“And by that same mighty power, he has given us all of his rich and wonderful promises. He has promised that you will escape the decadence all around you caused by evil desires and that you will share in his divine nature.” 2 Peter 1:4

I’ve had trouble posting lately, for several reasons. One is I want to have an encouraging tone, despite all the difficulties and anxieties in my life. The last 12 mo or so have been, shall we call it, re-shaping? I get stuck in pitfalls, human that I am, and do indeed struggle with my faith. But I want the fact that it’s worth it to come out!

So I took heart reading that verse. That last section of the verse is really flat staggering if you think about it. We won’t just imitate the perfect patience, love, wisdom, strength, and constancy of Jesus–we will share it and be as possessed of it as He was.

If you’ve ever read a story in the gospels and marveled at Him, “How could He be so ___”, then take that whatever and imagine yourself with the same attribute. Not a put on attribute, but having that much grace and goodness flow right out of you without trying.

Sharing in His divine nature is not the same as imitating it. Imitation is surface-level, it is like teaching a child not to hit another because they took their toy: you’ve controlled the wrong behavior but you didn’t change the desire to possess the toy that caused the lashing out to begin with. Jesus goes much farther than changing behavior!

Much is made of the various promises of God; providence in financial matters, comfort in affliction, courage under persecution. But this one, sharing the same holy and flawless nature as Jesus, is the mother of all promises. This one is the promise that makes all the other promises of God a reality.

It is at times impossible to wrap your head around. Honestly, how many of us believe it is even possible to have the same inner life that Jesus had? It can almost feel blaphemous to entertain the idea. He’s promising not just a nature similar but not quite as shiney as His, He’s promising the identical same as His. “Christ liveth in me”…

Have you ever met someone so decietful they couldn’t believe you weren’t, and were sure you had ulterior motives? Or someone so mean they couldn’t accept a single kindness without suspicion? It is human nature to project our own interiors onto other people, to fully expect them to think and behave as we do. We get confused when they don’t!

God is so holy that we cannot imagine it without some suspicion. Or make ourselves believe we can be too. We assume the daily fight to resist our desires will never end. The idea that we won’t forever have to fight the nature we were born with because it will be REPLACED, not just pasted over with a better one, is almost incomprehensible.  

That verse in 2 Peter isn’t about waking up in heaven without the urge to vindicate ourselves or own a nicer home. We won’t need to escape decadance all around us in heaven. There won’t be any there. That promise of sharing the same nature as Jesus is for here, and now.

The innate selfishness doesn’t get a white-out and written over, leaving it lying beneath the surface. Not when the Holy Spirit sets to work on it. The writing of sin on the heart is removed, disappearing forever, and replaced with His writing. It may take sandblasting, or the discomfort akin to getting rid of a tattoo, but selfish sin gets itself gone.

Think about it. Put yourself in that gospel story where Jesus got spit on and didn’t respond in kind, didn’t even want to. Or the story where He forgave the prostitute without a moment’s hesitation, even though if anyone had a right to condemn her it was Him.

If you want to “pray the promises” of God, this is one to pray! 

***

It’s good to recognize and understand a promise, but a promise is only as good as the Promiser. How hard is it to believe that you can indeed have the same inner life as Jesus? Or believe that the part of you ya don’t like can be so wholly gone and made pristine again?

Lemme rephrase the questions: is God god enough to change me, not just the “better people”? Does He has the strength to keep working and the wisdom to know how to get it done, ie is His arm too short to save? Is He so impossibly impatient to just throw up His hands and call it quits?

And then there’s this question: is He willing? Able is one thing, willing is another. Is He willing to change me or am I too much work? Not. If parting the Red Sea and making the sun stand still for Joshua didn’t make Him work hard, am I really that grandly giant of a problem? He’s willing for sure: it’s His goal for you!

If you are stuck in a doubtful turn, thinking you’ll never be free of this or that, stop looking at the this or that. Stop looking even at the promises themselves if you need to. Look to your Promiser. Ask yourself different questions than the ones that come naturally, which are about us: who is God really? What is His nature?

Read the Bible for seeing the attributes of God rather than for promises. Look for His faithfulness, His patience, His love, His wisdom, His power, His glory…for HIM. I believe I’m going to launch into that activity my own self, and spend some time deliberating on who is God, what is that nature of His He purposes to create in me.

The one prayer Jesus prayed for His disciples: to be “one as We are one”. The question then isn’t, can I really have His nature too–that’s already been answered by a cross on a hill.     

“My soul, it is God, even thy God, God that cannot lie, who speaks to thee. This word of his which thou art now considering is as true as his own existence. He is a God unchangeable. He has not altered the thing which has gone out of his mouth, nor called back one single consolatory sentence. Nor doth he lack any power; it is the God that made the heavens and the earth who has spoken thus.

“Nor can he fail in wisdom as to the time when he will bestow the favours, for he knoweth when it is best to give and when better to withhold…” If we thus meditate upon the promises, and consider the Promiser, we shall experience their sweetness, and obtain their fulfilment.” Charles Spurgeon http://www.heartlight.org/spurgeon/

“Before, you used to go to this person and that, but now the notion of the Divine control is forming so powerfully in you that you go to God about it…There are times, says Jesus, when God cannot lift the darkness from you, but trust Him…Keep the notion of the mind, of God behind all things strong and growing. Nothing happens in any particular unless God’s will is behind it, therefore you can rest in perfect confidence in Him.” Oswald Chambers http://www.myutmost.org/07/0716.html

The Holy Spirit’s been building the notion in me of the “God of All Things” for some time now. He began just in time, too! It’s been a challenging 12 or 14 months, with events of all sizes and shapes plowing up deep rooted questions and fears in my heart.

