Archives for July 2016

Tuesday, June14, 2011 10:49 PM

Still ‘Feeling My Way’

It’s day 2 of My Unusual Journal. I’m now winding down my day by working on this my maiden effort at writing anything close to a journal of my inner thoughts. This present effort can be termed “Feeling My Way.” I have no good idea if God will give me the green light, the red light or simply put me on hold for a season as far as this project is concerned. It’s in His capable hands.

My Journal – 6/15/11

Wednesday June15, 2011, 3:00 AM

It’s the end of a long day (6/14), by the grace of God, and the start of a new one (6/15), again by the wonderful grace of Almighty God.

Lord, remember all my Prayer Burdens whose needs run wide and deep, like a river that pauses for none to catch their breath. Keep them, Lord, and meet all their needs. Keep us all through the brilliance of a sunny day or through the horrors of the night when you allow the clouds of unreasonable fear and doubt to hide your blessed face. Keep them; keep me. Without you we have no hope, no compass and no salvation.

I like the Good Night Prayer my children used to recite before clambering safe into their beds. It takes me back to a simpler time when we didn’t have such a complexity of wickedness to face and overcome. Yet, despite the convoluted machinations of wickedness, we are still required to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves [childlike].” I too am a child, Lord, and tonight I exercise my childlike faith in you… as I pray with my children –

“Now I lay me down to sleep;

I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep;

When in the morning light I wake,

Help me the path of love to take

And keep the same for thy dear sake. In Jesus’ name, Amen”

 

Goodnight, sweet Jesus…

 

Wednesday 6/15/2011 7:20 AM

My wife woke me up today for the 6 AM Phone Prayer session sponsored (I guess that is the right term) by the church’s Tribe of Levi, to which Pat and I have been assigned and for which I am glad. They are a group of spiritually alert men and women and quite friendly to this guy they’ve never met in person at this writing. God bless them.

After the prayer session I had to face the usual physical travail as I lashed my body (I overstate it a bit) into harness for a spiritually profitable day. I progressed further through the usual tedious routine for the beginning of my day by a modest study of the Bible; that is, I read four chapters, two from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament. These morning readings are not in a deeply studious mode, but they are in sequential order and I do not whisk through them in 5 or10 minutes.

I could choose my daily Scripture reading in a random way by opening the Bible and reading wherever it fell open. It’s my choice to do it in a more systematic way. Either way is good as long as I read my Bible and don’t read the same chapters each day. The Bible is my source of inspiration, edification and comfort. It teaches me wisdom and as I read I expect the Spirit to open up my understanding of the words on the printed page. He makes them come to life.

This is not to say that every word or sentence instantly and spectacularly recharges my spiritual “battery”; no, but the continual reading has a very positive effect. I know it because I am the one that experiences the cumulative effects on my spiritual being when I deliberately subject myself to a constant bombardment by these words of life.

Here is a “revelation” (more like stumbling across a small fact that has been lying there all along): we humans, even we who know Christ, are not always sensitive to the needs of others. For a child of God that is not a good trait. Please hear me: As the offspring of Jesus, who is the essence of the love of God, we are, in theory, always loving and sensitive to the needs of others. But the hard truth is that it is inconvenient at times to be attentive to the needs of others. We have a carnal nature that makes demands on us and we constantly need to put that fleshly fellow to death; and it does not die easily. It is up to us, by the grace of God, to always be alert to this unchristian tendency within us and to actively seek to “mortify” the selfishness within us… We kill it often, but like a noxious weed, it has a stubborn tendency to revive.

The best way to fight your carnal nature is to fill your heart and mind with the Word of God. It will act as your divine voice of conscience, warning you, holding you back from wrong actions and alerting you to openings for “love in action.” So don’t ignore the Word of God. Read it, study it, meditate on its do’s and don’ts. Do not give in to the carnal nature’s pitiful pleas or its hard rationalizing for leaving your brother lying on the wayside to die.

Fill your heart and mind with the Word of God to avoid becoming insensitive to the many needs that are “out there,” wherever there is a vulnerable soul. If I were permitted to read but one book in the world, I would without hesitation choose the Bible. It is my lifeline. It is my life.

Wednesday 6/15/2011 5:59 PM

I have just sent an e-mail to an “intermediary” (my term for a person bringing someone in need to my prayerful attention) and it made me think: There are so many persons needing help that it’s overwhelming. I have prayed that God would help me to feel the needs of my Prayer Burdens – and He has been gracious enough to answer that request, at least in part. I know I need more help in that area.

Now I can actually better “feel” the hurts of the ones for whom I am praying. It is certainly not a miraculous or automatic happening: There are still times when I have to prod my sleeping empathy and make a conscious effort to immerse myself in the matrix of suffering in which my brother or sister find themselves. God honors my effort and gives me the ability to feel or empathize with him or her in a way that I have been unable to do before. It’s a thrilling thing.

