray this passage to the suffering Christ the night before his death, imagine if we were one of the disciples at table with him. "For stern as death is love." For our sake, Jesus endured death. Can we be as "stern" or "relentless" in our love for him as he has been, through his suffering and death, in his love for us? Jesus Christ did not suffer and die to make us feel bad about our sins. His only intention has been to Love. This is why the Magnificat Companion asks us whether we are ending Lent in "rejoicing" and "in love." Jesus passed through the "nether world" for our sake; can our "devotion" back to him be as "relentless as the nether world"?

All we need to do is stay near to him this week and watch what he does, love as he loves.

On Friendship

These words come from Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede and are quoted by Elisbeth Elliot in "A Strange Peace" in The Path of Loneliness:

The motto was Pax, but the word was set in a circle of thorns. Peace: but what a strange peace, made of unremitting toil and effort, seldom with a seen result; subject to constant interruptions, unexpected demands, short sleep at night, little comfort, sometimes scant food, beset with disappointments, and usually misunderstood; yet peace all the same, undeviating, filled with joy and gratitude and love. "It is my own peace I give unto you," not notice, the world's peace.

Suffering. Crowns of thorns. Often, when we suffer, we are brought to our knees and to the understanding that Christ wants to draw near to us in our suffering, and so we remember, once again, that what He always means to teach us is how to surrender to Him.

But has it ever occurred to us just how much and for what reason he wants to be near to us in his suffering? Has it ever occurred to us that He wants to be our companion in our suffering because He, too, Jesus Christ, fully man and fully God, has desired a companion during his own times of suffering? In the Gospel of Matthew, we see a powerful image of a vulnerable Savior:

Then they came to a place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." He took with him Peter, James, and John, and began to be troubled and distressed. Then he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch."...When he returned he found them asleep. He said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?" (the full narrative, Matthew 26: 36-41).

Why did Jesus Christ want his disciples near Him while He prayed? Why didn't He just go up to Gethsemane alone? Why did he take with Him specifically Peter, James, and John? Because Jesus, too, wanted--but did not need--friends to be near to Him in His suffering. He has had the same desires and feelings as any human being. He, too, did not want to be alone in His suffering.

I often think of the exhortation Jesus gives to the disciples when He finds that they are asleep as a scolding from the Father: "Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." But it is Jesus here, in all His humanity and vulnerability and glory, who is speaking. Jesus Christ, who is about to be handed over and betrayed by one of His closest friends, wants His closest friends near to Him in His suffering. Jesus Christ, who is also praying that He may not undergo the test His Father is giving to Him, tells His disciples the encouragement they will need to hear in all their suffering: "Watch and pray, that you may not undergo the test" which the Father is going to give to you. Who can say that Jesus does not fully understand us?

We are often like these disciples, Peter, James, and John. We mean well, we are close friends of Jesus, to be sure, but we often "fall asleep" and become unawares of Him in our midst and the desires of His heart. Not only does He want to draw near to us in our suffering; He wants us to bring our sufferings to Him. Our sufferings are a part of His, and our sufferings often "wake" us up, and we find that we have fallen asleep in the Garden and have lost sight of Him. And Jesus Christ, so attentive to the Father and the Father's Will, even in a time of great suffering, continues to encourage us to turn to the Father, to do His Will.

Truly, there is none who can offer us such selfless friendship as Jesus Christ.

Tilling the Soil

The other night a friend and I were debating as to whether I am originally from the country or the city. I argued that I had sort-of come from the country because my folks' house is next to some fields. But my friend is right--I am from the suburbs. And anyways, the field is being turned into a subdivision.

I've recently been thinking about farming, fields mainly. At various retreats and conferences this semester, I've heard about martyrs and people like Hudson Taylor and Gladys Aylward and even my good friend Noelle Gornik who is being called to go to Africa as a missionary. My question has been, "Lord, what are you trying to tell me? Am I supposed to go to China? Korea? Africa? for the sake of mission?

But as questions like these have arisen over the years, the Holy Spirit has gently reshaped such questions for me and narrowed them down to one: "Lord, show me my plot of land in the mission field. All I want is to till my little plot very well, to stay in this plot and till and grow what you give to me." I can so easily look to those around me laboring and compare my little plot to theirs. And it is little because I am nothing without Him, and He gives us the right size of land, knowing what labor He has equipped us for. It may seem like someone near me is growing trees and starting a vineyard, and I am planting flowers, but if that is what the Lord is handing me, then it is His will, and I am content. It is enough to have seed--the Gospel--and it's the seed that is precious. It's a joy to have a little plot of land in God's plan.

We don't have to go searching for a plot of land in the mission field because we're already standing in the part of the field God wants us to be in right now. Yes, He may very well call us to go various places to serve. But I think when we look inside our hearts, we see the field, and we learn that the field begins with our hearts. The first field we are given, the first field that God wants us to till, the first field He wants us to let Him till is the field of our hearts. I could mention various parables and metaphors from Scripture concerning nature that are used to explain what spiritual growth looks like. But I won't. The main point is that God is after our hearts. Last year at a communal prayer meeting, someone gave this word: "God wants the one thing He lacks: our hearts."

If we can understand this, if we can learn to see when we look at the mission field not a field of places, cities, circumstances, or things but a field of hearts, cracked, broken, dry, empty, in-need of the Holy Spirit's tilling and not our own, then we will be very good missionaries because we will be looking at the field with His eyes:

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness. At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples: 'The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.' (Matthew 9: 35-8).

Verses 37-8 are often quoted in reference to mission, but I think it's important to consider what moves Jesus to say what he does: "his heart was moved with pity." Jesus Christ is calling us to have hearts that are movable, as His is movable.

But who can love as Jesus loves? Who can see these crowds not for what they could "do" or "be" but simply as ones who need love? Only one who has received Jesus's heart for mission first and received Jesus's heart for him/herself first. Can missionaries humble themselves enough to believe that they, too, still need to be evangelized by the love of Christ? Can we believe that Jesus Christ looks on us and is "moved with pity" because we are "troubled and abandoned"?

We are in what many Christians call the season of Lent, a time of fasting, prayer, and repentance. Jesus Christ looks on us and is moved. Do we notice His gaze and count ourselves as part of the crowds? Jesus says "Blessed are those who are poor in spirit." Do we know how "poor" we are, that we may know how "blessed" we are?

Let us count ourselves as those who need the Gospel. As we continue to acknowledge this we shall be free to share with others the true nature of the Gospel, that "all [have] fall[en] short of the glory of God"(Romans 3: 23). We will know the nature of the seed we have been given to sow in the little plot of land which God has given to each of us. And we will see the plot of land for what it is, a lovely gift from Him, and will be confident that the One who has placed us where He has an incomprehensible love for each of us.