Seasons

A friend of mine visited me a few years back, and noticed that I had a “thing for trees”. She noticed a few pictures around my house that showed bare deciduous trees in the winter, and inquired about them.  Some people prefer trees with blossoms such as we see in the spring, or broad green leaves providing shade from the summer’s heat, or a colorful palate of oranges, reds and yellows that burst forth in the autumn, but for me, the winter tree has a beauty that is indescribably unique. I never actually noticed the trees in the winter, unless they were covered with a layer of ice and sparkled in the sunlight, until the Lord spoke to me of hope in the dry seasons of life, and He used the winter tree to do it. 

The trees in the winter stand isolated, reaching heavenward, seemingly lifeless. They are void of leaves or other ornaments of beauty, and appear naked against the landscape.  They bear up during blizzards and because they are leafless, they are not greatly moved in the storms. The covering of leaves would in fact make them weak and vulnerable to breaking and so while the winter tree almost appears abandoned it is in reality, by the forethought of God, protected from the elements of this world.  I remember the day the Lord showed me the absolute beauty of the lace-like branches, bare and naked, against the sky.  It was the most beautiful I had ever seen a tree to be.  We are a bit like that.

 To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven (Eccl.3:1).  “Everything” includes our life and our walk with the Lord.  There are seasons where we feel connected to the Lord and all is well, and other seasons when we feel spiritually “dry”, walking through a dry and thirsty land where there is no water. (Ps.63:1) When we go through these dry seasons, we often become perplexed and wonder if we’ve done something that broke our sense of communion with the Lord.  It is important to examine ourselves to see if we have sinned against God, and to ask Him to reveal anything in our lives that may have offended Him and created a break in our fellowship.  Certainly being imperfect, we will probably come up with a few things that we suspect may have caused the sky to become as brass to our prayers, but having confessed them, we claim that promise that if we confess and repent of our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse of all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9) If the dry spell is due to sin, this remedies the problem if we are sincere.   

However, not all such desert experiences are due to sin and are, in fact, a part of the normal Christian life.  Such seasons have been called “wilderness” or “desert” experiences.  We learn of our weaknesses in such times and our dependence upon God. This is important to understand because we have an adversary who would love nothing more than for a Christian to become discouraged in such seasons of life.  I’ve come to believe that all discouragement is from the devil, who is the father of lies.(Jn.8:44)  The only weapon against lies is truth.  

The Word of God is the Sword of the Spirit, our weapon (Eph.6:17), and when discouragement creeps in we search for the truth in Scripture to counteract the lie, and cleave to it.  This is how we exercise faith. This is how we learn experientially the faithfulness of God.  If we never had the dry, winter season stripped of our ornamental coverings we would not learn of His faithfulness or the power of the Word of God against all discouragement.  The Lord your God has set the land before you, go up and possess it…do not fear nor be discouraged (Dt.1:21) If God commands us not to be discouraged, He also has provided for our need so that we are not discouraged.  Faith grows when it is exercised, and the promise of spring reassures us that this is just a season through which we all must pass.

DJ

Broadway

I saw a tunnel deep and dark
beneath a bridge in a public park.
Beyond my vision I could hear
the sounds of a party
clinking glasses and cheer.
The entrance was broad and groomed to invite
the young and the old ventured in out of sight.
I paused for a moment only to see
the only one hesitating seemed to be me.
I gingerly entered as others passed by
they were talking and laughing, yet
I wanted to cry.
I could not understand why I wanted to mourn
the entrance was broad, the pavement well worn.
The deeper I traveled, I saw more hesitate
but others seduced them saying "this is your fate".
There grew thistles and vines
that entangled the feet. The air became heavy
and was no longer sweet.
A panic set in as I saw others snared
who were trying to leave what they
never had feared.
The clanging of glasses that the darkness had covered
was the gnashing of teeth, I soon discovered.
The roaring of laughter that I heard within
were the cries of remorse of those
deceived by sin.
A melody played hauntingly over-head
"I did it my way" it mocked, the song of the dead.
A glimmer of light shown through on my side
and I rushed to it wanting a place to hide.
The crevice was narrow, difficult and steep
but upward I climbed away from the deep.
Often I tired as I struggled alone,
but hope would engulf me as I carried on.
"I am the way" was the song I now heard
"the Truth and the Life, just abide in My word."
"My Savior" I grasped at His hem to survive.
Where once I was dead, I now was alive.
He held on to my hand and would not
let me go. "This is the way" I beckoned to the lost
souls below.
On occasion I heard relief in a sigh as
another escaped the place where souls die.
As long as there is breath, there is hope for new birth
A new life joined to the King of Heaven and Earth.
This way, fellow pilgrim, not easy, I know,
but better than hell where the other souls go.
The rewards are far better than
the wages of sin
Ask, knock and seek
He will let you in.