But it doesn’t come without a price. It hurts – and what did I expect: a foot-stomping glory hallelujah occasion? That may come later when he/she and I (both of us) come out of our grueling test. But even now while I am in the furiously burning fire with my partner in pain, there is a deep down joy and praise for what God has done for my brother and me: my brother now has a colleague who can pray for him the effectual, fervent prayer that he needs – and I, what do I have? I have the sense of fulfillment that comes only from reaching out in love to a fellow creature in their direst hour and enduring the trial of their faith with them. And be assured: The bread I have cast upon the waters will no doubt return to me in my own time of grief and pain. (Ecc 11.1)

Author’s Note: (fast forward to 9/27/2012 3:40 PM) On this date, as I am editing My Unusual Journal for the x-teenth time, I realize the promise of fruitful return has been fulfilled to me more than once since I posted the article above. I cast my bread on the waters and it came back to me in various ways and by various means. I will continue to cast that God may continue to bless!

There is quite a difference between a picture drawn or painted by an artist and its real?life counterpart. I am not talking about paintings by Picasso or Dali and other artists of their class. Their art is like a simile in speech; it approaches the real thing (sometimes), but often leaves the “commoner’s” imagination unfulfilled. Being one of the bourgeoisie or middle class, I prefer down?to?earth artists like Norman Rockwell and his peers who have a metaphoric (my term) approach to art. They make an apple an apple or a woman a woman and not some disjointed alien from outer space with body parts scattered all over the painting.

If the artist is good enough, he can make a picture seem very real. If it’s a tree, the viewer can imagine, from the realism infused into the picture, the side of the tree that isn’t shown. He knows it is there because it is always there in real life. If it is an outstanding portrait, the viewer can see a glint of awareness in the eyes and can almost reach out and touch the real person. A sculpture can have an even more realistic effect.

But, as good as they may be, these things are not real. They are beautiful and have a wondrous touch of reality – but they are not the genuine item they copy so well. They are, after all, only incredibly skillful paint strokes on a canvas or sketches on a paper. Or, if they are sculpture, they result from the dexterous work of the sculptor who has the advantage of working in a three?dimensional art form, which gives even more life to the inanimate object.

The portrait is unable to speak or love or comfort. The sculpture can neither see nor hear nor speak. Both possess unbelievably lifelike semblances of human body parts portrayed in exceptionally realistic manner, but they don’t function. They make beautiful art and satisfy the aesthetic side of the viewer, but they are useless in a practical sense, not having the power to do, to effect, to accomplish. In other words, they can’t make a real difference in a heart or in a life.

A portrait or a statue cannot raise a prayer nor can it console one who is deeply grieved. A life-like work of art is unable to worship a God or bring the Gospel to a sinner. For that matter, such things have not the least awareness, no cognizance of God nor of His wonderful love. They know nothing at all. The slighting remark, “beautiful but dumb,” is remarkably appropriate in this instance.

It is obvious that appearance and near?realism are not enough. Beauty alone may please the senses, but it is not enough in a demanding world of in-your-face reality. Beauty is not enough in the religious world where there are many beautiful forms in worship, edifices of worship, groups of worshipers (congregations), prayers and individual worshipers. But what do these lovely-looking items actually do of themselves?

Beauty is woefully inadequate. Attractiveness falls far short of what God wants and what the world of PEOPLE needs. There are two sources making demands on us who call ourselves Christian. First, there is a God who demands REAL beauty in our living, and second, there is a world full of individuals who have staggering needs both in the physical and the spiritual realm. A truly beautiful life will address both the demands of God and the needs of God’s creatures.

We need to mature and reject the notion so widely held that appearance is the sum total of existence. Outward appearance is like the beautiful painting that delights the eye but has no practical use. God is a God of realism and practicality despite our ideas to the contrary. He wants action; He wants profitable service; He wants progress and improvement in our service and our likeness to Him.

Paul warns of “Having a form of godliness [the beauty of appearance], but denying the power thereof…” He urges us, “from such turn away.” (2 Tim 3:5)

Rev 3:17 gives us this warning: “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing [the beauty of appearance]; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked [the harsh reality]…”

There is certainly a vast difference between the picture we draw of our own worth and accomplishments, and the ruthless reality of truth. Even we who are filled with the Spirit have a tendency to see ourselves in our own rosy light and not in the cutting glare of the reality found in the Word of God. Most of us don’t do it deliberately; it’s only that we want so much to be what God wants us to be that we fudge a little. If God wants perfection, we will give Him – and ourselves – the perfection He and we both want so avidly. In our minds we blur our imperfections so that they gradually metamorphose into good traits. I know. I have done it occasionally until I came back to reality and realized there is much work to be done before the beauty of my aspirations becomes a completed thing of beauty according to the Word of God.

In this discourse I have tried to show the need for more than beauty. We need real?life quality, and we do not have the full reality yet. But there is good news. God in His grace and mercy has given us both beauty and reality before we have literally attained the full reality. We don’t have to wait for the final work of perfection and beauty to be accomplished in our lives. If we are fully yielded to God and have the works necessary for a living faith, our lives at this very moment are breathing, pulsing works of art to Him. Reality as we know it may say it is not so, but God’s own reality makes it so, and who can argue with the Judge of all as to what is real?

Without boasting I can say that God has truly made something beautiful out of my life, and it is possible only by my LIVING faith in Him.

“For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.” (2 Cor 8:12)

If you too are a believer, your life and mine are both undeniable beautiful works of art created by the Master Artist. He has breathed His own life into these works of art and they have come vibrantly alive.