I haven’t been all alone in finding myself in the hard places–it seems just about everyone I talk too has been taking it on the chin. The Holy Spirit doesn’t tell us why as His chosen means of comfort, though; He tells us about Who. In fact, he reveals a Who behind “all things” that knows exactly what He’s doing.

Comfort and strength isn’t found in “why”, but in the fact that the difficulties big and small, all were chosen. Chosen isn’t a word to breeze over. There is a deliberateness and preparedness as part of the definition of chosen. We’ve all heard it said that nothing touches the lives of believers that does not have God’s explicit approval.

How much have we thought about that? Just how extensive is His power and wisdom to select the “all things” that enter our lives? Does He really pick everything, from who is born or dies or even the day the alarm clock died and made us late for work?

A God of Chosen Things, A God of Chosen People

He is a God of more than “all things”; He is God of Chosen Things. He chose the number and variety of plants, their purposes and quality. He chose to make a rhino with one horn and a rhino with 2 horns. He decided upon the strength of lions, and their relative weakness outside of a pride. He gave birds every color imaginable, and made monkeys noisy.

Then, oddly enough, He gave to Adam the right to name all created things. The race of man was given choices. He chose to create the nation of Israel out of a semitic man called Abram, and selected the customs that identify them as Israelites, too. Yet they have the choice to live inside His behavioral contraints, or not to. Lions aren’t allowed that.

Chosen has an impact on every part of our lives. It’s not an accident this or that happened. It’s not an accident this or that happened to me, or you. The things were chosen, and so are we. But why? Here’s some synonyms for “chosen”: appointed, designated, desired, prefered, confirmed, established, privileged, intentional…

Each of those synonyms carry explicit meanings, and implied ones. The things that are chosen to affect us are not picked at random, but are desired by God. They’ve been designated to accomplish certain goals. Whatever happens, “good” or “bad” as we happen to judge events, has a confirmed purpose for our growth into maturity of grace. 

Things are chosen, and so are people. We are not only chosen to endure whatever we’re enduring, we are appointed to the position, and privileged to be chosen for it. He has established you and me in the place we are at, in the family and job we happen to have, the church we go to…God has established us right here.

Okay, this is good theology, yes, but what on earth was He thinking doing this to me…Asked that? Yep, me too. A short answer is His thoughts aren’t “on earth” half so much as ours. Earth is all we see and grasp, yet it is only a small fraction of the whole span our lives will be. We are, well, nearsighted. There is more than this, much more.

Understanding the God of Chosen Things

The first idea we need to grasp as believers is: it’s not about us. He very much desires us as individuals, adores us and has graven our name on His heart forever. We are loved beyond describing. Being loved by God doesn’t have enough adjectives in all the tongues of earth to ascribe to it. Yet it is only the first half of a relationship.

We love our spouse or our kids, but we love them beyond our own comforts and how they make us feel. We love people, when we really love, for their benefit rather than our own. I’d say a good chunk of divorces come from a self-serving root where one or both people simply refuse to look beyond what they want, clinging to unfulfillable expectations.

Being loved inspires loving, it inspires selflessness from both people. If you want to know whether God is selfless, look at that cross. He is completely selfless towards us, and waits for us, teaches us to be selfless towards Him. His adoration inspires adoration in us because He is proven to be worthy of it.

We reach a point where the love God gives us pulls us out of ourselves and our little self-created worlds. His wonderous nature reveals our clawing for this and that as so petty it becomes contemptible to us. We begin to reach out for Him, and to want to have the same selfless, pure, magnificence of soul that He has.    

The second reality we have to understand if we are to ever become selfless, pure, and magnificent of soul is it’s not God’s job to make our circumstances easy. It is ever His work to make our nature holy and our character flawless. His goal for each and every appointed moment of our lives is to make us look, act, speak, love, and be HOLY, because He is holy.

Our love for Him makes us want that too. We see the beauty of Jesus, we long to share in such a perfect nature. The only way that happens is learning from the hard places He has chosen for us. The more we want of Jesus, the more hard places we are willing to endure; “Though He slay me, yet will I follow Him…”

Becoming is the Divine filter through which everything that affects us passes through. We have chosen and been chosen to be transformed, from the self-absorbed, scrounging, defiant animals we’ve made ourselves, into unblemished mirrors of God. We have an appointed place in His world, and are privileged by choice to reflect His pure glory.

We’ve all seen those old mirrors, with spots and scratches, whose silver has tarnished to the point that very little light or detail gets accurately reflected. That’s where our transformation starts. We may get our silver melted off, our glass ground and polished, our frames sandblasted. Oh boy do we get the treatment sometimes.

But the treatment is needed, however harsh it might feel. The result is a scratchless surface, a pure silver backing, and a gilded frame that shines with such brilliance it cannot be overlooked. As merciless as being sandblasted feels, it is a privilege to be chosen, a privilege to be desired by God, and even worked over by Him!

A privilege? Are you kidding?!… Nope. A lion will never be anything but a lion. A dog will forever act like a dog. An angel will always dwell in the lot of an angel. A human can chose to remain a self-serving animal, or he/she can chose to be made into both image and likeness of God Himself. We can be beasts or sons and daughters.

No other creature is offered that opportunity to become more than what they are right now. Only us. Only a few of us, to be realistic, will take Him up on the offer. Quite a few will call it quits when the grinding of their glass gets more painful than expected.

This past year has been something else for me:my service dog in training fell ill and still isn’t right, my hopes for what Kenai could do for me were dashed, my Mom’s depression just about sucked the life outta me too, my brother’s devastating our finances and subsequent death, my health took a nose-dive, the discouragement with “I can” shrinking back to “I can’t”, bouts of anxiety…

There’s the worry over my dear sister-in-law’s shaky mental health, our best friend’s son died and it’s wiping her out physically and emotionally, I’m beginning to lose my hearing, the stock market slammed us with deep financial losses, another sister-in-law is now a struggling single mother…

I’m being ground, melted, blasted, hammered, resurfaced, remodeled, and RESTORED. It hurts. It’s frightening. It’s worrisome. It’s a privilege. I have discovered more of God’s nature and purpose this past year than in just about all the years before it combined.

