Stumbling

 

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.”

—Isaiah 9:2

Even when we walk in places we know well, we can lose our way in the dark, stub our toe, or run into objects. Just ask anyone who has ever tried to escape a smoky blaze in their home or other building. Bottom line: we aren’t good at walking in the dark!

In Isaiah’s time, the whole culture lived in the land of darkness with the inability to find their way, or to make sense of life. When God sent Jesus, He sent a “Light” that would help His people—including us, as well—to find the way out of a life that Satan had shrouded with sin and death.

I love the Season of Advent. It is a time of darkness that reminds us of our lost-ness, of our need for a Lamp to guide us and to light up our sin so that God can remove that sin and bring us into His glorious light. I love the reminder that no matter how dark our lives may become—with troubles, sorrows, pain, or disappointment—Christ comes to offer us His healing light.

Psalm 91 tells us that the person who dwells in the shelter of the Most High rests in His shadow of protection. I like the way Psalm 91:11 (MSG) explains our tendency to stumble and God’s ability to protect us:

He ordered his angels to guard you wherever you go. If you stumble, they’ll catch you; their job is to keep you from falling.

We have the tendency to stumble in the dark, trying to find our way into places we may have been, as well as into places we may have never been. If we try to walk in God’s way, He will give us the Light of His presence and command His angels to lift us high enough above our troubles to keep us from stubbing our toes.

During this Season of Advent, take comfort in your darkness today. Be assured that God knows the way that you take, and that He knows how to keep you from falling. Trust His hand and His guiding light. Amen!

—Posted: Monday, December 16, 2019

 

 

A Beautiful Silence

 

“The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.”

—Habakkuk 2:20

Silence adorns the Season of Advent. While the world around us goes crazy with shopping and parties, God calls us to wait in quiet for Him.

In the northern climes, nature hides the earth in a blanket of white stillness. No birds call to us from the wooded glens. Even the sleeping animals and foliage wait in quiet. We, who recall the Nativity, wait in silence for the coming celebration of our newborn Savior.

To prepare for this coming—to prepare for the Holy Spirit’s coming at any time—or for the hearing of God’s word, we should prepare in silence and wait to recognize the coming of His awesome presence. We must practice silence and wait for Him.

Can you imagine the period of silence before God first spoke, when He said, “Let there be light!”? Or, the 400-year period of silence between the last prophecy of the Old Testament from Malachi until the angel spoke to Mary? In Heaven, at the opening of the seventh seal, a half hour of silence preceded the blowing of trumpets and the message of the seven angels. (Revelation 8:1-2)

We need to pause and refresh our poor brains in silence, separating ourselves from the cacophony of our materialistic world by spending time before our God and in His written Word. Many people can find this kind of re-set walking in the penetrating stillness of nature. Others experience a re-set in the ministry of quiet music. Still others gain a re-set by contemplating great works of art. God’s written Word speaks so much more powerfully when we have prepared ourselves for its work in silence.

This silent waiting for Christ, this Advent stillness, often results in giving us the most blessedness of the Season. We know from Genesis 3:8-9 that God waited for Adam and Eve in the quietness and beauty of the Garden. He waits for companionship with us, as well. The Babe came for this very reason—to restore fellowship between heaven and earth.

This Season of Advent, let’s purposefully appreciate the anticipation and joy of waiting for the Promised One to come to us with His gifts of joy, hope, light, power, and presence. He waits this Advent Season to bless us.

—Posted: Monday, December 9, 2019

 

 

Half-Spent

 

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

—Isaiah 9:2

In the Christmas Carol from as far back as the fourteenth century, the images of the rose with its tender stem, its fragrance, and the half-spent night, remind us of the largely unnoticed way in which Jesus, the Messiah, came into our world. The first and second stanzas of the carol “Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming” use this phrase: “When half-spent was the night.”

When we think about that phrase, it suggests that the night still goes on. We continue to have darkness in our world. Yet, in the last stanza of the carol we see that “this Flower dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere.”

