O Violent Night

Christmas. The birth of our Savior. C.S. Lewis referred to it as "The Great Invasion." In chapter 7 of Mere Christianity Lewis writes:

One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe--a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin.... Christianity agrees... that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.

Enemy-occupied territory--that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery. I know someone will ask me, 'Do you really mean, at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend the devil-hoofs and horns and all?' Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer is 'Yes, I do.' I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, 'Don't worry. If you really want to, you will. Whether you'll like it when you do is another question.'

Compare that with the most a-cultural telling of Christmas, as found in Revelation 12:1-7. We read:

"A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.


And there was war in heaven."

Robert Mounce says that: 1) the "woman" here is not Mary, but the messianic community, the "ideal Israel"; 2) out of the messianic community is born a "child," a Messiah; 3) the seven-headed red dragon is Satan (Rev. 12:9; 20:2); 4) Satan is looking to devour this child; AKA Jesus the Christ.

Mary has already been prophetically warned about such things. In Luke 2 we read that...

...the old man "Simeon took him [baby Jesus] in his arms and praised God, saying: "Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel." The child's father and mother marveled at what was said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

Violent night
Holy night
All's not calm
All's not bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Begins the Heavenly War
Oh win us our Heavenly War

Christmas Eve - that violent night when the Light of the World descended into darkness...

The Obedience of Desperation

(2 Kings 5, Elisha and Naaman)
The Power of Desperation, Michael Catt

• "The Bible recognizes no faith that does not lead to obedience, nor does it recognize any obedience that does not spring from faith. The two are opposite sides of the same coin." - A. W. Tozer
  
  
• ... no one gets to God on their own. While we do come to Christ alone by grace alone through faith alone, we are, in reality, in need of others to show us the way.
  
  
• God's chain to Naaman:
  * The Little Jewish Maid
  * Naaman's Master
  * The King of Syria
  * The King of Israel
  * Elisha
  * Elisha's Messenger
  * Naaman's Servants
  
  Never underestimate the important role you might play in the life of another person... When people are desperate and dying, it is no time for believers to be fearful of what others might think.
  
  
• We struggle with trust and resist the call to obey. We stand outside the door of deliverance and demand that God come out and meet us on our terms. We expect Him to recognize us even when we fail to recognize Him as sovereign and sufficient.
  
  
• The purpose and timing of God constitute the fuel of victory in the Christian life. And the spark that ignites it, releasing it as a practical and powerful force in the life, is OBEDIENCE. God's power flows in the stream of obedience.
  
  
• You believe only as much of the Bible as you are obeying! What you don't obey, you don't believe.
  
  
• If we are reluctant to give unquestioning obedience to God, it is because we don't really trust Him. If obedience comes from trust, where does trust come from? The answer is--knowledge. You won't obey someone you don't trust. You can't trust someone you don't know. So here is the spiritual equation for obedience: knowledge of God equals faith in God equals obedience to God.
  
  
• This, you see, is evil questioning [referring to Naaman's response to Elisha]. What business of Naaman's was it whether there was any medicinal powers in the water or not? Whether Abanah and Pharpar were better or worse than Jordan? He need have nothing to do but with the simple command: "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and you will be clean." 'Twas his to obey, not to question. 'Twas his to fulfill the command, not to enquire into its philosophy.
  
  
• Common sense can kill faith. Reasoning and questioning the Word and will of God will destroy faith and justify disobedience. There's a difference between common sense and coming to your senses. You begin to understand God's ways are not your ways. He doesn't have to explain Himself.
  
  
• When Godly people speak into your life: listen; confirm their words with the Word of God; don't try to bargain with God; don't delay!
  

~

Fill My Cup, Lord

(1 Kings 4:1-7, Elisha and the widow)
The Power of Desperation, Michael Catt

• "We will never crave to be filled until we are convinced we are empty." - John Blanchard
  
  
• Hindrances to being filled with the Holy Spirit:
  
  
  * Too much confidence in your own ability to function without help, coupled with a lack of appreciation for what the Spirit can and will do.
  * Being resistant to repentance.
  * When you cannot or will not take God at His Word.
  