I’m learning hope and fear travel together, the gains outweight the losses, I’m only helpless without God, and He indeed is God of Chosen Things. There is much more restoring to do, but heaven help me hold onto gratefulness that I am chosen to be like Him. Heaven help me harder to be transfixed by His heart and soul!

“O Lord Jesus, we would bow at thy feet, conscious of our utter inability to do anything without thee, and in every favour which we are privileged to receive, we would adore thy blessed name and acknowledge thine unexhausted love.” –Charles Spurgeon

Have ya ever known people that breathed new life into you when you heard from them? That’s Ben and Lorraine. My fascination with the grace and wonder of God is largely their fault!! Good thing to be accused of, don’t ya think?

Back in the day, Ben would preach at our church from time to time, and every single time his sermons lit the place on fire. Never failed. From him came the purest flow of Life, filled with passionate, earnest devotion and love of his Lord. God didn’t whisper through him, He sang. 

I remember those long, thrilling conversations about God we had, the four of us, Mom, Ben, Lorraine, and myself. Much of what we talked about have found their way into my posts, certainly very much a formative influence in what I understand. I rank Ben’s God given insight on a par with Chambers, Spurgeon, and CS Lewis. Oh yeah, that amazing. I keep threatening to win the lotto, so I can build a church and hand him the keys. 

Ben can author as many posts as his fingers can write for this here humble blog, and the same goes for Lorraine–don’t have alot of traffic, the Kenai blog is much more popular, but boy o boy to have the benefit of their wisdom for all to read. I’m sure they’ll recognize alot of what we talked about if they have a chance to go back and read the old posts.

It’d be just fine if he won the lotto by the way. Either way I’ll run over rhinos and small children to get in the door. However he wanted me to help out, I’d be all up after it, too. Where Ben and Lorraine go, the Holy Spirit will be working powerfully. That is a flow you want to dive into.

I’m getting ahead of myself, and maybe even carried away a bit. I haven’t bought a lotto ticket in years. (Is it time?) Maybe we’ll just catch up with each other first, huh, before figuring out carpets and prayer chapels?

Oh but the discussions we had! The nature of God, how He works, who we are in Him…I’m still absorbing the meat of these things, and will be the rest of my life. What I recall the most about Ben is a white-hot passion for the Word of God. And Lorraine I associate so strongly with deep, absorbing worship. The grace and the wonder…

When they knew me I was still that angry, judgemental, insecure person that once I had been. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease, thyroid disease, Meniere’s syndrome (balance problems and gradual hearing loss), migraines, immune suppression, adrenal fatigue, Reynaud’s syndrome, depression, anxiety, funerals…

All had yet to begin stripping me down to the foundation when Ben and Lorraine knew me. As Oswald Chambers describes it

“Instead of the vision becoming real, there has come the valley of humiliation…God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision…” http://www.myutmost.org/07/0706.html

I’m probably still in smack in the middle of the valley of humilation. Imagine I’ll be here awhile, seeing as I started out with astonishing tonnage of pride and judgement. At least some of it is burned off, and heaven knows I’m not the same person! I don’t want to weigh and see how much is left, though. Uh-huh, me no look too hard at the road ahead, just the Guide walking with me.

To have heard from Ben and Lorraine after so many years was such a joy. Mom and I were sitting around making up the daily drudgery lists, deciding when to go through my late brother’s financial papers, to write the thank you notes for those who attended his funeral a few days ago and the like. Then sunshine came with Ben’s voice.

Thank you God, I needed that!

“I cannot give up my will, I must exercise it. I must will to obey, and I must will to receive God’s Spirit…Choose you this day whom ye will serve. It is a deliberate calculation, not something into which you drift easily…“ http://www.myutmost.org/07/0708.html

This is the umpteenth post I’ve written, and maybe it will see the other side of the publish button? I’m in that trough on the back side of a big wave. Or the doldrums, you might call it. It’s a dangerous place to be, a very dangerous place, lulled into inattentiveness.

The devotional quoted above has been hammering away on my flagging will to obey, and I must confess to beating a  self-concerned retreat: I’ve been avoiding and hiding behind an ever deepening fatigue. These moments seem small and innocuous, but they’re not. The small failings add up to big backsliding.

“I just want…” has been popping up in my head. I recognize it as a retreat into selfishness, yet can’t seem to muster the will to stop myself. I haven’t visited Suzie in the hospital, or even called. She was my late brother’s housemate that drove us nuts from his heart attack to funeral, and beyond.

She has a blood clot in her lung, a serious condition, but I haven’t cared enough to move my indolent self. She’s emotionally exhausting, accosting total strangers with her neediness, and I do mean accosting. Suzie will run you over like a loaded heavy haul semi and hardly check the rearview mirror to see what’s left.

A wounded, overwhelming soul, poor inappropriate Suzie is. I don’t want what’s left of my energy to be dissappated on someone so unconnected to me when I have my own grieving to do, taking care of Mom, looking after the dogs, an overrun 3-acre yard to reclaim from the weeds…none of which I’m being particularly perfect with.

I’m sure that God expected better of me than the nothing I did. That’s not the only thing I’ve been incarnately lazy about. I really must change my diet and sleep better, but I hit the bag of chips last night and shovel down mashed potatoes regularly. I really must cut that blasted grass before a car could vanish in it, and still haven’t.

I really must do things that are part of daily life. But I’m tired beyond words. Chronic fatigue is a vengeful beast, and I find myself now in a moderate level of adrenal fatigue, having exhausted the fragile system during my brother’s 5 week slide into death. Physically I’ve got nothing left and it affects my mental and emotional strength too.

