Silence, Listening, Waiting, Confidence & Blessings

I've asked God to teach me...to show me how to depend on Him and not on myself so that I will know that it is Him and not me or anyone else that supplies my need. God is my source but how he gives it, through others, etc. is the resource. Today's My Utmost For His Highest talks about vision...God's vision that he gives to us. Chambers says that God puts us in the shadow of His hand and it is our duty to be still and listen. He says that when the darkness comes, we should just wait. God will make us in accordance with the vision He has given us if we wait. He talks about how Abraham went through 13 years of silence that his self-suffiency was destroyed in those years of waiting. I must admit that I really don't like to wait...I don't want to wait 13 years or even 13 months! God help me!

Chambers then talks about where our confidence should be: not in God's blessings, in myself, in others, in books or in prayers and ectasies. My confidence should be in God, Himself. I have been kind of stuck on Malachi 3:10-12 where it talks about tithes and offerings. I haven't seen or been able to see God's promise of blessing being poured out that I wouldn't have room enough to receive it and the stopping of my crops being devoured by pests. I'm now wondering if the blessing I should expect is God, Himself! This takes me right back to the song we sing Enough: All of you is more than enough for all of me; for every thirst and every need. You satisfy me with your love and all I have in you is more than enough.

I'm wondering if and how and what waiting and listening in silence for God to make me in accordance with the vision and receiving God's blessing (whether it's Himself or other types) have to do with each other. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

Too deep!

Have You Ever Been Alone With God? Part 2

Today, Oswald Chambers talks about, His Solitude with Us. He talks about how God gets us alone...by affliction, heartbreak, or temptation, by disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted affection, by a broken friendship, or by a new friendship--What drives you to God? Sometimes the only way that God can get any time alone with us is by allowing what we think are bad things to happen to us because He knows that when these things happen, that we will turn to Him. Chambers goes on to say that when God gets us absolutely alone, we are dumbfounded, and cannot ask one question, then He (God) begins to expound. God desires for us to spend time with Him, quality time. Time when it's not always us talking, asking for stuff. Time just enjoy Him and He you. Time not thinking about anything other than God. I wonder if when God and Adam walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening, if at times they were content to just to be in each other's presence without talking, but they knew the other's heart? I believe that it is in these times of Silence and Solitude that we learn to hear God speak to us more clearly, more intimately. I believe that it is in these times of Silence & Solitude that God can and will do His best work of healing, molding, shaping, transforming us into the image of His Son.

Have You Ever Been Alone With God?

Yesterday's and today's "My Utmost For His Highest" are key to practicing Silence & Solitude and the rest of the Prayer disciplines (contemplative, listening, etc.), the title for both is Have You Ever Been Alone With God? Yesterday's was about Our Solitude with Him, and it talks about how Jesus takes us alone and expounds only on the things when we can understand them and how God is making us spell out our own souls. That tells me that I should not be comparing myself with how my brother or sister is doing, but should be focusing on what God is doing in me. To back this up, Oswald says that this expounding is slow work, so slow that it takes God all time and eternity to make a man and woman after His own purpose. It is a slow and sometimes painful process. This reminds me of the times when Jesus asked His disciples, "are you yet without understanding?" as He did in Matthew 15:16.

Chambers tells us that we have to allow God to take us through all the crooks and crannies of our character. I wonder if my crooks and crannies are like a maze. He tells us that we don't know all there is to know about ourselves and that we need to give up the idea that we understand ourselves. God is the only One who truly understands us. I must admit that I have tried to understand me and found that I don't. Last night, I heard something that was key...we, or rather I desire to be God, desire to be the Creator and not the creature. For me, this is all about intellect and wanting and trying to know everything. Which is the same sin of Lucifer.

Last year, I heard God tell me that He wanted me to teach to learn. For a while I didn't know what that meant, and still only have a small taste of what it means. You have to know that I love to read books and I love studying the Bible! But, it was for the wrong reasons...to obtain knowledge. Obtaining knowledge in itself isn't wrong, but, if it doesn't bring life to me, then I do not need to obtain it. Again, last night, someone said something that really made me sit up and take notice...they said (actually it was part of a prayer) that God is not interested in right and wrong, but in life and death. I can now see how all my studying of the Bible and reading of books didn't bring me life, because I was only getting knowledge and not applying what I was learning. So, I believe that part of what God meant when He told me to teach to learn is to teach from out of my life experience, not from a book. That, for me, is difficult because it makes me have to really study...me...my life...it makes me really have to get in a mode of listening to God...it makes me have to depend more on God, than on what I have obtained through just my knowledge.

Sunday, my Pastor mentioned this book by Frederick Buechner: Listening To Your Life. Spiritual Disciplines help me to listen to my life...the life that God has given me in Him.

