If you are looking for a companion for the season of Eastertide, Alive: Encountering the Risen Jesus is available on Amazon.
Starting a new feature for the next several months called Book of the Month. I will present one of my books and tell you a little of the ...
If you are looking for a companion for the season of Eastertide, Alive: Encountering the Risen Jesus is available on Amazon.
“O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore.” (Ps. 131:3) Where is your hope? Who, or what, do you really put your hope in? And how can you tell if your hope is really in the Lord? If you look at your life, it will give you a pretty good idea. Your actions will always show you where your hope really lies.
Waiting for the Lord is one surefire way
to tell. Waiting for the Lord shows us where
our hope really lies. If we are willing
and able to wait for the Lord, it shows that our hope is really in him, and if
we are always charging ahead, it shows that our hope is really in
ourselves.
What does it look like to put your hope in the Lord these days?
We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” (Psalm 33:20-22)
Only you, O God, can make the parched land glad and make the wilderness blossom and bloom. (Is. 35:1) Only you can make water gush forth in the desert and make streams flow in the wasteland. Only you can turn burning sand into pools of water and transform thirsty ground into bubbling springs. Only you can turn the wilderness into a place of life and hope. Do that again today, we pray. Lord, have mercy on us.
“And
the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil, and oppression. So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a
mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous
signs and wonders. He brought us into
this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey…” (Deut.
26:7-9)
The two movements of God in this passage
are unmistakable: He leads the Israelites out of Egypt, in order to lead
them into the promised land. That’s
kind of the way He works; God is always leading us out of one thing to lead us
into another. Out of darkness and into
light. Out of brokenness and into
wholeness. Out of chaos and into
peace. Out of slavery and into freedom. Out of fear and into love. The first thing must be left behind in order
for the second thing to be fully realized.
What is God leading you out of these days and what is he leading you into? What is he asking you to leave behind and what is he inviting you to step into? What does he want you to let go of and what does he want you to take hold of?
Lent begins on March 5th this year. If you're looking for a companion for yourself, your family, your small group, your staff, your church, etc. Here are two options:
“Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.” (Psalm 77:19) Oh, how great it would be if your path, O God, always led around the sea. If life with you meant that we would never experience heartache or chaos or pain or loss. But your path does not lead around the sea, but straight through it. It is only by going through the sea that we are forced to depend on you. You teach us something by taking us through the sea of pain and loss, of sorrow and sadness, that we could learn no other way. Walking through the sea is what you use to form our lives and shape our hearts. It is how you make us more like Jesus, who “learned obedience through what he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8) So, thank you.
Loss is inevitable in this broken and fallen world. How we deal with that loss is something else altogether. We can live our lives trying to avoid or deny it, or we can face our losses, grieve them, and embrace what God wants to do in us through them. The fact is that we can never arrive at joy by going around sorrow, but only by going through it. It all comes down to trust, really. Do we trust his heart when we cannot see his hand (or, in this case, his footprints)?
“I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.” (Psalm 131:2)
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord; O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in
his word I put my hope. My soul waits
for the Lord ore than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait
for the morning.
O Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for
with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their
sins.” (Psalm 130:1-8)
Have mercy, wait for the Lord, put your hope in the Lord, and trust in the Lord are all interconnected. If you take out one of them out, the whole thing falls down. Thus, all are essential, and all are interdependent as we walk with God.
Mercy involves the realization of my immense
need for Jesus—not merely in salvation (which is huge), but in all things. It involves me realizing that I cannot do or
accomplish anything of eternal value on my own.
Not one thing. I am totally
helpless and dependent on God and his power.
If I can do nothing (as Jesus tells me in
John 15:5), then I am totally dependent on God’s mercy for anything and
everything. Which is not a good look for
us. We do everything we can to make sure
we never have to depend on anyone. But
the truth is that all of us are totally dependent on God and his mercy. Therefore, our only recourse is to wait for
the Lord.
But we can’t really wait for the Lord if
our hope is not in the Lord. This is
where the lines get a little blurry, because it is hard for us to see, at
times, what our hope is really in. Sometimes
our hope is in our gifts and abilities.
Sometimes it is in the gifts and abilities of others. Sometimes it’s in our circumstances, our performance,
or the opinions and affirmations of those around us. All of which point to our hope being in
ourselves instead of in our God.