I want to sleep and whine and get everybody’s needs off my back for awhile. I wonder, when Jesus sat down at that well, was He fighting the same fight? I want to rest, and laugh, and relax, and be left alone when I want to be left alone. Lots of wants there, huh, that are conflicting with what I should.

There were times, frequent times, when Jesus withdrew. But He never refused His Father, like I have. It’s easy to think this moment or that moment doesn’t really matter, or I can withdraw from God for a short time to rest up. This sort of self-deception cuts me off from the only real source of rest and healing.

“When his personal desires take the upper hand, the voice of the Spirit of God is stifled and silenced. There can be only one result–the human soul will become starved and deformed!” –AW Tozer, “Renewed Day by Day”

I cannot serve two masters at the same time; God or ME. If I keep giving in to the wants, I’ll find myself in a disgustingly lukewarm condition. Already am, if you’re taking bets. I know it, and I still struggle to refuse my wants. Oh cursed illness–chronic fatigue–it undercuts my strength of will too.

I wish He would cure it, but there I go again looking for the easy. I’m doing exactly what Oswald Chambers calls ”utilizing God for the sake of getting peace and joy, that is, we do not want to realize Jesus Christ, but only our enjoyment of Him.” I want the benefits without the surrender, like skipping the job to go straight to retirement.

Tired doesn’t get me off the hook with God. He’s trying to get my attention. For several days in a row now the various devotionals I read, scriptures, and pretty much everything has left me with a sense that big problems are coming, and I need to be faithful in refusing the urge to satisfy my wants now.

It’s not really a feeling of dread, so I can rule out a simple anxiety response to the difficulty of the past 5 weeks. It’s more like what authors call “foreshadowing”. As if He’s trying to warn me that falling down on the little stuff now is going to make it that much harder when the heavy duty industrial stuff hits.

This is so like God–He prepares us now, always, for what He knows is ahead. We may fear the hardships He has planned, but He doesn’t. They are His tools, and I think He anticipates their appointed times with a measureless hope. Great distress can make a great “woman of God”.

“The Holy Spirit has assured us that we have an Anchor, steadfast and sure, that keeps the soul…Nearly all the great examples of faith and victorious grace which we find in the Scriptures came out of situations of extremety and distress. God loves hard places…” –AW Tozer, “Tozer on the Holy Spirit”

I can attest to the victorious grace in the hard place. His grace is mighty when we need mighty, for certain. Perhaps this doldrum after a crisis is in fact, another hard place–just a quieter one, less obvious but not less treacherous. If I truly let myself count up the spiritual dangers I’m facing, I’d be scared witless. 

Silently they all showed up around me, like hyenas trying to intimidate a lioness of her hard won meal. Grief, exhaustion, discouragement, demands of other people, great upwellings of selfishness, impatience, inconstantcy…oh heavens, I didn’t realize how perilous is my perch!

Give me Your strength Father, to will and to do. Bring me through this hard place, and keep my soul. Fix my eyes on You entirely. I’m counting on Him being an Anchor! My will may be flacid and worn out, but He made that will of mine, so I’m hoping He will give it a shot of go-go juice.

There isn’t such a thing as vacation in Christ; there is always work, always learning, always growing and being changed. We don’t get time off for good behavior, I’m afraid, to lay about and be selfish until we feel like facing the hard places again. Okay, that came out more discouraging than intended…

A person has to will to obey, will to keep going and once we get going, the strength comes. Have you ever known someone with depression? The hardest part of getting them off the couch is getting them off the couch. Once they are out and about with people, most of the time they’ve enjoyed themselves. The trick is to just get them out.

Much the same, grace doesn’t flow when you’re laying around; you have to get up and start needing it before it comes. What would Jesus do? Well, what DID He do? He spoke to the woman at the well, and obeyed His Father rather than say “I’m tired, I want to do nothing instead”. There’s my example, right?

It’s finally done: the long, grinding wait for God’s command is over for those of us left behind. Mike’s long grinding wait for death is done too. But more than that, his wait for something wholly good is over, being seated now in heaven to dwell there ever more.

The dates and times are all set, the loose scraps of this and that will be done by Tuesday night. Then we have a few days, 3 or 4 days to rest, to be in the quietness until the out of towners start arriving over the weekend. The visitations and services begin Sunday.

While working on the this and that, one small task was burning off a song that Mom wanted played at his funeral, called “Go Rest High On The Mountain”. It’s could well have been written as a biography. The flitting through various music was hardly a task I dislike, btw.

Perusing music is a favorite activity of mine. I listen to everything from Gregorian Chant to African American gospel, depending on how I’m feeling. Anuna (Beati Quorum Via is a song I love), Gaithers, CeCe Winans, Sarah Groves…I have too many favorites. Everyone has something to say that needs be said.

I came across a song I had not listened to in awhile, and loved it just as deeply as I had the first time I heard it. The backstory is a little murky in my memory, but a 19th century preacher’s wife  had written it as a  poem, and a 20th century songwriter set the words to a traditional Irish tune. Selah sang it on their CD ” Hiding Place”. 

Before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea; a great high Priest whose name is Love, who ever lives and pleads for me. My name is graven on His hands, my name is written on His heart. I know that while in heaven He stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart, no tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see Him there, who made an end to all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me, to look on Him and pardon me.

Behold Him there, the risen Lamb, my perfect, spotless righteousness; the great unchangable I AM, the King of glory and of grace. One with Himself, I cannot die; my soul is purchased by His blood, my life is hid with Christ on high, with Christ my Savior and my God, with Christ my Savior and my God.” 

–Charitie Bancroft

To me this poem stands as one of the soundest statements of faith I’ve ever heard. It is a laying out of Who saves, how to resist discouragement, to worship, and to stand. There is nothing we’ll feel or fear that isn’t answered by these mere 3 verses.

