bedrock

Lately, I’ve been blessed to be an observer and sometimes-participator in overhauling my brother’s house. One of the notable days in this process occurred last week when a team came out and fixed the foundation; after that event, I was able to paint walls and breathe a little sigh of relief that I had at least a little assurance that I wouldn’t come in the next day and see massive cracks all through my work.

Because of the evenings spent observing the house as it evolves, I’ve been meditating on foundations; and I have been surprised at how frequently the Bible mentions them. Perhaps even more striking to me has been how Biblical foundations (especially those relating to God) sometimes incorporated materials that seem highly impractical to our modern view of concrete foundations. Solomon laid the foundation for the temple with “great stones, costly stones, [and] hewed stones” (1 Kings 5:17). John saw each foundation of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 decorated with a different semi-precious stone. And, of course, Paul tells us of the most precious spiritual foundation—the bedrock of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11).

Something I read in Psalm 11 deeply resonated with where my heart has been concerning foundations. In the psalm, David is endeavoring to encourage himself in the midst of deep conflicting emotions after Saul has made yet another attempt on his life. He opens with a conversation—possibly a literal one, but I tend to believe that David and I had in common the whole “talking-to-people-in-one’s-head” thing. Someone has counseled him to run and hide, just like a bird escapes the hunter staked out in the open plains when it flies into the mountains. David’s response is one of adamant faith—“How can I truly say that the Lord is my shield and my defense if I cower away?”

It is in the middle of this debate (verse three) in which David says something that doesn’t seem to fit: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Cue the screeching halt to my blithe understanding of the chapter. ‘I thought we were talking about cowardly birds and hunters, Lord. Not really following here.’

Fortunately, the insight of men so much smarter than I am is archived in concordances readily available on the internet. The significance of verse three lies in the context of the first two verses. David has already outlined that his trust is in God, even in the face of “common sense” which would dictate that he do all things necessary to shield his life. The foundation of his self-preservation was a deep-rooted faith that God does all things well and is indeed able to protect that which is His own. Any efforts that David took to protect himself (in short, to run when God told him to stand firm) would erode the foundation of verbalized faith and result in the destruction of the life he was building upon it.

Truly, God desires a people who will marry their actions to their deeds. Our salvation is most assuredly by grace through faith in Him and not of works, but this does not imply that we are to take a passive approach to the life of faith. Living a life that is “counter-culture” to the ruling ideologies of the day requires that we make proactive, conscious decisions. We choose to seek out the oppressed fight for justice. We choose to find those who are hungry and feed them instead of expecting the hungry to come to us seeking for a handout. We choose not to run in fear from confrontation—to stand for integrity and morality even at the risk of seeming offensive. And we lock into Jesus, the originator and perfector of our faith and the bedrock on which we as living stones seek to build.

intercede

I’m reading through 1 Samuel now. Actually, if you want to be technical about it, I’m reading through Genesis, 1 Samuel, Job, Proverbs, Isaiah, Matthew and Ephesians now, in what could be classified quite convincingly as a mild case of spiritual A.D.D. In tonight’s sitting, Abraham rescued Lot from the four kings who went out against Sodom, Saul became king over Israel, Job told off his friends for insinuating that he was less than perfect in the sight of God, Solomon told me to quit worrying and trust in the Lord, Isaiah reminded me that the Lord is not angry forever, and John the Baptist was beheaded.

I had one of those “wow” moments in 1 Samuel tonight--the kind where the words seemed to hurtle themselves off the page and I found myself wondering who snuck into my apartment and inserted a page in my Bible with a new part of the story that I had never seen before. In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel confronts the people of Israel for their sin of rejecting the Lord as their ruler in favor of having a king (Saul) like all other nations. The power of his words brought conviction (or perhaps merely terror--although the two do seem to come together at times) to the hearts of the people, because in verse 19 they beg Samuel to pray to the Lord on their behalf that He would not kill them for their sins.

What struck me followed in verse 23 when Samuel replied,

“…far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.” (emphasis added)

Wow.

In the Old Testament, Abraham prayed on behalf of Lot that God would spare the city of Sodom, and Moses prayed on behalf of the Israelites that God would spare their lives when they turned against the Lord to worship idols. In the New Testament, Jesus commanded us to pray for those who persecute us, and Scripture tells us that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are constantly interceding to the Father on our behalf. As a result, we have at least a vague notion that praying for other people is a good idea.