Two Trees in the Garden

We have before us the Tree of Knowledge
with all its numerous degrees
the fruit of which still brings death
though to the eyes they please.
And yonder there, the Tree of Life
simplicity and rest,
the fruit is hidden behind the leaves
and yet, this fruit is best.

Seek and ye will Find (Mt.7:8)

  The Scriptures were given to us to understand God and to discern truth and are essential to navigate in this life, for there are many antichrists and counterfeit experiences. God elevates His Word, even higher than His name and we are to study to show ourselves approved, rightly dividing the Word of God. There have been many good teaching helps for those who desire to know God in a deeper and more intimate way. These are helpful as is a map would be on any journey, but these can only but lead a believer to the threshold of a deeper walk.  To know the Lord intimately, is not to find Him in a book, or a method, but by “Faith".  I first address this to the skeptic and wandering soul who struggles with the stronghold of intellectual supremacy.

We do not taste with intellect, but with an organ designed to interpret the stimulus, which is translated somewhere in our mind, but not until having communicated something to the soul. We find the taste pleasant or noxious, uplifting and sweet, or repulsive and bitter or a combination of either. What business does intellect play but to put into works the interpretation of our decision as to whether this is a taste we decide is good and something to be repeated or not good and to be avoided.  Even the memory of the taste has greater prominence than intellect itself. We can never, by intellect, share what that taste is.  We can merely describe our personal interpretation of it.  We hardly think about it until we have tasted it. 

We love not with our minds, but our hearts. We do not completely reject all thinking, but our best description of attraction to another human being is “chemistry”, an unseen but well understood phenomena.  This chemistry cannot be generated, it merely is acknowledged to be present or lacking. We can, using our intellect, talk ourselves out of investing in a relationship, but that is not until there is a consideration of the factors involved. We become aware that there is a power of our heart that draws us into a controversy within ourselves. Until that phenomenon is experienced, it can hardly be explained.

We see with our eyes, but it is not until we see a thing, that we engage the intellect to interpret for us what we are looking at. We touch, and again if we had never touched, we would not have the experience to engage the intellect to interpret the sensation of the touch. Our memory dictates to the intellect, and intellect makes a determination, a determination which may not be accurate. Something such as fur may appear to be soft and decided upon by the intellect to be soft by prior experience and sensation, but in reality, it may have been sprayed with shellac and is quite stiff to the touch. The intellect needs additional information if it is to be trusted.

We may hear a sound, but until we hear it, our intellect has nothing to interpret. The same can be said about the sense of smell. Odors are amazing triggers to memory, and yet our intellect is not yet engaged until that memory is medicated upon.

All that is in the world that is perceptible to the senses demonstrates what a small role “intellect” plays in the experience.  Yet, many depend upon intellect to play a major role in the unseen spiritual realm.  Without any input whatsoever, many gamble away their souls to eternal damnation by relying entirely upon the limited ability of the intellect. They thrust the intellect to the forefront without any input and decide that “there is no God”. They do this without ever having taken the time to seek Him.  It is like saying a fully charged battery is dead, simply because it does nothing when you set it on a table.  Until that battery is placed in a circuit of some kind, what makes it any different from a fully expired battery?

