We Had Heard

 

“As we have heard, so have we seen.”

—Psalm 48:8

I had heard about and seen pictures of Pikes Peak in Colorado for many years. In fact, I showed pictures to classes as I taught “America the Beautiful” written by Katherine Lee Bates from the top of that mountain. But, I had never seen it for myself. Then one summer my husband and I traveled to Colorado Springs and drove up the mountains to the Peak. I experienced something much broader and bigger than I imagined. The winding, treacherous road, the clear air above the timber-line, the steep climbs, the breathtaking views from the summit, all gave me a much more vivid view of this great mountain.

In Scripture, we find several examples of persons experiencing the wonders of God for themselves that they may have only heard about before. In Psalm 48, the people recount the deliverances of the Lord in their past history. They exclaimed together:

“We had heard about God’s mighty acts. We heard the stories from childhood, but now, in our own time, we have actually seen them for ourselves.”

In the book of Job, we read the story of God’s servant whose life God allowed Satan to devastate. Job suffered great torture and never knew the reason. Yet, he didn’t give up on God. At the very end of his story in Job 42:5, Job confessed to God:

“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”

Job’s experience far outweighed the stories about God. In 1 John 1:1, the Apostle describes what he and others had experienced of God:

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.”

Here again, the early church gave great significance to the experience of seeing and knowing Christ. The Apostle Paul also recognized the importance of a personal knowledge of God. In Philippians 3:10, he yearned:

“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Do we want to know Christ in this way, by experience? God invites us to come near, to know Him, to experience the way of life He offers, and to no longer live only on the encounters of others.

 

 

By Hap

 

“She gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on the part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.”

—Ruth 2:3 KJV

Sometimes the language of the King James Version of the Bible catches my attention in a way that the modern translations don’t. When Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote his devotional book, Morning and Evening, he used the word “hap”—a word that was quite familiar at the time of his writing in the mid-1800s. It means “by happenstance,” or “taking place by coincidence, or chance.”

The unknown author of the Old Testament Book of Ruth tells the story about how Ruth, seemingly by chance, gleaned in the field of her mother-in-law’s relative Boaz. Here’s what Spurgeon wrote about the story: ¹

Ruth had gone forth with her mother’s blessing, under the care of her mother’s God, to humble but honourable toil, and the providence of God was guiding her every step. Little did she know that amid the sheaves she would find a husband, that he should make her the joint owner of all those broad acres, and that she a poor foreigner should become one of the progenitors of the great Messiah. God is very good to those who trust in Him, and often surprises them with unlooked for blessings.

If we stop to consider carefully the days of our own lives, most of us would see times when things that seemed “by hap” actually turned out to have occurred by the design of our Sovereign God. Along this vein, I read an account of the day Christian artist and author, Joni Eareckson Tada, had the diving accident that left her a quadriplegic for life.

Joni’s sister, Kathy, was at the beach with Joni. She stayed near the shore and suddenly felt a sharp pinch by a crab and screamed to Joni to watch for crabs. Because Joni didn’t respond, Kathy immediately went looking for her and ended up saving her from drowning. Kathy writes, speaking of God: ²

From the big events in life down to the tiniest of details, He is great, He is sovereign, and He is in control.

When we are tempted to think that we have experienced a coincidence, we must remember that, as God’s dearly loved children, our Heavenly Father sovereignly looks out for us, directs our ways, uses us in the lives of others, and yearns to have us honor Him with our thanksgiving for all that He so graciously does for us. In the lives of those of us who belong to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, there simply is no such thing as “by hap”!

______________________

1 Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. Morning and Evening. McLean VA: MacDonald Publishing Company, Public Domain. p. 599.

2 Tada, Joni Eareckson. Pearls of Great Price. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2006. Devotional for July 19th.

 

 

Beyond

 

“No one is like you, O Lord; you are great, and your name is mighty in power … Among all the wise men of the nations and in all their kingdoms, there is no one like you.”

