On Sabbath Rest

This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
In quietness and trust is your strength,
But you would have none of it.
You said, ‘No, we will flee on horses.’
Therefore you will flee!
You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!
A thousand will flee at the threat of one;
At the threat of five you will all flee away,
Till you are left like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
Like a banner on a hill.”

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you…
- Isaiah 30:15-18 NIV

Repentance, rest, quietness, trust… How many times throughout the Scriptures does God offer them? How many different ways does He call us to them? They are our avenues to salvation and strength, He says, but so many of us refuse to go there.

As good as His offer looks on the parchment pages of our Bible, at our gut-level we still believe that the battle is to the swift and the relentless. So we imagine we’re speeding aggressively toward our goals… but I think that if we pull up and listen, in reality we’re being pursued by fears, fleeing before the cries of the enemy: Faster! Faster! There’s no telling what might happen if you stop!

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to us. To give us soul-rest and quietness of mind, to firm up our trust in Him, to reconnect us with Himself. And “Sabbath” is one way to get there from here.

Do you have a Day Set Apart, something built into your week that takes you out of the stampede? If not, I challenge you to get out pen and paper, and list – honestly – the reason(s) why not.

How does it look on paper? Talk to God about it. Don’t be defensive – He’s only offering to ease your burden. Don’t be suspicious– it’s impossible for Him to take anything from you and replace it with something inferior. Don’t be afraid. He’s far more powerful than the pursuers in your life.

And He knows that repentance and rest and quietness and trust will make you strong, and allow you to stand victoriously… even while others are beating a hasty retreat on swift horses.

*find excellent practical help in Discipleship Journal's archives - go to: http://www.navpress.com/magazines/archives/search.aspx (copy into browser) and type "sabbath" into the search box.

Can We Get There From Here?

“You can’t get there from here,” is the saying. What a discouraging word! I think it’s the message that Satan and his forces are lobbing at many of us, day in and day out, along with messages like:

“You can’t become a spiritual giant.”
“You’re an extreme case… far harder than the ordinary person”
“You’ll never overcome that stronghold.”
“You don’t have the strength [or perseverance or commitment or spiritual maturity] required.”
“The promises in the Bible weren’t meant for your situation.”
“You can’t expect victory yet – you haven’t suffered or struggled long enough.”
“Besides, victory won’t last – remember your other failures?”
“Is all the effort worth it? Look what it’s costing you.”

Rest assured, the enemy of our souls would love to badger us throughout FAC’s upcoming Sunday morning sermon series, Roots, with its focus on Sabbath keeping, solitude & silence, prayer, fasting, and celebration. And we’ll help Satan out if we bring an unteachable, suspicious, or defensive spirit - anything to harden the topsoil of our hearts and make it easy for him to snatch truth away before it can take root.

For he knows that these “spiritual disciplines” do make a way for us to get there from here. To become like Christ. To gain victory over habits that disgust us and harm our relationships and our testimony. To climb the mountaintop and look down on the things that once towered over us.

So why should we accept one discouraging word from the father of lies? On our way from here to there, it would be far more helpful to listen to the Author of Truth:

"You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
"I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly."
"Take My yoke upon you and learn of me, and you shall find rest… for My yoke is easy and my burden is light."
"All things are possible to him that believes."

In other words, we can do it! We can get there from here. We can experience victory where defeat had so often reigned, and freedom where we had been bound, and rest where we had worked so hard in our own strength. The spiritual disciplines will be like friendly guides to show us the way.

So over these next weeks, bring to morning worship a humble, teachable spirit, a willingness to change, and a commitment to obey whatever He says. Bring an expectant faith in His encouraging words… and let the adventure begin!

Holy Awe

“Everyone was filled with awe” (Acts 2:43).

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote,
“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes –
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”

We were challenged this past Sunday to be a team, a team devoted, like the early church in Acts, to instruction, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. Devotion is a concept that gets my attention, because the life verse the Lord gave me some years ago comes from Jeremiah 30:21: “Who is he who will devote himself to be close to me?”

So I’ve been trying to learn more and more about this thing called devotion – what it is and what it looks like in practice. And I’ve gotten at least this far: It’s much easier to be devoted to something that fills you with awe. That’s bigger than you, bigger than anything else on the horizon of your life.

The bigger I see God to be, the easier it is to be devoted to Him. The early church was filled with awe (or “reverential fear,” as the Amplified puts it); Am I? Are we? The best description I’ve read of that awe was written by A.W. Tozer in Worship: The Missing Jewel of the Evangelical Church. He writes that real worship is made up of :

Boundless confidence. You cannot worship a Being you cannot trust.
Admiration. Appreciation of the excellency of God… to the point of wonder and delight.
Fascination. Entranced with who God is, and struck with astonished wonder at the inconceivable elevation and magnitude and splendor of Almighty God.
Adoration. To love God with all the power within us… with fear and wonder and yearning and awe.

Do you see how often he mentions wonder? But to make it an ingredient of our worship, we desperately need eyes to see God for Who He really is. We need those eyes opened by His Spirit; we need to turn them away from everything else and focus them on God. As individuals, and as a team.

When that happens, you can be sure that we’ll set our blackberry pails aside, the shoes will come off, and we will worship God together in holy awe.

Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds

“Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.” (1 Cor. 16:13 NIV)

I’m not sure if Pastor Rick mentioned the word “tumbleweed” when he got to this verse on Sunday, or if it just popped into my head as he spoke, but suddenly I was whisked back to the old Sons of the Pioneer hit song by Bob Nolan, a cowboy tune that I listened to years ago (and it was years ago!), “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.”

See them tumbling down
Pledging their love to the ground
Lonely but free I'll be found
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

A rather romanticized look at the unattached, solitary, drifting tumbleweed, to be sure. A more realistic picture is given by Judy Henning at http://phoenix.about.com/od/desertplantsandflowers/a/tumbleweed.htm

“The tumbleweed is often thought of as the symbol of the American West. Actually, it isn't native to North America at all, but was brought to this country (unintentionally) by Ukrainian farmers. The tumbleweed really is a weed, and its real name is the Russian thistle. Tumbleweeds aren't considered as having any redeeming value except for the fact that they are interesting to watch as they tumble about… [It] is a round, bushy, plant that grows to about 3 feet. At maturity it breaks off at the base and because it is rounded, it tumbles in the wind. There is a natural purpose to this tumbling--the tumbleweed can produce up to 250,000 seeds, and the tumbling serves to spread those seed wherever it tumbles, guaranteeing that there will be more tumbleweeds in the future… Don't try to catch a tumbling tumbleweed. Ouch!!”

According to Judy and other experts, the tumbleweed is truly that – a weed, and a thistly, unfriendly one at that. A curiosity that’s of little real use. And it likes to make more of its own kind!

I think Paul is warning us against becoming (or remaining) tumbleweeds, with our only redeeming value being that we’re interesting to watch as we tumble about. It’s so easy to tumble from church to church, relationship to relationship, job to job. We even tumble from spiritual highs to spiritual lows and back again, constantly, like spiritual boomerangs. Sometimes these changes are good, or at least unavoidable… but not always. And not as a pattern. Often they’re the product of our restlessness, rootlessness, carnality and selfishness. Ouch!

Rather, Paul urges us to “Stand firm. Let God dig that tumbleweed disposition out of you. Root yourselves in the Word and soak up something valuable that God can use to nourish those around you. Bloom exactly where you are planted.”

Then when the high winds come, we’ll remain where God put us, doing what He called us to do. And instead of tumbling about and making more tumbleweeds like ourselves, we’ll be encouraging others to stand firm, too – more like that steadfast believer described in Ps. 1:3…

“He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither” (NIV). That’s no romanticized ideal. It’s really possible for tumbleweeds today.

When a Seed Dies

I know a lot of people are spooked by cemeteries; they avoid visiting them whenever possible. Myself, I’ve always kinda liked them. Especially the old ones with unique tombstone shapes and meaningful – or at least interesting - epitaphs.

I used to stay each summer at a church camp in Pleasantville, and take regular strolls through the nearby cemetery. One tombstone was shaped like a large dog (that guy sure must have loved his pet), a second was heart-shaped, and many others were unique and eye-catching. Under the shade of towering pines, hundreds of graves lay peaceful and quiet (except for the chattering of squirrels and the thump-thump of pine cones falling to the ground).

But some of you are shuddering at the suggestion of finding peace and quiet in such a place. So…maybe it would help if we thought of a cemetery as a garden. That’s what it is, isn’t it? Row upon row of many seeds, planted and awaiting germination.

Edward Markquart, a Lutheran pastor on the West coast, once consulted Dr. Gibbe, a professor with a Ph.D. in plant physiology. Pastor Markquart informed the prof that he was planning a sermon on John 12:24, and asked him, “Can you tell me what happens when a seed dies?.” In a sermon entitled "When a Seed Dies," the pastor shares what he found out:

“He told me that inside every seed is an embryo, and in that embryo is a root which goes down into the ground; and a shoot that goes up into the sky. Every embryo has a root and a shoot; and inside that little embryo, (and this is really a miracle), there is an ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that seeds have ‘on’ and ‘off’ switches. But they do…

“And when you plant a seed into the ground at 40 degrees for 40 days, that mechanism goes on, but if the temperature is at 20 degrees, the mechanism stays off… Now there is also a thin coat around that seed which protects the oxygen from coming in prematurely. And then when this dormant seed is planted into the ground, for 40 days at 40 degrees, the switch goes "on" and the seed takes in water, and it miraculously begins to expand, and the seed coat is broken, and it begins to mature and produces sugar and protein; and then out comes the little roots and the little shoots, and the shoots produce more seeds which produce more fruit. ‘And that’s what happens when a seed dies,’ said the professor. ‘It's a miracle.’”

What will come forth from that broken, dead seed-coat? The garden gives a hint. Those pink-coated corn kernels my dad and I used to bury in the soil were given new “bodies” – towering, tassled, and ear-laden. Tan seeds, large and flat, came up as golden butternuts squash. And the zuchinni seeds… well, need I say more? It’s all much more, much better, much grander, than what was originally planted.

Which makes the grave of each who have died in the Lord a mystery-filled place, bursting with eternal potential, just waiting for the switch to go “on”… and a split-second germination process to be fulfilled.

Almost makes you want to take a walk in a cemetery, doesn’t it?