The problem with the intellectual is that they think a true Christian’s faith is in the thinking and consideration of imaginations and stories.  They do not consider that a true Christian experiences God. They do not understand that there is an imparted divine life within him, communicating with his soul and spirit that grows stronger in time, much like the life that is hidden within a seed. One small seed can remain lifeless and inert for years…but plant it in soul, nurture and water it, and the hidden life becomes a tree.  It is not that a Christian forsakes intellect, but rather that he does not engage it to experience God, but only to interpret that experience, just as all men engage intellect only following their experiences of their five senses. The spiritual sense is just as real, but people are born into this life spiritually dead.  It is not until one is “quickened” by the Holy Spirit of God, that he can experience anything of God. 

The Scriptures declare that there is placed in the soul of man, a glimmer of light revealing God and that experiences in our lives may generate an inner sense of the reality of God.  In response to this revelation, those who seek God, find Him.  Those who do not seek Him do not find Him.  People talk themselves out of seeking God using an intellect that is void of any divine light.  It is ironic that we cannot engage the intellect without a sensory input in the temporal world and yet many engage the intellect and fully trust their intellect when it comes to the world of the unseen.  That really doesn’t make much sense.

A Contrary Wind

He saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them (Mark 6:48)

We live in an environment where the “wind is against us”. We strain and try to cut through the wind, and we just don’t get very far.  In this scene, the 12 disciples are straining, fighting to row against the wind for most of the night.  Jesus, after staying back on shore for the first 9 hours of the night, set out walking on the water seemingly effortlessly. In fact, He’s about to stroll on by while they’re wrestling with the oars, barely having made any headway. When the disciples see him, they’re terrified until He reassures them and climbs into the boat. Once in the boat with the disciples, the wind ceases. No more contrary wind, no more struggle, smooth sailing from then on.

 

Perhaps the wind remembers the rebuke of the Lord from a previous encounter as described earlier in this Gospel account, and behaves as soon as He is in their midst, but it is noteworthy that the word “wind” is so often used to describe the spiritual world.  Not knowing from whence it comes, or where it blows, but it stirs up the physical realm.  The invisible wind causes the sea to violently respond.  The contrary wind opposes the plans and agendas of the followers of Jesus.  Yet, they struggle and fight against it, exhausting themselves, while Jesus who spent the time in prayer, strolls effortlessly by on top of the sea, unhindered and unaffected by the wind.  It is as though the winds parted, and the sea was restful wherever He planted His next step.

What if the disciples decided earlier on to drop anchor and wait for Jesus. What if they turned around back to where Jesus was and said “Lord, without You, we are struggling against a contrary wind.  We have seen how the wind and waves obey You, and how compassionate You were to all those You sent away, feeding every single one of them.  We have seen You accomplish great things in a short time, and how we are not able to do this without You.  Therefore we’ve come back to ask You to get into the boat with us.”  Maybe this is why Jesus waited on shore for so long. Perhaps He was wondering when it might occur to them that they were powerless without Him. By the forth watch,  it would appear that they were going to continue their fruitless struggle against the contrary wind, not asking for help, nor even praying for it, just fighting and struggling against the elements of the invisible world in the weakness of their flesh.

One can almost picture Jesus rolling His eyes, shaking His head as He decides He’s let them struggle long enough and since they hadn’t called out to God to help them, He was about to stroll on by, past them, onto the other side.  Perhaps to emphasize the calm surrounding Jesus, one might also imagine Him whistling a tune to Himself as He walked on by.  In the same way we watch a toddler struggle to do an impossible task as He pushes our hands off insisting and saying “I can do it myself!”, while we sigh, sit back and wait until He finally asks for help, or gives up trying, we see Jesus taking the same approach. It wasn’t cruelty that Jesus allowed them to exhaust themselves against a contrary wind, it was an object lesson.  We must come to the end of ourselves sooner or later.

We can do nothing in our own strength.  There is an invisible contrary wind blowing against us, stirring up the physical world with its circumstances and interruptions.  We can fight against it in our strength, but it is a fruitless struggle and all that we accomplish is exhaustion. 