  
  
  
• PUSH - Pray Until Something Happens
  
  
• Take God at His Word. Don't negotiate or try to figure it out. Have the attitude of the mother of Jesus who said to those at the wedding feast, "Do whatever He tells you." (John 2:5) End of discussion and the beginning of blessings.
  
  
• Desperate people obey willingly!
  

Additional scriptures to read: Ephesians 3:17-19, 5:15-18; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Romans 10:17; James 2:26.

Also, see this post for more on the story of Elisha and the desperate widow.

The Sufficiency and Supply of God in the Wilderness

(Deuteronomy 8, Moses and the Children of Israel)
The Power of Desperation, Michael Catt.

• "The grace, the groans and the glory are all part of the eternal purpose. Where there is no groaning, there is no growing now, nor glory to come." - Vance Havner
  
  
• The thought of God taking forty years to work something in us - and out of us - is frightening. Especially in our American Christianity mindset of immediate success and power.
  
  
• What might the books of the real heroes of the Bible be entitled?
  Job - "Serving God when there's nothing left."
  Moses - "How to go from the palace to the desert in one fateful decision."
  Noah - "Don't build a boat where there's no water, unless you are willing to be the brunt of the world's jokes."
  
  
• "The Wilderness is an experience of contrasts. It is an unsettled, barren, perilous area, but it is also a place where God is! It is a difficult, lonely, unnerving site, but it is also a place where God dwells! It is a draining, exhausting, discouraging situation, but it is also a place where God heals and strengthens! It is a removed, desolate, debilitating condition, but it is also a place where God moves and loves!" - Rob Bailey
  
  
• God puts us in the wilderness until we want the Promised Land enough to fight for it.
  
  
• The wilderness is NEVER wasted time.
  
  
• The wilderness is a time when you can make a choice: I'm going to live through this and thrive in the wilderness, or I'm going to curl up in the fetal position and just wait to die.
  
  
• Moses got a B.N. degree (Be Nothing) in the seminary of suffering and sheepherding. Faith works best when there is no natural hope. God speaks best when all other voices are silenced.
  
  
• "Remember is is the very time for faith to work when sight ceases. The greater the difficulty, the easier for faith; as long as there remains certain natural prospects, faith does not get on as easily." - George Mueller
  
  
• Our strengths are no help to God, and our weaknesses are no hindrance to Him.
  
  
• God is not looking for a rededication of your life. God is looking for admission, confession, surrender, and obedience. What He wants is not rededication of our flesh to be better. He wants repentance from the sin that so easily besets us. We should ask God to put a thorn in every pleasure and a worm in every desire that would prevent us from being wholly committed to the Lordship of Christ.
  