What strikes me most though, is the author of those words is long forgotten, not anonymous but not noticed. She was an ordinary woman, and an extraordinary woman. We tend to find favorites in the constellation of famous preachers, and I have mine. Who doesn’t?

But the ordinary Christian is endowed with the same capacities of faith, the same Lord who gives and teaches, and we tend to forget that. We rarely apply such a truth to ourselves, either. Little ol’ ordinary you and me has within our grasp every gift and power available to any of Jesus’ apostles.

We may not need to convert whole nations. Yet the ordinary person is possessed of an extraordinary God. It wasn’t the preacher who nailed down each and every  theological doctrine of Christianity into this living profession of a well battled, indefeatable daily faith; it was his wife.

A homemaker, a mother, a behind the scenes sort of soul who knew how to live in lovely humility is who gave us a jewel. She was no doubt a somewhat noticed but not really person, the preacher’s wife. This ordinary woman knew how to fight the good fight, and walk in some seriously feirce glory.

I enjoy the irony, I guess; the “little woman” with big truth, the last being first. Typical American, rooting for the underdog! But it is something to think about, isn’t it? We don’t have to be “important” to be extraordinary. We don’t have to have huge numbers of blog readers or give sermons for the glory of God to shine white hot in us.

Can you imagine Mrs. Bancroft’s shock when hundreds and thousands of people come looking for her in heaven, to report how profoundly she changed their lives or shored up their faith in a vulnerable moment? She didn’t neccessarily write that poem for publication, but God had plans.

I expect the same will happen to all of us; total strangers will have a story to tell about a passing comment we made and never thought of again. Or a plain old casserole delivered to a lonely soul will have monumental consequences in lives we do not know.

Nothing we do is insignificant, not the tiniest bit of grace will be overlooked. No one who lives in Christ is ordinary.

“The one word in the spiritual vocabulary is Now. Let circumstances bring you where they will, keep drawing on the grace of God in every conceivable condition you may be in.” -Oswald Chambers, http://www.myutmost.org/06/0626.html

28 days after my brother’s heart attack, we are still waiting for him to pass away. Why the Lord has chosen to allow his body to linger, I do not know. I do know it’s wearing on people. One of the dearest people we’ve met because of this is JR, a retired Highway Patrolman and the man who began CPR to save Mike.

They were very close, JR and Mike, despite some 20 years difference in age. I attribute much of my brother’s return to Christ to the influence of JR’s solid faith. Yet JR has been “hiding” from us for a few days, suddenly feeling ever so guilty. His words were “I don’t know that I did him any favors”, and he’s starting to blame himself for the ordeal.

Oh Lord…how quickly death and dying can make us toss away the superficial. We delve into the depths of our souls, our very faith’s foundation when the piddly thoughts of daily life are drawn back and shown to be utterly trivial. There really is no bond stronger, nor rancor more lasting than that which is forged at a death bed. 

All I could keep saying to JR is first, this long dying process is one of our soveriegn Lord’s choosing. There have been hundreds, even thousands of people praying for Mike, via internet and word of mouth. There are too many prayers from too many of God’s people for His will to have been somehow abrogated.

The LORD has chosen this path for us all, and His Hand is to be seen everywhere. JR was a big part of the Lord’s will being manifest. He was the person Mike needed, to return to his faith, and there the moment the heart attack began. He did him the greatest favor one human can do for another: exemplify the grace and forgiveness of Jesus.

If JR or any of us really needed more time with Mike, would not our gracious God have given it to us? Of course! We miss opportunites all day long to talk with each other, but what must be said always seems to get said when the Holy Spirit knows that time is short.

What is happening I think, is the devil’s retribution. JR’s faithfulness “stole” a soul from the devil, and now the malicious beast is trying to take his pound of flesh. Grrr! It doth make me protest! How unexpected it is to feel such profound love for a person met less than a month ago, to have the deepest of conversations with a near stranger.

But conversations we have, and true to the pattern I’m in, I pray far more for him, Mom, Shannon, and the kids than I do for my brother. JR is family, for the good and sufficient reason that he too is my brother, born in the blood of Jesus. Would that I could call down fire for him, to burn off the devil’s pernicious whispers.

It is ever the Holy Spirit’s work to turn our eyes away from self to Jesus; but Satan’s work is just the opposite of this, for he is constantly trying to make us regard ourselves instead of Christ… We shall never find happiness by looking at our prayers, our doings, or our feelings; it is what Jesus is, not what we are, that gives rest to the soul. –Charles Spurgeon, http://www.heartlight.org/spurgeon/

The more we struggle, the more we absolutely must abandon thoughts of ourselves, and fall upon what we know about Jesus. It is His nature that decides the course of our lives, and all the events of life. All things were made by Him and through Him, and this world doesn’t turn without His say-so.

He is soveriegn, perfect in wisdom to decide upon the circumstances we find ourselves in. His reasons for our various hardships are born in love, and His every thought and prayer is concerned with how we grow into Him. God is love, everlasting and unshakable. Nothing happens to us that is not saturated in the Love of God, however bitter it might feel!

It is what Jesus is that gives rest to the soul, so my prayer for JR (for us all) is that he fix his eyes on Jesus, and willfully neglect the “what ifs” and “I should’ve”. Whatever our failings or victories, they are measured in the hand of God and no longer ours to judge, even if we had the metal capacities to understand their magnitudes.

We can never know in this life what our faith was worth, nor what our actions accomplished. But one day, one mighty, magnificent day, we will “know as we are known”. I get the feeling that day will be tear-filled, amazed at how little we understood, and weeping in the wonder of how perfectly God kept us.

I am a “kept” woman, and proud to say it. My keeper is without flaw, and that cross is unassailable proof of how far He would go to keep me, to keep us all.