However, I wonder if we truly grasp the gravity of the role to which we are called on the earth. 1 Samuel 12:23 says to me that those of us who know the will of the Father and seek to walk in the power of spiritual leadership--whether as a forerunner like Abraham, a quasi-political leader like Moses, or a prophet like Samuel--have a divine responsibility to pray on behalf of others. With position comes responsibility. With an ear tuned and sensitive to the voice of the Lord comes a mandate to walk in humility and use the gift of hearing to serve others.

I wonder how much the face of the church would change if we all believed that we sin against God when we do not interpose ourselves between His judgment and the brokenness of our neighbors. I wonder how much He would soften our hearts toward our brothers and sisters if we truly began to grasp that He delights in mercy, that He is infinitely patient, and that He holds an inexhaustible supply of tender love for all of humanity. I wonder how much easier it would be to forgive the offenses we hold against others if we realized how serious about this He is.

Just a thought.

"God, Where Were You?"

So I was thinking a lot about Abraham and Isaac a few months ago--specifically how at just at the right moment the Lord stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son. I think it has almost been to my detriment at times that I know the end of the story because when the Lord asks me to give Him something, there's always this sense of, "oh, I'm not really going to have to sacrifice that. I'm just showing Him that I'm willing."

The thing is, sometimes there is no voice calling out, "Stop! I've seen your heart. You don't actually have to go through with it." Samuel told Saul that obedience is better than to sacrifice, but sometimes obedience requires sacrifice. One of my amazing friends reminded me just a few days ago that the story of Abraham and Isaac contains the first mention of the word "worship" in scripture--and it was in conjunction with sacrifice. Something always dies when we worship in its truest form.

But back to the point...so often we parade our "Isaacs" across the altar--the dream job, the relationships, the promises to which we cling--all the time waiting for the divine intervention that God chooses not to send. And when we look down and see the life-blood of what we held most dear spilling over our hands, we begin asking in a confused daze, "God, where were You?" In the clamor and the emotional turmoil, sometimes it's hard to hear His whispered response–"here."

Hebrews 4 contains such a beautiful promise to us in verse 15:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. Instead, we have one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet he never sinned.

I know that when I lose something precious to me, the temptation is there to allow myself to be swept away in a rush of emotions. I find myself doubting that I truly heard the voice of the Lord. I struggle with blaming myself and even blaming God for the discomfort that follows. I throw myself into any project I can find to avoid the phrases "it's not fair" and "I don't understand." Six little words not even used in the same sentence all the time that nip at my heels like dogs and tug at my peace of mind. Does Jesus truly understand that?

And then I think about the cross--the fulfillment of the shadow that the Lord played-out in the Abraham/Isaac sacrifice. Jesus came with a purpose and was aware of the end of His story from the beginning, but the Gospels tell us that He agonized enough to sweat blood the night before He died. I wonder if He was thinking about Abraham when they crucified Him. I wonder if perhaps part of Him was also waiting for the Father to speak up and say, "No--there's another way" as Jesus stumbled toward the cross, even though He knew there wasn't.

I think Jesus's cry--"My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?"--was the ultimate expression of the "God where were You?" question. In that moment, Jesus showed us that He felt, in excruciating detail, every agonizing emotion that comes coupled with a call for sacrifice--with a call for true worship.

That is the Jesus I find myself holding onto--the one who "gets it." And He proved without question that the end result is worth it, even if God doesn't stop the process of sacrifice.

a dream

I don't ordinarily share my dreams, but I have felt such an urgency to pray this morning and a realization that I cannot carry this burden alone. I had the third of a series of disturbing dreams last night. I dreamed that I was in a large room like a gymnasium. The walls were covered in vertical wooden slats just a few inches across. I was busy painting the room in horizontal red and white stripes, each stripe several feet tall.

While I was painting, a group of men gathered at the top of a stair-case in the gymnasium looking down at me. I believe there were others in the room with me, but I don't remember who they were. The men at the top of the stairs had a list of names and phone numbers, and they began calling the numbers on the list. The numbers matched the cell phones of the others in the room with me. Each time a call went through and a cell phone rang, the men on the stairs would arrest the owner of the cell phone and lead him/her off.

