One thing

It’s a New Year and my prayer for you is that it may be one where God will meet you where your heart is at. That if you’ve been searching for Him you will be found by Him, that your longing for Him will be satisfied, that your questions of Him may find understanding and contentment in His sovereignty and above all that you will know Him more.

I’ve been meditating on this ‘one thing’ extract about zeal by J.C. Ryle (as quoted by J.I Packer in Knowing God) and my only resolution for this new year is that God, in His grace, would allow me to keep my focus on Him. That He alone will be my ‘One Thing’:

“Zeal in religion is a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way. It is a desire which no man feels by nature- which the Spirit puts in the heart of every believer when he is converted- but which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called ‘zealous’ men…
“A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swallowed up in one thing; and that one thing is to please God. Whether he lives, or whether he dies- whether he has health, or whether he has sickness- whether he is rich, or whether he is poor- whether he pleases man, or whether he gives offence- whether he is thought wise, or whether he is thought foolish- whether he gets blame, or whether he gets praise- whether he gets honour, or whether he gets shame- for all this the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing; and that one thing is to please God, and to advance God’s glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it- he is content. He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, work, and give money, he will cry, and sigh and pray…. If he cannot fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work of Moses, Aaron, and Hur, on the hill. If he is cut off from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter, and the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of ‘zeal’ in religion.”

One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.

Happy New Year!!

Even if You don’t…

Lord you know my prayer
You know the fear
You know the constant thoughts
The faith I try so hard to keep

The faith that says
He will make a way
The faith that prays and pleads
The faith that holds its breath…
Just in case you don’t Lord

But today I say to that
Even if you don’t Lord
Even if my world falls apart
From where I stand
Even if You don’t

I will seek You for You alone
You alone I desire
You alone are worthy
You alone hold the Power
And all Your decisions are good
All Your promises true

A new prayer I pray to You
A new song I sing
A prayer of worship
A song of thanksgiving for all
You’ve done

Because even if you don’t Lord
You’ve already
Done It All.

You have said, “Seek my face. “My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.”

Looking up

One of the greatest reminders of God’s greatness and power for me is just looking up at the sky. Sometimes it’s easy to forget, to just see what is in front of me. But oh when I look up, at the expanse of the sky, which on a blisteringly hot summers day is the purest blue, stretching as far as I can see, I stand in awe of the greatness of the One who holds all this in place.

And as I lie on my bed at night and smile as lightning lights up the room, as mighty thunder deafens and rolls and shakes the earth (with my little dog crawled in as deep as possible under my bed), I know the God I serve is Almighty and Powerful and Above All.

And I think of Psalm 147 which decribes the greatness and might of God:

Hallelujah!
How good it is to sing to our God,
for praise is pleasant and lovely.

The LORD rebuilds Jerusalem;
He gathers Israel’s exiled people.

He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.

He counts the number of the stars;
He gives names to all of them.

Our Lord is great, vast in power;
His understanding is infinite.

The LORD helps the afflicted
but brings the wicked to the ground.

Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
play the lyre to our God,

who covers the sky with clouds,
prepares rain for the earth,
and causes grass to grow on the hills.

He provides the animals with their food,
and the young ravens, what they cry for.

He is not impressed by the strength of a horse;
He does not value the power of a man.

The LORD values those who fear Him,
those who put their hope in His faithful love.

Exalt the LORD, Jerusalem;
praise your God, Zion!

For He strengthens the bars of your gates
and blesses your children within you.

He endows your territory with prosperity;
He satisfies you with the finest wheat.

He sends His command throughout the earth;
His word runs swiftly.

He spreads snow like wool;
He scatters frost like ashes;

He throws His hailstones like crumbs.
Who can withstand His cold?

He sends His word and melts them;
He unleashes His winds, and the waters flow…

So even today, as the sky hangs heavy and grey with the coming rain, I can look up and say:

He who holds the heavens and set the stars in their place, also hold my life in His hands. And it’s good hands, hands that can be trusted; faithful, everlasting arms… I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

What reminds you of His Power?

Unutterable tenderness

O Lord, Jesus Christ,
who art as the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land,
who beholdest thy weak creatures
weary of labour, weary of pleasure,
weary of hope deferred, weary of self;
in thine abundant compassion,
and fellow feeling with us,
and unutterable tenderness,
bring us, we pray thee,
unto thy rest.

I came across this beautiful prayer by my favourite poet, Christina Rossetti. I have been wondering, that God, being all powerful and all knowing, knowing the end of all things, being completely in control, and not worried or anxious or frustrated by the present or the future, does His heart really break, as people say, when our hearts break? Or does He only see the final outcome and feel happy and satisfied? Does He feel our pain or sadness when we face different things, or does He only see the necessity of the trial for the work it does in perfecting us?

