city of refuge

there's a beast in the streets. he rushes his prey. he devours all in his path. can you feel him? the edge of his hunger is the breath on your heels as you run, and run, and run. on and on you run, heart pounding, chest aching, one step following another with nothing more than the push of your will to keep going. sprinting to survive. praying for the earth to swallow the flood spewed from the monster pursuing you.

the people are fleeing for their lives, but the city of refuge lies in ruins. where are those who will build up the wall? who will stand in the gap? the cornerstone is in place, but the peters of the kingdom quibble among themselves, striving for position in the wall, refusing the cut of the mason's tool. each stone struggles and seeks to complete the spires on the wall. who will lay down their lives to be a foundation and allow the next generation to build upon ground they'll never have to break?

the city is in ruins. rough, unhewn rocks dot the surface of the hillside, and the monster is coming, and the people are fleeing. the city has already been besieged and surrendered. where will the people go when strength is gone, if the wall is not standing?

scattered stones on the hilltop. bones bleaching in the valley sun. hear the call of the Father. urgent. desperate. build the wall. build the wall. build the wall.

coincidences

Nine o’clock on Easter Sunday night saw me wandering down the aisles of WalMart. I had just driven the almost-two-hour drive from my parents’ house after a long afternoon with friends, and was mentally already ticking off the list of things to do before I could fall into bed. I stopped and began to peruse the different boxes of crackers available, and had just settled on which flavor of Triscuits I wanted when “he” came over to me.

“Hi,” he said.

I gave a polite half-smile and nodded.

“Do you need any help?”

“No thanks–I think I’m good.” Do I really look that confused? Well, there are a bunch of choices...

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I think I found what I want.” The tomato-basil looks potentially interesting.

“‘Cause I’d hate for you to need help standin’ here and lookin’ all . . .”

Ooooooh. The light dawned, and I smiled for real this time. I thanked him again for the “offer” and assured him I was just fine. He told me where he would be if I needed anything and turned to go. After a few steps, he turned back toward me, and that’s when he said it.

“Keep doing whatever you’re doing.”

Then he was gone, and I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night.

What he said has stayed with me, though. Keep doing what you’re doing. Perhaps not the way he meant it–but the message came through just the same. Just keep going. Don’t quit.

God sends us encouragement and answers to prayer in our everyday lives, but I think a lot of the time we don’t accept them because they don’t come to us with pomp, circumstance and flair that we expect from a “miracle.” In His love for us, God is constantly speaking, tugging at our attention and whispering “come away.” Too often we miss it because we’re looking for something else. Because angels don’t show up shining like neon lights and waving banners trumpeting “thus saith the Lord” in our faces. Because it comes to us through commiserating with a stranger about the price of gas while standing at the pump instead of in the middle of a church service.

I don’t know who came to speak to me on Sunday night, but I do believe God used him to get a message across, and it has served as fuel to press on after God and to continue to believe that He’s got something bigger going on than what my finite mind can see. I pray that God will shift us all to a mind set where we look at “coincidences” and see answers instead.

my companion, my heart

A few weeks ago, Pastor said something in his sermon that has really stayed with me. He was talking about the marriage of Jacob to both Leah and Rachel in the Old Testament, and how Jacob loved Rachel more, even after seven years of marriage to Leah, because Rachel was his heart. Pastor then admonished all singles in the church to make sure that their future spouse was their heart and not just their companion.

My heart went out to the poignancy of Leah's plight, bound for the rest of her life to a man who would always love her sister more, the apparent quintessential Proverbs 30:23 woman; and then I began to think about Leah herself. Unfortunately, instead of focusing on capturing her husband's heart, Leah turned her attention to the heated rivalry with her sister and fractured their relationship.

While we know that Rachel was Jacob's heart, we have to wonder if Jacob was really Leah's heart, or if she was more interested in social status and attention. While we cannot know Leah's motives and desires, we can learn from her marriage to Jacob. How often do we allow the same thing to happen in our relationship with God? We seek the benefits of companionship with Him, often without making Him our ultimate desire. Often, when we see our brothers or sisters walking in enraptured love of Him, we grow jealous of the anointing, attack their zeal and judge their motives rather than emulate their lifestyles.

At our House of Prayer meeting on Saturday, we discussed how part of the curse on woman in Genesis 3:16 was a raging thirst for love that no broken and imperfect man can fully satisfy. Leah's story is an example of how this quest can become twisted and is fruitless. I believe that the curse can be a mixed blessing. History shows us that God allows those He considers His friends to experience His emotions. Abraham better identified with God's sorrow at sacrificing His son when he laid Isaac on the altar. Hosea experienced God's pain at a constantly unfaithful people when he married a prostitute. David felt God's heartbreak at having evil repaid for good when he spared Saul's life, only to have Saul chase him in the desert again and again.

In women, God has planted an inherent ability to understand the unspeakable longing He has to be loved. He is the master pursuer, but He longs for a people who will pursue Him with equal passion and abandon. The paradox of mature, agape love is that it expands, and the more you love, the more you realize how much more there is to love. The Psalmist asked, "what is man that Your are mindful of him?" I would ask, "What am I, that Your heart's cry is to be my heart?"

falling, face-up, and fear

I perfected the art of self-humiliation on Saturday night. Some friends and I went to hear a visiting speaker at a local church. Upon walking in the foyer doors, I noticed a dear friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in a few weeks, and ran to give her a hug; unfortunately, gravity and the floor had other ideas. Just as I reached out to embrace my friend, my foot slipped out from under me and down I went, clutching madly at my purse, Bible, and notebook (all of which remained decorously in place through the thrilling ride). As I lay on the floor, one leg curled under me and the other between Leslie's, who was standing over me with a shocked expression on her face very much befitting someone who finds herself fielding first base when she didn't even know she was in the game, for a split-second I debated the feasibility of trying to play it all off. Reason won over pride, however, and we all laughed together about my "obvious" gracefulness.