I was given a type of birds-eye view of the list of numbers, and as I watched, black lines appeared across the page redacting the names and numbers so that the men could no longer call.
Just before the list of numbers was completely blacked out, the men were able to scribble down my number. However, before they could call me, another friend of mine called me. When the "hit-men" called my number, my caller-id beeped to let me know I had an incoming call, but my phone did not ring because I was on the phone with someone else--so I escaped detection.

I went up the stairs and found myself in a room with all of the people who had been "captured." My dad was in the room with them speaking encouragement to each one. I came to an understanding that the hit-men would be flying these in the room to another country, where they would be executed.

What followed was a series of very painful goodbyes, as person after person who I knew intimately in the dream came to me. I remember weeping with them, telling some that I would gladly take their place if I could. The last two to whom I said goodbye were my dad and a man I have never seen before, but in the dream I knew him to be my fiancé. After the hit-men took everyone away, I found myself in another room with a couple of other people saying that I didn't know what to do with myself. I awakened with my heart crying for my father.



I asked the Holy Spirit to give me wisdom to understand the dream this morning, and felt that He gave me a little insight and some simple instruction.

1. Pray “hiding prayers” over yourself and your family. My parents trained me in the significance of praying hiding prayers from an early age. Psalm 17:8 and Psalm 64:2 give a good example of this type of prayer. I believe the red and white stripes of paint symbolized the blood of Jesus, which I was actively involved in applying to the “boundaries” of my environment. The hit-men came in through an opening where the blood had not been applied. There can be no room for “chinks” in our defense system.

2. Pray for others around you, especially those who you recognize to be intercessors on the “hit-list” of the enemy. I believe there is an attack that has been launched against our tools of communication (essentially, our prayer lives) to turn our greatest assets against us. I also believe that this attack primarily targets those who have dedicated their lives to prayer and pleading the blood on behalf of other people. In the dream, the call of a friend saved my life. The enemy may “have our number” but a friend who commits himself or herself to be a mediator on our behalf can subvert his plans. Definitely pray for those who are “names” on a national prayer level – Lou Engel, Mike Bickle, etc. – but also pray on a local level for your pastors, teachers, mentors, and friends.

3. Pray for leadership. The two individuals who stood out most in the dream and were being taken away to their deaths were the two men in primary spiritual leadership in my life—my father and my husband to be. I believe this applies to the political state currently in America. In the dream, I was in an engagement season where the “headship” of my home was passing from my father to my husband, but the transition had not yet taken place. I did not recognize the man I was to marry, although I knew him in the dream. In the same way, the leadership of our nation is in a time of transition with the upcoming election, going from one president to a new one (whom we don’t yet know). There is an attack formed against leadership that would endeavor to execute spiritual covering and leave us vulnerable and exposed.

4. Pray for a generation crying out for fathers—and commit to becoming a mentor. I believe the last scene of the dream gave me insight into people desperate for someone to speak life into their lives—screaming silently for a father. We must pledge our lives to showing them the Father. We must also take the challenge to become spiritual mothers and fathers to those who feel orphaned and widowed on a spiritual and emotional level. James 1 shows us that this is the kind of religion the Lord honors.

God bless you all.

i'm in love

I heard a question this week that has started changing the way I think. Very simply, someone asked me, "what do you think God feels about you?" I know the "pat" scripture answers we shoot back without really thinking, but I had to answer what I believed He thinks about me--not what I "know" He thinks.

Knowing what He feels about me changes the way I think about myself and the way I treat other people. There is great confidence that comes when I recognized that I am truly loved. Proverbs talks about how the earth shakes under the weight of a woman who is married and not loved/valued the way God created her to feel love. If we are truly to be the Bride of Christ, we must understand that He is radically, passionately, persistently, excessively in love with us, and everything else we do (even down to signs, wonders, and miracles in His name) is simply an overflow that spills over out of the excess of that love.

I'm starting to get it I think, but it's a definite process. He loves me. HE loves ME--intimately, personally, and to depths I've never recognized. It's the ultimate love story where the beloved opens her eyes and comes to the realization that everything she's ever wanted has been there waiting for her the entire time.

Who am I? I am a lover...and a beloved...in the most life-changing love story ever penned. So do you know who you are?