So, it all comes down to trust. We can’t possibly hope in the Lord—or beg him
for mercy or wait for him—if we do not trust him. It’s as simple as that. Which brings us right back to begging for
mercy. For when we cry out for mercy,
God gives it to us 100% of the time. It
may not look like we want it to—which is a mercy in and of itself—but it is
exactly what we need.
Hope in the Lord, O my soul; wait for him. Do not take matters into your own hands, but trust in him to move, speak, and act in whatever way he sees fit. That’s what walking with God is all about; he leads, and we follow.
Praying Psalm 131 every Saturday for the past eight years has been one of the most formative things for my soul that I can remember. It continues to change the way I see, think, and operate. I'm just hoping that someday it will be 100% true of the way I live my life. Here's today's response:
“Come unto me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30) What a beautiful invitation, and yet we rarely, if ever, take Jesus up on it.
Why is that? Why are we so resistant to rest? Why are we so hesitant to come? Jesus gives us an open invitation into the
life and joy and rest of the Trinity and we refuse. Why on earth would we do that? Are our egos so big that we think we can
manage and control our lives better than he can? Are we so prideful and delusional that we
would rather sink or swim on our own than surrender to his care, direction, and
control?
It’s nothing new; Isaiah and Jeremiah ran
into the same thing: “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy one of Israel, says:
‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your
strength, but you would have none of it.’” (Isaiah 30:15) “This is what the
Lord says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask
where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’ But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”
(Jeremiah 6:16)
What is wrong with us? God offers us the moon and we settle for the
darkness. He offers us a life of peace
and joy and rest, and we settle for anxiety, weariness, and busyness. We’re a piece of work, huh?
O
heart, be not proud and lifted up. O eyes,
be not high ad haughty and arrogant. Don’t
live on the oxygen of approval, affirmation, and accomplishment.
Instead, still and quiet your soul like a weaned child in the loving embrace of its mother. Breathe me in. Let me be the only air you need. Stop trying to suck it out of everyone else, for that is what it means to be weaned. Only then will you be free.
And all of it depends on me, not on you. Always remember that.
What's above is a little adaptation of Psalm 131 from my time with God this morning. It's a psalm I have been praying every Saturday for years now. And every time I pray it, I wonder if I'm making any progress in the "weaned life." There is still so much in me that I need to be weaned of. I need to be weaned of the need for a certain response from others, weaned of the need to impress and be affirmed, weaned of my slavery to what others think and say about me, weaned of my captivity to results and performance. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. But, as the psalm says, my only hope for this weaning is in God. So, I will keep praying and keep wrestling and keep trying and keep hoping that one day "stilled and quieted" might actually be the state of my heart and soul.
“My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)
It could
be that my brokenness, desperation, and dependence are the best things I have
going for me. It could be that they open
up great space for God to live, move, and act in and through me. Thus, maybe I should embrace them rather than
reject, avoid, or deny them.
Maybe
they are an invitation rather than an intrusion. An invitation to recognize the presence of
God, the hand of God, and the power of God amidst all the chaos. An invitation to share in the sufferings and
vulnerability of Christ, and to become more and more like him.
Maybe a
continual sacrifice of my deep brokenness and contrition makes good space for
God to do some of his best work, because it keeps me from taking up all the
space. I am emptied of my competence and
my adequacy and independence so that he can finally fill me with himself. Maybe that sacrifice keeps me where he wants
me and makes me who he wants me to be―humble, lowly, and dependent. When we don’t recognize our great need for
Jesus, we tend to take up all the space ourselves. That’s why God will never despise an offering
of a broken and contrite heart.
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why send money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul with delight in the richest of fare. Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.” (Isaiah 55:1-3)
A New Year has begun, but God's invitation is always the same: "Come!" Could intimacy with God really be this simple? Just listen to God’s words of invitation here and you tell me: come, come, come, come, listen, listen, eat, give ear and come to me, and hear me. That's all we've got to do; the rest is up to him. He’s the one who fills our hearts and brings delight to our souls. All we have to do is come and listen. Why do we make it so complicated? And why don’t we consistently do what is written in these short few verses? For if we did, our souls would truly live.
What is God’s invitation to you for the New Year? How is he inviting you to "Come"? How is he inviting you to listen? How is he inviting you to eat what is good, that your soul may live?