The guest speaker, John King, preached an impassioned and inspiring message based on the story of the friends who dug through the roof of Peter's house to bring the paralytic to Jesus. Pastor King had so many good things to say about the order of the church based upon that story, but what stayed with me the most occurred early in the service, right after he announced his text. I was flipping frantically (and rather frustratedly) through my Bible, seemingly unable to get to Romans, and thinking that everyone else must be having the same trouble because it was taking him a long time to speak again, when I heard him say something about "the lady there in the scarf" and felt the friend sitting to my right nudging me to say he was trying to get my attention.

I don't normally broadcast prophetic words over my life in such a public fashion, but since he spoke to me with microphone in hand before the entire church, and cds of the service have been duplicated and handed out, I'm thinking any effort on my part to keep what he said private is futile. I won't go into all the details, but one thing he addressed is what God wanted to do in my life regarding what he called a "tremendous fear of men."

I was praying about that this morning, and asking God for wisdom, when He gently reminded me of Proverbs and that He'd already put wisdom at my disposal--my responsibility was to apply what He gave. So I flipped to Proverbs 28 (on January 28--original, I know) and stopped at the first verse, which reads: The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.

Figuring that God is a specific God, and that He has a good eye for details, I did a Hebrew word breakdown on the verse to see exactly what He was saying. I've always read it as, "a bad person's going to run away all the time even though nobody's chasing him/her, but a good person will walk into dangerous situations without being afraid." And I still think that applies to some extent...but some of the meanings of the words surprised me. Here's what I found:

The wicked -- guilty one, guilty of a crime, guilty of sin

Flee -- To cause to disappear, to hide

When no one pursues -- to be behind, to follow after, to pesecute, to harass

But the righteous -- the just, lawful, the justified and vindicated by God

Are bold -- to trust, to be confident, to be secure

As a lion -- young lion

What struck me was that the definition for boldness in this verse was less of an "I'm walking into a dangerous situation," proactive kind of word, and more of a quiet, "God's got me" kind of word. When we know that God has vindicated us, that He agrees with our decisions because we've made them according to His leading, and when we rest in His perfect will, we are automatically granted the same right to confidence and security as is given a lion cub romping near it's mother.

Fear, then, is ultimately a lack of faith in the knowledge that everything comes to us filtered through His hands. And we know that anything that is not faith is sin.

Ouch.

At this point, I am still working out how to apply this to my life. It's all well and good to speak of changes we need to make in ourselves. It's another thing, though, to be in that split-second of strong emotion on your backside in the church foyer trying to process what just happened and how to respond. However, if we can trust Him to protect us in the rough times, to hold us in the hard times, to vindicate us in the unfair ones, and to challenge us when it's time to grow, then we can trust Him to have the grace to lead us through every new situation; and that's an awesome arsenal against fear.

how much do you want?

"Love is a most costly commodity. The more you are willing to pay, the more valuable the prize. The question is, are you willing to pay the price?" ~Johnny Lingo, "The Legend of Johnny Lingo." Dir. Steven Ramirez. Video. Turtles Crossing, LLC 2003

I awakened this morning with the question, "how much do you want?" spinning over in my mind. The story written by Patricia McGerr of Johnny Lingo and his 8-cow wife is one of my favorite legends (you can read a condensed version of it here. The 2003 movie adaptation strays from the original story in some areas, but the underlying theme is the same in both.

My thoughts this morning, however, were not from a standpoint of making sacrifices for love, but making sacrifices for the anointing (which, when you come down to it, ultimately is about love, but not in the romantic sense presented in the Johnny Lingo story). It is an often overwhelming paradox that the more I learn about God and the more time I spend with Him, the more I feel like I don't spend enough time with Him. Could this be a religious spirit pushing me to faith through works instead of salvation through grace? Possibly. But more likely it is simply that I just can't get enough of Him--and since Scripture shows that He can't get enough of me either, it looks like that's a good thing.

So why the question?

God requires different things from different people according to their callings and the ministry to which He's called them. Some are called to lives of fasting and prayer like Anna in Luke 2. Some are called to leave home and family to serve on a mission field. Some may have to sacrifice the good opinions of those around them. For some, it's giving up television and/or secular music. For some, it's offering their lives in the sacrifice of martyrdom.

The bottom line is that He's looking for obedience on the most basic level in our lives. There is great power that comes with the anointing of the Holy Spirit, but it only comes at a great price. As He sees we are willing to do whatever it takes to be like Him, He is able to trust us with more. Anna was one of the first mouthpieces of the Gospel, a recognized prophetess, and favored with one of the earliest-recorded encounters with Jesus, but it came at a price--84 years as a widow compared to 7 years of marriage in a culture where the worth of women depended so heavily on fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, and a lifestyle of constant fasting and prayer.

If I could rewrite the quote above, I would change it to say "the anointing is a most costly commodity." God has purposes and callings for each of us, and more than anything He desires relationship with us. The more we respond to Him and the more we desire Him, the more of Himself He gives to us. The "responding" process, however, is where we face the crossroads. What price are you willing to pay?