This prayer, and the words;

abundant compassion

unutterable tenderness

have been floating around in my head, and I was asking ‘Really God? Really?’

And I was reading a book about Jesus, coming to earth as a baby, fully human. And there it was, for this very reason:

So it is evident that it was essential that He be made like His brethren in every respect, in order that He might become a merciful (sympathetic) and faithful High Priest in the things related to God, to make atonement and propitiation for the people’s sins. (Hebrews 2:17)

For we do not have a High Priest Who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and infirmities and liability to the assaults of temptation, but One Who has been tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sinning. (Hebrews 4:15)

With unutterable tenderness, He feels with us.  With abundant compassion, He longs to draw us into a place of rest in Him.

Waiting and watching

To wait! That means to pause and soberly consider our own inadequacy and the Lord’s all-sufficiency and to seek counsel and help from the Lord and to hope in Him (Psalm 33:20-22; Isaiah 8:17). Israel is rebuked that “they did not wait for his counsel” (Psalm 106:13). Why? Because in not seeking and waiting for God’s help, they robbed God of an occasion to glorify Himself.

For example, in Isaiah 30:15, 16 the Lord says to Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” But Israel refused to wait for the Lord and said, “No! We will flee upon horses.”

Then in verse 18 the folly and evil of this self-initiated frenzy is revealed: “The Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” The folly of not waiting for God is that we forfeit the blessing of having God work for us. The evil of not waiting for God is that we oppose God’s will to exalt Himself in mercy.

-John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Multnomah, 2003) p.170-71

Food for thought

I received a link to this blog post, and it made such an impression on me (I thought the summary was really excellent) that I have decided to post pretty much the whole thing here. I could relate to all of the points mentioned below and has given me some things to think about. I’d love to hear your thoughts:

Craig M. Gay, in his book The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist (Eerdmans, 1998), seeks to expose the symptoms of worldliness in the postmodern world. The organization of the book is quite thoughtful and the author builds a new theme off the previously theme, eventually tying all the themes together.

In a very basic form, the book develops around five progressive building blocks:

(a) Control—Man seeks to control his world through technology and rationalism. By this he refers to the impulse in the postmodern heart to control every area of life through technology, not merely to improve certain areas of life.

(b) Secularity—The aspirations of the modern man to this techno-rational control of the world leave little room for any god, save the “self-defining self.” God—if ever referenced at all—becomes a “god of the gaps,” a god whose necessity is limited to the areas of life that are outside of our control. Think “acts of god.”

(c) Individualism—The forces of control and secularity combine to encourage individualization, a fix-it-yourself mentality that breaks apart personal relationships and community.

(d) Anxiety—Man becomes an individualized self. But “the assumption of godlike responsibilities has turned out to be a heavy burden and that we have become increasingly anxious beneath the weight of this burden” (p. 308).

(e) Impatience—Combine control, secularity, individualism, and the anxiety from these godlike responsibilities and you end up with “what is possibly the master theme of modernity, and now of ‘postmodernity’: that of impatience” (p. 308).

This progression is helpful. And when the author begins to weave together the anxious impatience of our world his work really proves practical. Because, as Christians, we are called to cultivate an eschatological worldview and the spiritual disciplines of waiting and watching, distinctives directly undermined by modern forms of worldliness.

I mention the five building blocks of his book because it provides an introduction to an important quote from the conclusion on the topic of “anxious impatience.” Gay writes:

…anxious impatience is evident in virtually all aspects of modern social and cultural existence, and not least in the increasingly frantic pace with which so much of life is carried on today. It is largely by reason of impatient frustration, after all, that we have been persuaded to try to perform the functions of the hidden—and, indeed, seemingly absent—God.

“God is either unwilling or incapable of helping us,” we say in effect, “therefore we have no choice but to help ourselves, to take matters into our own hands, and to try to engineer a habitable environment for ourselves.” Ironically, it is this same anxious impatience that has consequently moved us to surrender ourselves so naively to the dehumanizing techniques of the modern world.

Indeed, it is anxious haste that has incited us to mortgage ourselves to technical rationality for the sake of its promise of control. “After we have taken control of the world,” so we tell ourselves, implying that taking control of the world must somehow enable us to take control of ourselves, “then we will discover how to be human persons again.” But the horizon keeps receding, and we always seem to be waiting for the promised control to be established.

The longer we are forced to wait, however, the more anxious we become; and the more anxious we become, the more prone we are to placing what little hope we have left into the possibility of technical-rational control, and thus to giving ourselves over to dehumanizing modern systems; and so forth. It is an unfortunately vicious cycle.

Modern secular society is thus a culture of anxious impatience, a culture in which so much stress has been placed upon human abilities and human agency that the modern mind has effectively lost the ability to trust anything, or more importantly anyone, else.