Additional scriptures to read: Psalms 119; Jeremiah 17; Romans 7; Psalms 63 (1 Samuel 15-19); Psalms 84; Psalms 143; Matthew 5.

~~~~~~~~~~

Even if God were to intervene this very minute and deliver me, fulfill my desire... it would not be the end. Other troubles just as pressing, likely more pressing, will come. I desire to grow in Christ, and growth comes through trial, groaning, and necessity of faith. If I am to forever chase God, then I am to forever be tried. I must learn to bring joy with me to the wilderness and be sustained - to thrive in the desert - by God's presence alone.

The Way Up is Down

Tonight I am beginning the book: The Power of Desperation by Michael Catt. Why? One, because I was sitting at my desk when my spirit suddenly said, "Hey Craig, go read that book you've had on your shelf for over a year," and two, because my heart yearns for love and my spirit cries out for more of God and His power. I want [to learn] to be desperate and broken, completely weak and surrendered, while still holding unwaveringly to faith in God's deliverance. I don't know how to do that, but God will not ignore a cry for wisdom. The Joy of the Lord is my strength.

I'm making notes in my prayer journal as I read a chapter each day. I will post some of the more meaningful ones here, most likely without personal comment. They speak for themselves.

Chapter One - The Way Up is Down (Genesis 32-35, Jacob)

• "God cannot bless us until He has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There's no bargaining with Him." - C. S. Lewis
  
  
• You are wallowing in defeat because you keep trying harder instead of trusting completely.
  
  
• "I want to be the person he can turn to and know he is loved unconditionally. I don't approve of what he's done. I don't applaud it. But someone has to love him, and it might as well be me."
  
  
• We will never be desperate for God if we blame our environment, our education or lack thereof, our surroundings, our parents, or our circumstances. We will never be desperate until we face our own depravity. Sin deceives us into thinking we can negotiate with God. It deludes us into thinking we can get better in our flesh. It destroys us by telling us we can get to heaven but avoid a face-to-face encounter with the Christ who demands our whole life surrendered to Him.
  
  
• The blessing can't come without the wrestling. If there is no willingness to yield, there will never be willingness for God to rule.
  
  
• Jacob, like many of us, knew the promise of the blessing, but he couldn't see how God was going to do it. He was impatient with God's timetable. He must have been convinced the promise was conditional based on something he could do, rather than unconditional based on the wisdom, grace, and love of God.
  
  
• Jacob's actions reveal his inability to trust God with his life. He fell back into his old thought patterns.
  
  
• God wrestles with us for two reasons: to get us to admit our deception, and to reveal what we can be when we are desperate for Him as our source of sufficiency.
  

A Bored vs. Meaningful Life

I have a family member who loves to work in his large vegetable and flower garden. He talks about needing "garden time." I would say that is his "therapy." Working, laboring, for a purpose can bring great inner satisfaction. To work on a job worth doing is to achieve a job well done. Just the sheer physicality of hard work produces job satisfaction. From my Jesus-theistic standpoint, to work at a task God calls me to brings great emotional and spiritual fulfillment.

For me this applies to even small, seemingly insignificant tasks. For example, whenever I arrive at a friend's home and see dishes that need to be done, or trash that needs to be taken out, I'm finding that I'm beginning to love doing the dishes or carrying a trash across a parking lot. The purpose for me is: this will bless my friends. It is one thing they will not have to do. It is a way to show them that I love them. To work with a purpose is to co-labor with God and His purposes. That is not only good, but therapy for the soul. I want to come to the end of my life knowing God has worked through me to accomplish His desires.

This doesn't have to apply only to "good deeds." Colossians 3 tell us, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him... Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving."

To labor with no sense of purpose is a kind of hell. It is boredom. "Boredom" is not having nothing to do; boredom is finding no meaning in what you are doing. Purposeless work produces inner agitation. It is "a useless and ill-directed action of the body." Yuck! I continue to meet many people who live purposeless lives and thus experience a constant back-and-forth movement in their disquieted spirit. What should one do?

What Thomas Merton writes is helpful here. Merton says:

“Work occupies the body and the mind and is necessary for the health of the spirit. Work can help us to pray and be recollected, if we work properly. Agitation, however, destroys the spiritual usefulness of work and even tends to frustrate its physical and social purpose. Agitation is the useless and ill-directed action of the body. It expresses the inner confusion of a soul without peace.