 The Lord had commissioned them earlier to go out two by two, proclaiming the gospel, healing the sick, and casting out demons.  He had to demonstrate to them their utter helplessness without Jesus.  Their power depended upon Jesus.  In this stormy scene, the Scripture states that “their heart was hardened” (Mark 6:52). Whenever we think that we did something amazing, pride rears its ugly head and hardens our hearts.  God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Pride must not be allowed to enter into the work of the Gospel because it is a lie.  Pride is the sin that caused Lucifer’s fall, and it is the greatest disease to afflict mankind.

The remedy is death, therefore we must all die and be reckoned dead to the flesh, where pride proliferates, but alive in Christ.  We must be entirely dependent upon Jesus, living in union with Him, abiding in Him.  He must be in our boat at all times if we are to get to the other side and if He isn’t, we must wait and find out why that is. Jesus would never leave us, nor forsake us, but He would, for our own good, let us struggle without Him until we cry out to Him. We must seek Him and ask Him if He is indeed sending us out, or is He calling us to “come aside by ourselves to a deserted place to rest a while”.  It is imperative that we are abiding and sensitive to His will in this moment.  We cannot have an agenda of our own.  Ours is to surrender our agenda, and wait upon God.

Beyond the Veil

Much of the problem that I see with the Christian church in this generation, is our myopic vision of God. We say we believe in the Trinity, but we don’t act as if we do.  We are introduced to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Man, and we sit gazing at His manhood.  Whether or not we are distracted, we spend little time wondering about the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the One Whom Christ was so intent upon bringing us to. 

   
The Holy Scriptures described the flesh of Jesus Christ as the “Veil” which hung in the temple between the people of God, and the Holy of Holies, and upon Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, this veil was torn in half, from top to bottom.  This was an indisputable act of God and a visual testimony of what had just been accomplished.  As the veil which hung between the people of God, and the Holy of Holies, we see this veil on the one side, mankind, and on the other side of this same veil “the Holy of Holies”.  It is the type of fully man, fully divine image that is consistent with our understanding of who Jesus Christ was and is.  One veil, two distinct sides….fully man, fully God. 

It seems that we then spend the rest of our days looking at the limitations of the manhood of Christ, rather than the boundless eternity of the “Godhood” of Christ which lay beyond the veil. The veil was torn, that we might enter in. The intention is that we might now be clothed with the righteousness of God in Christ, and then know the Father as intimately as Jesus Christ knows the Father. He is in the Father and we are in Christ who is in the Father.  Christ is our means of knowing the Father, and the Holy Spirit communicates this knowledge to our spirit. 

Somewhere along the way, people have forgotten about the “Father”. Back in the day of Christ’s resurrection, the people understood the grandness of the Father. They understood the Holiness of God, and they knew the stories of God’s divine intervention in the lives of their ancestors.  They understood the “fear of the Lord” and lived their lives under the banner of having been chosen by this great and Mighty albeit inapproachable Holy God. 

  Who they didn’t know, was the Son of God.  They had wrong ideas of who the Messiah was, and how He would enter into history.  The Father gave faith to as many as He called, to recognize and believe in His Son, and then many did indeed search the Scriptures and believe in Jesus Christ.  In those early days, the Holy Spirit was neglected by those who came to believe in Christ, but had never heard of the Holy Spirit Whom Jesus said He would send to His followers upon His ascension.  Until they learned of Him, they did not and could not live by the power of the Holy Spirit. They never sought the Baptism of the Holy spirit.

In this generation and point on the timeline of history, we have come full circle.  We are a people who by the grace of God, have come to believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and by the grace of God and by means of the study of His Word, have come to some understanding of the Holy Spirit (in varying degrees) but other than mentioning the Father in addressing our prayers, we have not the “fear of the Lord” which is the “beginning of wisdom”.  We have not an appreciation of His Majesty, Glory or Sovereignty.  If we did, we would not say much of what we say about God, nor have such a flippant attitude regarding sin.  We fail to fully appreciate the Providence of God and His attention to the details of our lives.  

This is not entirely our fault. We have learned to compartmentalize our faith in a society that has brainwashed people that there is such a thing as “secular”.  So we tread life with a secular mindset throughout the day, where things happen seemingly haphazardly and with no rhyme nor reason, while we only give lip service to the Sovereignty of God.  We have had no idea how undermining this is to faith. We just accept that fallacy and our experience is dampened because of this error.