—Craig M. Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist (Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 310–311.

I think the thing that really stood out for me, the words that really shouted out at me, were the words waiting and watching. Oh how I hate to wait! It is the exact opposite of what we have been taught by society; act! make it happen!

I have just been re-reading passage from Piper’s book Desiring God, dealing with waiting, and I’ll share about that in my next post.

Surrender

To the cross I look, to the cross I cling
Of its suffering I do drink
Of its work I do sing

For on it my Saviour both bruised and crushed
Showed that God is love
And God is just

At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

What a priceless gift, undeserved life
Have I been given
Through Christ crucified

You’ve called me out of death
You’ve called me into life
And I was under Your wrath
Now through the cross I’m reconciled

In awe of the cross I must confess
How wondrous Your redeeming love and
How great is Your faithfulness

Sweetly Broken- Jeremy Riddle

Belonging

Of all the the photos I took in Paris- including the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower… my favourites are these I have put together in the album below. It doesn’t show any great work of art, it isn’t some great tourist attraction, it is about our humanness. I keep coming back to these photos because I relate. To the need for acceptance and belonging, and in some ways I understand why my best friend became a goth, and I understand why people colour their hair purple, why they wear strange piercings and dog collars. It is to shatter expectations. It is to say: I am not like you, but will you accept me anyway?

After some discussion over at Ed’s blog a while ago about church, I started thinking what I can do to be better with people (at church) and anywhere really. And I thought about my homegroup back in Durban, and why I was able to stay there. It was because of acceptance. We were a funny group- there were two 15-year olds, a 20-year old surfer dude/heavy metal [christian] rocker, a mentally disabled 23-year-old, an african with some strange political ideas- on crutches with one leg way shorter than the other due to childhood polio, me with my hang-ups and cynicism, and our leaders- probably the only ‘normal’ ones- a young couple with great faith in God, always loving, always accepting. We were all so different, but all accepted; we belonged, no matter what we did or said.

And I made list of how to accept/love people better (at church) but anywhere really:

- You know the one you have nothing in common with? The one with the odd sense of humour? Go and talk to them anyway.

- You know the one with the chip on their shoulder? The cynical one, with the sarcastic comments? Invite them for  lunch.

- You know the loner, who never talks? Include them anyway, don’t expect them to say anything.

- Enough with the judgements.

- Don’t expect them to be like you, they are not and that’s ok, love them anyway.

- Even if they say the ‘wrong’ things, love them anyway.

In time, their hearts will open and soften, they’ll say less ‘wrong’ things, the cynicism and sarcasm will melt away. Because all anyone really needs is acceptance and love.

Light

It is never a good idea to contemplate darkness. It will suck you in and hurl you into the pit of despair.

In fact, the Bible admonishes us to think of good things, of pure things, of everything that is beautiful and worthy of praise. (Phil 4:8)

But sometimes when all you see are the poor on every street corner, when all you see is hope dying in young eyes, when you see families torn apart, when you see corruption and lies, when the whole world seems to be groaning under the weight of darkness, sometimes the darkness overwhelms.

And I asked ‘Why God? Why so much darkness when You are Light?’ And I wrestled with my faith, I wondered what is the point of being in the light when darkness seems to consume everything?

God, in His grace, tolerates our wanderings. It reminds me of Job, when God said to him ‘Who are you to question Me?’

Where were you when I established the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?

What supports its foundations?
Or who laid its cornerstone

while the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Who enclosed the sea behind doors
when it burst from the womb,

when I made the clouds its garment
and thick darkness its blanket,

when I determined its boundaries
and put bars and doors in place,

when I declared: “You may come this far, but no farther;
your proud waves stop here”?

Have you ever in your life commanded the morning
or assigned the dawn its place… (Job 38:4-12)

This reminded me of who I am, and who I am not. I am not the Sovereign God of the universe, I cannot see from afar, I cannot see the whole picture, and it isn’t my burden to carry:

And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; or in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, “For we are also His offspring.” (Acts 17:26-28)

But I am His light to the world, and I can be the light in my corner of darkness. I can be the arms holding the hurt, the healing hands, and the love of Jesus, offering His hope and the light to every person I encounter in my corner of the world. I cannot save the world, but I don’t have to because Jesus already did.

Arise, shine; for your light has come! And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the LORD will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you. (Isaiah 60:1-2 )

Funny

A few weeks ago, my work laptop was stolen.

Do you believe a computer can tell whether a human voice is lying?

I really don’t. I believe in the validity of lie-detector tests, but a voice test? Seriously?

Yesterday I had to go for a voice-test to prove that I didn’t, in fact, steal my own laptop.

Or, as the nineteen-year old performing the test put it:

‘Are you sure the laptop was stolen? You didn’t just misplace it?’

So tell me, when last did you misplace your laptop?