“…for there is nothing stable beneath these rolling skies; change is written upon all things. Yet, we have certain “things which cannot be shaken,” and I invite you this evening to think of them…we will see the wreck of everything earthborn, and yet rejoice in the God of our salvation.” –Charles Spurgeon. http://www.heartlight.org/spurgeon/0622-pm.html

I have been strangely disconnected the past 3 weeks, since my brother’s soon to be fatal heart attack. After almost 12 days without life support, he has not yet passed away, leaving us rather “on hold”. I hope you’ll pardon me if my posts seem rather disjointed, can’t seem to help it.

Feeling a bit drawn by fatigue, and emotionally disengaged, the Spurgeon devotional was quite the soft pillow to rest my head on. He was a poetic sort of soul, Spurgeon. Sometimes it’s too flowery for me to not glaze over half way through, but this devotion was a just right bowl of porridge today, warm with a touch of honey.

It feels like I’m floating about recently, sort of in my own world and moving about in this one without being a part of it. Feelings of course are transitory, and can flop you around like a fish out of water. But even mentally, I’ve felt oddly fleeting.

Being the fickle things they are, I try to keep my feelings somewhat at arm’s length; aware of them, feeling them, but not giving way to their demands. If my emotions had their way, I would be in a permanent state of consternation, reving up about an uproar, plummeting down in disappointment…you know what it’s like. A roller coaster. 

I’ve managed to avoid the roller coaster for the most part, infused with a noticably larger amount of unearthly grace, noticable at least to me. I know better than to take credit for it, too! But I’m tired, after 23 days. “I’m tired, and so weary, but I must travel on…” (from a hymn, Peace in the Valley)

The funeral arrangements are all done, save small things like buying a pair of socks for the funeral home to put on Mike, or writing an obituary. I don’t want to have to keep track of this and that, knowing my fatigue will continue to worsen, and my brain will grow less and less focused as time goes on.

I become lethargic emotionally and spiritually when my body gets worn down. That’s the nature of drawn out crisis; they wear on you. Even Jesus was worn down at times when He walked this earth. So Spurgeon’s devotional came as a gentle invitation to anchor in a safe harbor awhile and wonder some peaceful wonderings about what doesn’t shake. 

Some things are never shaken, and those are the anchor in the safe harbor of Jesus; the love of God, the Atonement, the whispering work of the Holy Spirit. Shake all the earth out of you, and that’s what’s left. There’s a wonderful arrangement of the the song “The Love of God”, by David Phelps on his CD “Live”, by the way.  

This is the scripture the Spurgeon devotional came from:    

“22 No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to thousands of angels in joyful assembly. 23 You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge of all people. And you have come to the spirits of the redeemed in heaven who have now been made perfect.

24 You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which graciously forgives…27 This means that the things on earth will be shaken, so that only eternal things will be left. 28 Since we are receiving a Kingdom that cannot be destroyed, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe.” Hebrews 12:22-28

Isn’t that a breathtaking picture to imagine? A shining city, sparkling with the glory of God and the truth it is your home too.  I’ve met people who’ve said they never think about heaven, it doesn’t seem to interest them. How on earth could anyone walk this earth and not need the hope of such a home? I’d be shaken day and night without the glittering light of that place coming to rest on me from time to time. 

There’s a lot of “why” being asked as you might imagine, while the shaking down here goes on. Mom especially is held in the grip of wanting to understand why her only son, her firstborn, is in such a state. Why must his daughter grow up without a father? Why is the most asked and most unanswerable question ever to cross the lips of mankind, I’m sure. Don’t need a gallup poll to guess that…

My why’s have very little to do with the practical, at least about my brother’s death. I have no clue why my brother will soon die, no clue how many uncountable ways his death will change even people we do not know. For all I know, much of God’s purpose could have gone awry in people’s lives if he had survived his heart attack.

I seem to have completely given up trying to figure this life out! Either it’s too complicated, or I’m too simple minded…(that I won’t submit for a gallup poll!)

I could imagine the worst, that we are being punished. (Not!) I could imagine better, like he is being spared some horror that would come if he lived. I could take it up a knotch and imagine God’s “why” is because my neice would not be the same person if she grew up with her father, and some beautiful calling in her life would be missed.

But really, God’s “why” is as impenetrable and penetrating as He is. Who knows the surprising ways grace will work itself into our lives because of this? Who can measure the gains that come because we endure losses? I don’t know why, and I cannot measure the future in all its complexity.

What I do know is the God of “why”. His purpose is always love, however much it hurts. He doesn’t punish, He purifies and in the most inexplicable ways. God’s “why” will be perfect, magnificently perfect. So much more perfect than if we got to be right and made God wrong to allow us pain. If we hold onto “why, I must know”, we will almost entirely miss Who.

But I do have a few “why” thoughts. I wonder looking at Mike’s withering body, if he is “in there”, his spirit aware that we’ve withdrawn supportive care. I wonder if he is trying with all his might to respond to us, but his body won’t let him. Being trapped in a less than athletically responsive body my own self, I’ve had to wonder some.

Then I wonder if the mercies of God are such that a child of His, in the utter wreck of an earthborn body, is spared the turmoil of wanting to interact and not being able to. I wonder, does the Holy Spirit simply envolop them that they become absorbed in the mysterious spaces of God’s being, like some astronaut free to float in a star nursery? 

Does He somehow take their spirit to heaven and leave the soul until the body dies, or take both? If He does, why then command the body to linger at the edges of death? Some would say my “why” is seemingly pointless, a theological trivial pursuit. Or is it? How far and how deep and how encompassing is the mercy of God is never a pointless question. 