This tender rose depicts our Savior, who has come to us as a beautiful baby and at a time in history that God chose while things were void of His light. Depending on our circumstances, we may face a time of darkness and seeming absence of light this Advent season. But, we must remember that we do indeed have a Savior. And, we must remember that He does come to us in the darkness of our lives. When we know Him—when we look for Him and seek Him—He has promised to come in His glorious presence to us.

Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
   from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming
   as men of old have sung.
It came, a Flower bright,
   amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.

Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
   the Rose I have in mind;
With Mary we behold it,
   the virgin mother kind.
To show God’s love aright
   she bore to men a Savior,
When half-spent was the night.

This Flower, whose fragrance tender
   with sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor
   the darkness everywhere.
True man, yet very God,
   from sin and death he saves us
And lightens every load.¹

The Baylor University Chamber Singers share this lovely carol:

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1 Lo! How a Rose E’er Blooming. German Carol, Public Domain.

 

 

Sweet Ponderings

 

“I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.”

—Psalm 77:12

In this season of Thanksgiving, we need to curb our rush, even if for only a brief time, and consider the goodness of our Lord. Over and over in the Psalms, we see the admonition to give our praise and thanksgiving to God.

In Psalm 111:4 we read:

He has made His wonderful acts to be remembered; The Lord is gracious and merciful and full of loving compassion.

God intends for us to notice and meditate on the wonderful acts He does for us. He wants us to observe them and to purposefully review them. We can blow our minds, so to speak, by recounting the mercies and providences—as Christians in past centuries referred to them. Seventeenth century Presbyterian minister, John Flavel, wrote the following:¹

There is not a more pleasant history than our own lives. If you would but sit down and review, from the beginning, what God has been to you, and done for you. Consider the special manifestations and out-breakings of his mercy, faithfulness, and love in the conditions you have passed through. Let your thoughts dive as far as you can to the bottom, to plumb the depths of providence, and admire them, though we can’t touch the bottom.

If you will allow me to do so, I would like to suggest the following exercise to help us understand how God has worked in our lives:

Let us sit in a quiet place and center our minds, perhaps by reading a Psalm full of thanksgiving. Then, taking paper and pen, we should go back over our lives—yes, from the very beginning—and write down major mercies and graces that God has given to us. Think of family, education, life experiences, people, church life, health, and material goods. Think of talents and noble work afforded to us and think about our understanding of and personal relationship with God Himself.

I sincerely believe that we will encounter so many mercies and graces that God has poured into our lives that we will have trouble putting down our pens. Next, we should review our lists during this week and arrive at Thanksgiving Day with joy and gratitude in our hearts—joy like we’ve never before experienced.

Through this exercise, I believe that we will come to understand that God has given His wonderful acts for us see and to remember!

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1 Flavel, John (author) and Richard Rushing, editor. Voices from the Past: Puritan Devotional Reading, Vol. 2. Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2016. p. 272.

 

 

Rest

 

“The fruit of righteousness will be peace; the effect of righteousness will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.”

—Isaiah 32:17-18

Through the Prophet Isaiah, God gives us a picture of rest as He intends it. Our world does everything it can to prevent such rest, to rile us up, to give us fear instead of confidence, and to take away our faith in the God of Peace. Even though God allows troubles in our experience, He wants us to see Him and His powerful rest in the midst of these troubles. Rest does not come naturally. We learn it from Him.

Scottish evangelist of the 19th century, Henry Drummond, puts it this way:¹

Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception of rest. The first chose for his scene a still, lone lake among the far-off mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with a fragile birch-tree bending over the foam; at the fork of a branch, almost wet with the cataract’s spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first was only Stagnation: the last was Rest. For in rest there are always two elements—tranquility and energy; silence and turbulence; creation and destruction; fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ.

Christ’s life outwardly was one of the most troubled lives that was ever lived: Tempest and tumult, tumult and tempest, the waves breaking over it all the time till the worn body was laid in the grave. But the inner life was a sea of glass. The great calm was always there. At any moment you might have gone to Him and found Rest. And even when the bloodhounds were dogging Him in the streets of Jerusalem He turned to His disciples and offered them, as a last legacy, “My Peace.”