—Jeremiah 10:6-7

Sometimes I hear people questioning to what the “Beyond” in the chain store Bed, Bath and Beyond^® refers. But, it got me thinking about that English word, and two Scripture passages containing it.

Perhaps the first passage came to me in an especially difficult time. From 2 Corinthians 1:8, I recalled:

We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.

Many will say that God never gives us any burdens we can’t bear alone. I’m not so sure. He wants to grow us to the point in which we have no strength left in ourselves, so that He can show us His mighty power at work in and for us. When we run out of our ability to endure, we can count on His power to take over.

I know this because I read about this power in another of the Apostle Paul’s words found in Ephesians 3:20-21 (NASB):

Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

Our God gives us trials beyond our abilities to endure so that He can do what goes abundantly beyond all that we could even imagine!

In response, I repeat to you from a contemporary hymn:¹

O God beyond all praising,
    we worship you today
And sing the love amazing
    that songs cannot repay;
For we can only wonder
    at every gift you send,
At blessings without number
    and mercies without end;
We lift our hearts before you
    and wait upon your word,
We honor and adore you,
    our great and mighty Lord.

The only thing we can do when God shows His “beyondness” over our weakness is to offer Him our thanks and praise in such a way that honors His wonderful name. Amen and Hallelujah!

______________________

1 Perry, Michael. O God Beyond All Praising. Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing Co., 1982.

 

 

The Cows are Out!

 

“You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.”

—Psalm 139:5

“The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

—Psalm 16:6

Usually the call came from my dad, frantically yelling into the house, “The cows are out!” That meant everyone had to jump into action and move out into the backyard, or road, or wherever the family herd had meandered.

Cows do not seem to have the intelligence that you would expect from animals that produce so much of our food. So, they quite frequently get themselves into serious trouble.

The cows, when out of the barn, or a fenced in area, have to be corralled and driven back where they belong. If the barn door gets accidently left open, or the gate gets broken down by weather or struck by a piece of farm equipment, the animals take that as an invitation to explore a world they have only observed from afar.

On the several farms my family members own, stray cows have been known to peer into house windows—even licking them repeatedly. They will stand ankle deep in freshly seeded lawns or flower gardens. And yes, they have even ended up in the family swimming pool.

Cows are curious creatures, and sometimes they just want to try new adventures. And, it seems that they believe the grass might truly be greener and taste sweeter outside the fenced-in meadow.

Truthfully, in all too many cases, we’re not unlike those cows. Sometimes we just wander off. For no apparent reason we take advantage of an “open gate” and launch off into someplace we really shouldn’t go. We just drift away from the safety of God’s best place for us. We, like the cows, don’t see the warning signs—like “speeding traffic” or “a pool of water eight feet deep.”

How many times do we get dissatisfied with certain aspects of our own lives and take it upon ourselves to explore new vistas, even sinful ones we know will lead us down the wrong path. Discontent can provoke us to move into dangerous territory. How do we avoid getting “outside” the boundary lines that God has assigned to us?

First of all, we need to stay close to our Heavenly Guardian. If we ask, He will remind us that we are getting too near unhealthy and ungodly associations, temptations, or influences.

Secondly, we need to very insistently and very carefully watch out for ourselves. Proverbs 4 instructs us to guard instruction, guard our hearts, and pay close attention to our paths. We do this by staying close to God’s written Word, and by remaining vigilant against the evil suggestions of our culture and of our enemy, Satan, who 1 Peter 5:8 tells us:

“…prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

We should gratefully submit to the instructions of God’s written Word and to His known will for us. In addition, when we seem penned-in to some place where we would rather not live, we should consistently trust God’s grace.

If we belong to Christ, when we do stray from the center of His will for us, we can be assured that He diligently calls out His heavenly crew of angels to get us back inside the fence of His divine and perfect will. But, how much better for us and for our witness to the watching world, if we stay out of the places where we don’t belong—places of ruin that we can certainly avoid!