How He works fascinates me enough that I cannot help but day dream about what He’s up to. Man has not seen what the Lord has for His own in heaven, but it doesn’t stop me from trying to peek. His mysteries are behind the clouds that surround Him, yet they draw us ever so powerfully, don’t they?  ”Come to Mt Zion” they whisper…

One thing that does keep hitting me is how remarkably judgemental I still am. After many years of difficulties I thought was knocking the judgemental out of me, low and behold what should arise is two insidiously disguised versions of it. The eye opener came via Oswald Chambers (the man was a walking 2×4).

Beware of anything that gives you a feeling of the superior is the paraphrase. Whack! There are 2 people with whom this manifestation of pride has reared its ugly head during this time; Mom and Mike’s former housemate. With Mom, it stems from a long standing role reversal, where I am her primary means of emotional and physical support.

She comes apart, and I’ve been the one who tries putting her back together again. I’ve glued my fingers to each other a couple times…(grin). Yes, I do realize that’s not my job, it’s God’s. But…there’s the but, a red flag indicator of my fix-it tendency. She doesn’t turn to Him, she turns to me.

It’s not that God intends for me (us) to say, “sorry, suck it up and ask God, not my job”. That would be callous. When the Lord gives us the grace and strength to support someone, even by merely cooking supper, then we are to use it. If that means I man the phones and take the hard phone calls, I should do it.

It’s when we begin to feel the responsibility for another person’s emotional state, when we have the weight of it pressing down on us or have a sense that we are holding it all together that we’ve stepped over the line. “Should”, and “oughts” appear in my thoughts, and that’s an absolute fire alarm to the presence of hidden judgements. 

“I should pray this for her…”, “She needs to…” It places me in the position of deciding who needs what, and what’s not right. DOUBLE WACK!! Sure we need to have good judgement about people and things so we don’t get caught up in foolishness, but when I start sorting through a person’s innards picking out what they do and don’t need from God…

Well deserved 2×4 time, right upside the head. The other side too, please, so I’m not lopsided!

Then there’s Suzie, my brother’s former housemate.  She has a tendency to sort of fly off, to hear only what she wants to hear and it comes from a wounded part of her soul. Suzie’s the sort of person who needs more care than the patient, and I feel alot of compassion for her.

She makes everything about herself, from deciding it’s up to her to make sure the nurses do what she believes Mike needs, to glomming onto absolutely everyone connected to us or Mike in a terribly forward and intense way. She can be hard to take, grabbing total strangers to hug or talking incessantly about how good Mike was to her whether they want a hug and a conversation or not.

Don’t get me wrong, Suzie has a big heart. She’s trying to make it better for others, and doesn’t have a clue how far it too far. She will run you over trying to make you feel better. Her need to give and help and protect is driving her, and blinding her. It’s hard to be gracious sometimes, especially at 3 am when she calls to tell us Mike is trying to get out of bed and walk to the bathroom.

My brother is in a persistant vegetative state, and was having seizures again. I went up and checked it out, just in case because God can and does heal. Suzie was desperate for him to be miraculously healed, and saw what she wanted to see, even yelling and screaming at the nurses to reinstate life support because he was moving purposefully. 

She’s wounded. That I understand and recognize; been there, know what it looks like. The point of God showing me the fingerprints of injury in her heart even as partially as I see is to be patient about her habits. A proverb somewhere says “A man’s wisdom gives him patience”.

So I try to smooth down the uproars she causes, and treat her gently, not further injuring her out of anger. I run interference, occupying her attention so she doesn’t go too far with someone who doesn’t want her attentions and have a bad scene blow up needlessly. That’s grace. That’s cutting someone slack because Jesus cuts me miles of it.

The patience suddenly started wearing thin after the 3 am incident, and I found myself thinking quite irritable thoughts. Uh-huh. That means me myself and I was mixed in the cookie dough. The warning from Oswald Chambers turned on the oven, and I saw what rose to the surface.

How smug I was looking at her and Mom from ever so sickeningly high. I’m not so damaged, I don’t run off into hysterics, I know better what’s happening… Superior, and insufferable. For crying out loud, when shall I ever be rid of this incarnate nature?!

Yeesh, proud of not being prideful, all the while oozing prideful out of every pore. Duh.  

***

 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour…” 1 Peter 5:8

The point I’m surely mangling is that even with grace in our hearts we really do have to be vigilant, as Peter says. Perhaps even more vigilant as more grace comes to us, since our enemy will key on it. He will try to devour the good it might do for us and around us. Rarely does the devil just insert some new form of evil; almost always he just stokes the fires of what’s already there.

For me, it is a sneaky sense of superiority. Thank God it never really slithered its way out into words or actions, doing noticable damage to anyone. He was good to keep my pride from causing deep harm to someone else. But it doesn’t have to go out and slosh on someone to be awful. Pride is sin, and it’s just as ugly when no one else sees it but me and God.

That fallen and self-aggrandizing nature we were born with doesn’t go down without a fight. Reminds me of a cartoon I once saw, where a stork has a frog in it’s beak, but the frog has it’s hands around the stork’s throat. The caption is “Never say die”. Pride never says die.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have a choice when God tells it to drop dead. The Lord points out to us where our selfish and egotistical nature is gaining strength, and forgives us instantly when we ask. All the might and holiness of a perfect God is ours for the asking, to fight back against our ugly and win.

Unlike self-help, which really just uses more pride to attack pride (I will, I will not), grace destroys pride with humility. Yes, Suzie can fly off the handle. Yes, Mom can come unglued. SO CAN I about some things, who am I to judge it. I am not better, I am different, in a different place, and have been given grace, not earned it.

My brother’s imminent death doesn’t throw me into upset. I know he is entirely in the hands of Jesus even now though he hasn’t passed away. The peace of that isn’t anything I could create for myself. He is and ever more will be, safe, at rest. I’m almost jealous!

Mike will be raised up and enrobed, to sit at the marriage supper of the Lamb, and no more will sorrow or suffering befall him. Mike’s going home. I will meet him there someday. Death has lost!