Work brings peace to the soul that has a semblance of order and spiritual understanding. Agitation -- a condition of spirit that is quite normal in the world of business -- is the fruit of tension in a spirit that is turning dizzily from one stimulus to another and trying to react to fifteen different appeals at the same time. Under the surface of agitation, and furnishing it with its monstrous and inexhaustible drive, is the force of fear or elemental greed for money, or pleasure, or power. The more complex a man’s passion, the more complex his agitation.

All this is the death of the interior life. Occasional church-going and the recitation of hasty prayers have no power to cleanse this purulent wound.” (No Man Is an Island, 114-115)

Merton says that to work for the goals of money, pleasure, or power is to cultivate the agitated heart. It brings "the death of the interior life." The antidote to this is: dwell, now, in Christ. (See John 14-16) Abide in Jesus. Let Him shepherd your soul. A little bit of churchgoing won't help. Constant abiding will. Out of this Christ-dwelling comes not only His peace and joy but our life purpose.

The Needy

I have been drawing today. I enjoy drawing, especially when it is for other's enjoyment. Naturally, I am my own worst critic. I have been doing art-related activities for as long as I can remember. I've painted pictures of mountain landscapes, sketched epic battles between dragons and knights, and colored portraits of friends and famous folk. I've hand-crafted pottery filled with snakes or the blood of Jesus and woven tapestries that now hang on my wall. I've practiced thousands of hours and generally feel pretty good with what I can accomplish visually when I set my mind to it. But I cannot create pieces of art like my parents. Their sculptures and drawings put me in awe. As I look at their work, I cannot help but think, "I am a man of unclean artistic ability." I am in need.

So are you. We’re all a bunch of very needy people. My fellow artist and poet David once wrote, “Yet I am poor and needy; may the Lord think of me. You are my help and my deliverer; O my God, do not delay.” We all need guidance. We all need direction. We all need help in this life. It is a good thing to recognize one’s neediness, for this realization puts one in position to be guided, directed, and helped. Only the needy know they need a shepherd. Only those who realize their need for guidance can be guided.

In a moment of God-inspired musical genius David wrote the first line to arguably the greatest worship song ever written. Out of his neediness David wrote, “The Lord is my shepherd.” All of David’s own talents were not enough. As brilliant as King David was, his own intelligence did not suffice. As courageous as he was, he still struggled with fear. David, the greatest King and leader Israel ever had, knew that he needed himself to be led. He needed a shepherd. And for that, David chose well.

A minister I firmly respect runs a seminary. In his class on spiritual formation he sends his students out for times of prayer, using Psalm 23 as their meditative focus. He instructs them: “When God speaks to you, write it down.” According to him, his experience is that God doesn’t let 40% of them get past verse 1. God asks them the question: “Am I really your shepherd?” That is the foundational question for all spiritual formation, transformation, renewal, and restoration. The answer to that question determines whether a person’s life and ministry will be authentic or inauthentic, relevant or irrelevant. This is because unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain; unless we are shepherded by God, we’re shepherded by some other god (like self; others; money; sex; power). The key question of the spiritual life is, as Henri Nouwen said: Who do you belong to?

The necessary precondition for authentic, relevant God-leadership is: being-led. To lead is to be led. To be led one must heart-recognize one’s great neediness. This is, spiritually, a very good place to be. How do we come to understand this?

I don’t think you can force this idea on people. I believe that the heart-recognition of personal neediness is given to people as a revelation. You cannot command this for other people. You cannot even teach or explain it effectively. It’s a revelation, a wakeup call, that God desires us all to have, but which all do not see. If one consistently abides in God’s presence, God Himself will show you this. It will be like me, admiring my latest sketch, thinking I’ve got my artistic creativity in a powerful place, watching my dad pick up a pen and begin to work, and then comes the revelation of personal artistic-neediness. If I was thinking that I didn’t need more ability and practice to draw like that, that I didn’t need help and shepherding to draw like that, such a thought has been, like a bubble, burst.

In the spiritual life neediness is cool, self-reliance sucks. If I really wanted to draw like my parents I’d need my parents to shepherd me individually. If I really want to be used by God I need to be constantly shepherded by God on a personal levl. Pray for a revelation of personal neediness. God wants to reveal this to you. He will, as you spend time with him.

Your spiritual life and effectiveness for the sake of God and His Kingdom is at stake.