More thoughts on Psalm 23

I've had some more thoughts on Psalm 23; particularly on verses 3 & 4:

Rest & restoration = coming to Christ to be saved. Jesus says in Mathew 11:28-30, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."(KJV) Psalms 23 begins the same way: "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake."(KJV) Jesus wants me to find rest and restoration when I come to Him. In Jesus is the only place where I will find complete rest and restoration from my sin, from my independence or self-dependence. And by the way, since I am still a work in progress, I can go back to Jesus for rest and restoration
whenever I need to.

Jesus, Himself, found rest in the Father as the Father led Him through the valley of the shadow of death when He went to the Garden of Gethsemane. The valley of the shadow of death brings about a seemingly separation from God. This is why the shadow of death is just that, a shadow. Even though it may seem like death and even feel like death, it's not death. Death is separation from God and we are not ever really separated from God. And even if we are, this separation or death is only a temporary separation, not a permanent one for the believer. That's why it can only be a shadow of death. . .whether it's physical death or death of self-dependence. We, just like Jesus, are never separated from God for long, if at all, once we enter the valley of the shadow of death.

Psalm 23

I always end my quiet time with Psalm 23. Each time I do, I marvel at the progression the that Psalm and how it starts out with the Lord leading us to rest and restoration then through paths of righteousness that takes us through the valley of the shadow of death. Notice how death isn't real, it is only a shadow (more about that later.) Notice, also, how the Lord's rod and staff comforts us. I'm going to stop here for now, because I want to have a Selah moment. I will definitely explore this more!

I'm interested in any thoughts that others may have, too.

A Selah Moment

I just read "My Utmost For His Highest". It's about the disciplines, Worship, Silence and Solitude. It's about finding a quiet place away from the crowds, away from the world, to worship our God. Sometimes, worship for me is just sitting in complete silence (quieting my mind, my emotions, and my heart), sitting in complete solitude (with no else around and no distractions) in God's presence, just enjoying Him. Not talking to Him, not asking for anything, but just being with Him.

A good friend of mine has told me more than once that the mark of a good friendship is when you can be with another person and not feel pressure to talk to each other and you still enjoy each other's company even if you're not talking. Now, at those times, she was talking about human to human, however, I'm talking about Spirit to spirit, God to human, human to God. And I think this is more than the mark of a good friendship, I believe that this may be the mark of a God friendship! Selah (Pause and calmly think about that!)

Breathe on me Breath of God

Happy New Year!

I was reading "My Utmost For His Highest" this morning. I had some thoughts about what it says.

First Oswald Chambers talks about how "Peter had denied Jesus with oaths and curses," I thought about the rest of the disciples. It seems to me that they denied Jesus to by "forsaking" Jesus and "fleeing". Peter did it in a more open, bold way as only Peter could do! This is the Peter who asked to walk on the water; this is the Peter who challenged when Jesus told him that He was going to die; this is, also, the Peter who proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God; this is the Peter who cut of the man's ear in Gethsemane. All through Scripture we see Peter, right or wrong, good or bad, boldly doing, saying. Peter was the bold one. He wasn't afraid to look foolish before Christ. This is one of the reasons I believe Jesus chose him to be his disciple, to be in His inner circle. He had 3 who appeared to be closer to Him than the rest; John (the disciple He loved); James (John's brother) and Peter (the one who verbally denied Him). Jesus had told Peter "And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren."(KJV) I believe this relates to Peter denial of Christ. After the denial, look at what Jesus tells Peter to do, 'when thou art converted'. Jesus tells Peter to 'strengthen thy brethen.' Jesus saw the true Peter. Jesus saw who Peter was created to be. Jesus knew that Peter was a diamond in the rough. He sees this in all of us and wants to help us to be the jewel he has created us to be, inspite of the right or wrong, good or bad in all of us. But we have to first "come to the end of ourselves" (back to Oswald) "and all of our self-sufficiency. We have to realize that "there is not one strand of ourselves that we can ever rely upon again and in our destitution, we will be in a fit condition to receive an impartation from the risen Lord." We must see that "no matter what changes God has wrought in us, to never rely upon them, but to build only on a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and on the Spirit He gives." Breathe on me, Breath of God!

Over the past week, I have come to realize these very things. I have seen and continue to see how my sin, me trying to fulfill myself, my needs because of my hurt, pain and woundedness hurts God. He wants me to depend only on Him to meet my every need. We sing this song at NCC that has become my mantra: "All of you is more than enough for all of me for every thirst and every need. You satisfy me with you love and all I have in you is more than enough." Don't get me wrong, I know I need people in my life, as well, but, I had been seeking out the people to meet my needs instead of seeking out God to meet them in whatever way He sees fit; whether through the people He brings into my life or through some other avenue. Although I haven't quite discovered just how to totally depend on God, I trying to stay open and listen with my heart and learn and apply. Breathe on me Breath of God!