“We have the notion that we can consecrate our gifts to God. You cannot consecrate what is not yours; there is only one thing you can consecrate to God, and that is your right to yourself (Romans 12:1)… The saint realizes that it is God Who engineers circumstances, consequently there is no whine, but a reckless abandon to Jesus. Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as He is with you.” Oswald Chambers, http://www.myutmost.org/06/0613.html

I haven’t disappeared into the ether, I promise. On May 31st, my brother had a giant heart attack, resulting in severe brain damage. We turned off his life support this Thursday morning, and as of early Friday, he was still surviving on his own. There is enough brainstem to maintain shallow breathing and enough heart muscle left to hold blood pressure. For now at least. 

This is good but not; neither Mike nor Mom and I would ever want him to be in a persistant vegetative state. He would be horrified by such an outcome. I could accept it better than Mom et all, I think, simply by virtue of not having to endure the pain of a mother’s love. That and a growing grace to accept God’s arranging of circumstances regardless of my own desires.

There’s been so much that’s transpired, and I’m sure much of it will remain in a muddled bucket of happenings rather than lining up into a Divine order that I understand. Deep thoughts and theology have filled my days, really, and how to see His workings. At least when the fatigued fog bank clears for a time.

I am waiting for Him to tie the loose strings together so a single strand will knit together what the Lord has for me to say about the patterns of Life in my life. I am also waiting for the strange detatchment to wear off that came with the need to keep Mom from utter despondency and take care of the neccessary stuff for her.

There is a non-family member involved with a particularly needy bent. She has a good big heart that wants desperately to both help and be helped, so I will allow no ungraciousness towards her. I just place myself between her and people she wears on, allowing her to “help” me and be occupied with our conversations.

I remember how wretched my father’s last days became because of his new wife’s possessiveness. It was ugly from up to down. No way do I want that here, to wound the wounded and hurt the grieving needlessly. Here will be found the Lord’s goodness and grace as best as I am able to spread around.

I cannot say there is not self-interest and pride rearing it’s head in me! There is much to take myself to task for in thought and deed, not to mention lack of deeds too. But He has provided more grace and strength then I would have expected. I can say that the Lord is here, and has long been preparing for this day.

For 18 years my mother prayed for Mike’s return to God. I had given up anticipating it, to my shame. But He kept his word. Out of the blue, for no obvious reason we saw Mike surrounded by a veritable armada of strong Christians. He was drawn back, and on April 19th recommitted his life to God.

Not only did the Lord keep His word to Mom, she was there to see it happen.

I don’t know what will transpire next, nor how I can possibly help Mom. Much like I used to be, her anger is directed at God, her thoughts filled with how-could-you’s and beliefs that some bad isn’t supposed to happen.  I don’t know how to help her with that. I’ll have to leave her to God, and allow His originality as the quote says.

I’m still around, and will hopefully soon have a better post about all this. Until then, would ya’ll pray for Mom especially? To Him be all glory and gratefulness…

Today’s reading http://www.myutmost.org/06/0605.html went along these lines, “The only way to get the dread taken out of us is to listen to God’s say-so”, and not forget what He’s said. Being naturally forgetful, the last part is the hard part!

My heart and my head can run over God’s say-so if I don’t reign them in, like a team of willful mules. We seem to be programmed to remember first the last thing we saw or heard. Maybe that’s why we can hear a say-so from God then promptly forget it when the doctors say-so, or the news gives a say-so about the job market.

The Bible is one long say-so. There are specific say-so verses, like not to worry about what to say because the Holy Spirit will give you the words. There are general say-so verses too, like “If I am for you, who can be against you”. That one covers just about anything which makes us worry or waver.

Of course we can’t just pick out a say-so to make God fit it into our plans. Reciting all the say-so’s in the Bible won’t help me win the lotto unless it is His wish. They aren’t like Hindu mantras or magic charms. But they are manna left by a God who walks before us, there for when we need the nourishment to follow Him.

A conversation with a pastor about walking with God began with the image of a road, but someone said they felt more like they were walking on the edge of the cliff. Frankly, I think we’re walking a ridge as precipitous as any the Rockies could hold, chasms on each side and rocks in our way. Not to mention the rocks we carry on our backs until we learn to walk light. The way is narrow…

Yet that jagged ridge is the safest spot on earth to be, led and carried and fed by God. The views are spectacular up there, and the air is fresh. Someone once said “if we fall, He either catches us or teaches us to fly”. Looking off the edge can give us a bad case of vertigo, and that’s where the say-so’s come in.

Hold onto the say-so God gave you, and quit looking over the edge!

When we start out, we stuff a bunch of needless junk in our packs; food in case He doesn’t provide, clothing to keep us warm in case His fire isn’t warm enough…we hedge our bets and haul our junk. The steeper the climb the more we toss out, though, learning as we go.

Walking mountain ridges means we also have to learn to breathe when the air gets thin, and it will get thin on you from time to time. God’s say-so is an oxygen mask. It is salt to melt the ice beneath your feet that could make you slip, and a brace for the inevitable turned ankle.

By the time we reach the end of our ridge, the only things in our pack are God’s say-so’s. We don’t really need anything else. Maybe that’s what He meant when He said His yoke was light?  

Are you learning to say things after listening to God, or are you saying things and trying to make God’s word fit in? Get hold of the Father’s say-so, and then say with good courage – “I will not fear.” It does not matter what evil or wrong may be in the way, He has said – “I will never leave thee.”

Frailty is another thing that gets in between God’s say-so and ours. When we realize how feeble we are in facing difficulties, the difficulties become like giants, we become like grasshoppers, and God becomes a nonentity. Remember God’s say-so – “I will in no wise fail you.” Have we learned to sing after hearing God’s key-note? –Oswald Chambers