We would think that the absence of trouble would spell rest, but as we read here, it consists of peace in the midst of trouble. As Peter quickly learned on the Sea of Galilee, Jesus makes the peace available (see Matthew 14:22-33). However, our focus must be on Him, rather than on the storm. We must rely on the inward voice of His Holy Spirit, and not the roar of the waterfall.

Have you learned this kind of rest? God wants to teach all of us the same strong confidence and quietness that only comes from Him. I pray we all find it, to the praise of His glory!

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1 Drummond, Henry. The Greatest Thing in the World and Other Addresses. London: Collins, Public Domain. pp. 117, 119

 

 

Remember Who You Are

 

“Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

—Matthew 5:16

We are the Vincent Chorus.
We will look our best, perform our best,
    and act our best.
We represent our chorus, our school
    and our families.
They have allowed us to proudly show what
    kind of singers and students we are.
We will not disappoint them.

I always had my chorus children recite this mantra before every concert and every field trip. I wanted them to rise to their very best when representing from where they came.

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his sermons on the “Sermon on the Mount,” spends sixteen chapters telling Christians who we have become in Christ. He begins with the Beatitudes and describes us in terms of poverty of spirit, mourners over sin, meek, hungry for righteousness, merciful, peacemakers, and how we behave as persecuted people. Then He compares us to salt and light.

But, when he gets to the seventeenth chapter, he goes from describing Christians to reminding us of how we manifest this essential character we carry with us. He says:

We are children of God and citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Because of that, we have to manifest the characteristics of such people. We do this in order to manifest His glory, so that others may be brought to glorify Him.¹

Because Jesus came directly from the Father, He was not a Pharisee, or trained as a Pharisee. He detested their interpretation of the Law and the Prophets. He sought to live and teach a new way of living. Jesus did not abolish the Scriptures. But, He fulfilled them in new and vibrant ways, which caused the Pharisees to criticize Him. And, He wanted His followers to see the difference so they could properly represent themselves, as Christians, in His footprints.

Upon careful study, we often learn that the Old Testament Scriptures taught unorthodox ways compared to the leaders in Jesus’ day who were exponents of the Pharisaical laws. Jesus taught us to follow Him, to represent Him, to apprehend the spirit of the Law, so that the world might know He has come to bring a new way of living empowered by His Holy Spirit.

Just as I wanted my chorus children to represent a different character from what culture believes children should look like, sound like, and behave like, so Jesus wants us to proudly represent Him and His Kingdom to the world. This will happen only as we live by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, which He has given us, and as we study His written Word to understand His ways for us. Then, let the world sit up and take notice!

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1 Lloyd-Jones, Martyn D. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co./Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1971. p. 180.

 

 

A Unique, Beautiful Frame

 

“Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.”

—Psalm 16:5-6

When looking at a picture, do you notice the frame? The frame can either enhance or detract from the picture it holds. It can reflect as much beauty as the picture. I am convinced that our lives compare to frames. They get more ornate as the years add up and reflect the imagination of God the Creative Artist who fashions them.

As time works on us, our struggles bring out a rich patina to the metal. The trials and deadly effects of life add swirls and cut deep into the wood, adding carved designs to the frame. In the end, we realize that Romans 8:28 has become true for us:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Recently, in preparing to teach from 1 Samuel about Samuel’s mother, Hannah, I came across this quote about her:¹

When Hannah took a very young Samuel to Shiloh and knelt with him in worship before leaving him behind to serve the Lord all the days of his life, the frame around her words was her long history of infertility and persecution for her faith in God. Hannah knelt in prayer that day within the context of a relationship with God that had withstood the tests of time and adversity.

When we feel the effects of wear and tear on our bodies, or the scraping and carving of the knife on our emotions and heart, we must realize that God considers the unique, beautiful frame with which He has surrounded us.

Our prayers and our words of encouragement to others have been framed by those circumstances that God the Artist has allowed us to experience. The picture may not be completed yet. Nevertheless, along with the finished frame, that picture will sometime reveal a more beautiful piece of art than we have ever realized.

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1 James, Carolyn Custis. Lost Women of the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2005. p. 132.