If there were such a thing as “secular”, a so called “God-Free” zone, then we would have no basis to trust God in this place.  In fact, God would not be God at all if one single molecule was rogue and unmanageable. We don’t see the connection of one event to the other, so we dismiss the events of the day and conclude with a prayer of thanksgiving that our heads were kept above water.  We never consider that He may have sent the events our way, therefore, we fail to learn from them. This is not the reality of this life on earth, this is the ungodly version of it.  This is living in the enemy’s camp completely naked and ignorant.  We should thank God for His patience with us, as we trudge on in our “lack of knowledge” by which so many are destroyed. We can thank God that He has us in His hand, even though we seem to wander aimlessly in our ignorance or plunge into activities of our own design, blissfully ignorant of what the Father is doing. We have envisioned God as “out there somewhere”, when in actuality, in Him we live and move and have our being. 

 We must start to pay attention and deprogram our pattern of thinking to align with the Word of God.  If God knows the number of the hairs on your head, we have to start to understand that He knows and is in control of EVERYTHING. 

I will at some other time, address the bad things that happen in this life which seem to reinforce the erroneous notion that there must be “secular God-free” zones. That is a topic that will only distract from the point of this article, but is fully explainable given the spiritual condition of this world system.  Suffice it to say that all the while that the Israelites were trudging through the desert those 40 years, being fed by manna, being given drink from a rock, having the sea split in two in order to cross…there was a world of the ungodly demon worshipers going on elsewhere where many “bad things” happened. God was giving His attention to His people, and those who joined themselves to His people in the worship of the God of all creation. 

We, as the blood bought people of God, who are joined to Christ and have the Holy Spirit indwelling us, must gaze beyond the veil to the God side of Christ and the Father.  If we fail to gaze from the “God” side of the veil, we will not believe for the impossible.  We have allowed the limitations of our mind to define who God is. In limiting God to our limited “concept” of Him, we have created an idol.  Our minds cannot contain God, we “see through a glass darkly”. I believe this is why God strongly warned against using carved images and pictures of any animals, birds, sea creatures or man to assist in our worship of Him.  These things cannot define God and only serve to exchange the truth of God for a lie. It is offensive to God that we should gaze upon a thing of our own making, and worship it. People may say that they are not “worshiping the thing, but the god behind the thing”, but the Scriptures claim that the “god” of that image is a demon…so it is little wonder that this is odious to God.

We cannot know God apart from Christ, but Christ reveals Him to us as we abide in Him and earnestly seek to know Him. We must know the God of the Bible, the “whole” counsel of God.  We must think upon the details of God’s intervention on behalf of men to accomplish His purpose in history.  We must think upon the goodness and severity of God. We have the confidence of His love in Christ, but if we don’t understand His Holiness, we will continue to make light of sin and hinder our ability to ever know Him as He should be known. If we continue in sin, we have reason to doubt the reality of our conversion and union with Christ. Jesus did not have any good things to say about the “hypocrite”. If that charge is true in our lives, we must confess it to God, repent of it, and walk in the light of truth with integrity. He is faithful and just to forgive us…but God is not mocked, so if we are not sincere, we are wasting our time and deceiving ourselves. The Scriptures speak of the hypocrite being “cut in two and cast into outer darkness” when face to face with God. 

 By His grace, we are saved through faith in His Beloved Son, and in Him we are accepted.  He could have just as easily cast us off to hell with the rest of the unpenitent and ungodly. So fear Him who has the power to cast both soul and body into hell. But trust in Him who saved us from such a fate and continue in Him. See…the goodness and severity of God.

Our view of God is too small.  God is greater than our minds can imagine, and our minds cannot truly know Him.  Sinful man can never know Him. He sent His Word to lead us to Christ. He sent Christ to make atonement for our souls, cleanse us and make a way into the Holy of holies and He sent the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us.  He gave us faith to believe, hope to press on, and love to communicate intimately with us. We must abide in Christ, and look beyond the veil.