In Love’s Disguise – for Lovers of God

A Child is Born

Here’s an excerpt from God with Us: A Walk Through the Gospels. I especially thought it would be good to think about the “reason for the season” and hope you enjoy this.

 In Love’s Disguise

Through waters of pain and blood

God’s blessings flood!

The Messiah’s birth, He’s come at last

But without a single trumpet blast

 

In answer to our deepest longing

He slips into our world disarming

All that keeps us far from Him

He’s come to annihilate our sin

 

Can He smell the beasts and dung?

Or know His angels have just sung?

Did He hear Eve’s groans of pain?

And feel the shock of air like icy rain?

 

God with skin, so velvet soft—

Is scratched by straw and bound by cloth

The curse of Eden forgotten by joy;

in this wonderful, tiny, baby boy

 

In awe the angels’ Maker now—

fills tiny lungs—and, so, they bow

They tremble at His needy cry—

for this is none but El Shaddai

 

Eternity and Time meet as one—

The Ancient of Days is Mary’s son

To our breast we bring Him near—

and hold Him close, so very dear

 

Creator of Life is in our care;

for our pain He too will share

For since the days of the Fall,

None has seen God’s face at all

 

Now in the manger crude He lies

Wrapped in Love’s disguise

 

Expectant after Gabriel’s visit, Mary awaits The Promise. For nine months, her hopes grow with the holy Seed within. Can she understand this mystery? She’s never known a man. Her child, the angel said, was God’s only begotten Son—the one of whom the prophets wrote:

“For unto us a Child is given;And the government will be upon His shoulder.And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.”

Here is an ancient prophecy from Micah:

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.’”

 

 WONDER JUST A LITTLE

Let this sink in. Almighty God became an embryo, grew into a baby boy, grew into a youth, grew into a man. He was like each and every one of us. We take this for granted because we really can’t grasp this wonder. Let’s ask ourselves a few questions. Why did God choose to come to earth as a baby? Why did he become a vulnerable, needy, baby boy? He could have visited the earth as a man as he had done before. What motivated him to do this? What purpose did it serve that he became one of us—including the need to cut teeth, learn to crawl, walk, and talk? He grew in wisdom—which means he learned.

Can you imagine the Word of God eventually picking up words of Aramaic in order to speak? He is wisdom itself! By his Word, all things exist.

Can you see his parents’ delight in their toddler’s first steps? Imagine, the engineer of the universe toddled. It’s simply too overwhelming to comprehend.

This mystery of God’s incarnation is far too comfortable a notion in our minds. We are way too numb. Once in a while our hearts are awakened with wonder. A shock of truth makes its way through the layers of indifference. When Jesus walked on water, he shocked a few people. He did this after years of being an ordinary person, hidden in the ordinary lives around him. But Jesus was no ordinary human being. He was fully God as well as fully man. That is why he came the way he did. He wanted to be fully human.

We must ask another question. Why did he live that hidden, ordinary life for so long? Thirty years? What do these things tell us about God’s inner life—his heart—about his motives?

Is it possible God simply wanted to love and be loved? He wanted to be known, and he knew we couldn’t know him because he was too far above and removed from us. Did he want to be handled and held? Intimately known? There is something very tender about God’s desire to be loved in this way. Why did God desire to experience all that we experience?

Imagine what this meant to a simple carpenter named Joseph. The Lord of heaven and earth, as a baby, began a face-to-face, long-term, intimate relationship with him as “his son.” Vulnerable for the first time, God completely entrusted himself to the very creatures he made. Mary and Joseph were chosen for the most privileged roles of the Ages. How could an ordinary man, called to be an ordinary dad, be the “dad” to Divinity? How could a young woman bear the Creator in her womb?

Did Joseph and Mary know they held their own Maker when they held little Jesus? Did Joseph realize that when he taught Jesus how to work with his hands, that his son’s hands had made him? Did Mary and Joseph ever tremble at the scope of responsibility placed upon their shoulders? Perhaps Jesus’ full identity remained a mystery to them during his life. If they could have fully comprehended the truth, they couldn’t have raised Jesus as a normal child.

Yet this great mystery—the earthly life and mission of Jesus—was the drastic means God took, the tremendous lengths he went to, to bring “Eden” life to us. Eden means delight.

How God longs for intimacy with us. He couldn’t give any more of himself than he did in the way he came to us, and he couldn’t have better proved his love to us than in the way he showed it to us. Now we know God’s unrelenting, surpassing, surprising, everlasting love.

Merry Christmas.    Margaret Montreuil, http://www.oneheartpublications.com

Nurturing the Reflective Life – for Lovers of God

I have come to my garden . . .

October 2009, Sea of Galilee

When we encounter God, it is often not during our devotional times. Sometimes a shock of grace suddenly floods over us while doing some mundane task. Once it happened to me while walking down a school hall before a parent-teacher conference. The goodness of God, and his love for my children, seemed to come out of nowhere and overwhelmed me. God’s active Presence or touches of virtue show up at the most unexpected places. He enjoys surprising us. The reason for this is that communion with God is initiated on both sides—God’s and ours.

How he longs for us to notice him, to appreciate whatever it is he is doing. He goes to extremes to capture our attention. Much of the time, we don’t recognize his nudges and whispers, or that he has just orchestrated some event or happenstance especially for us. But if we try to be more aware of him, our lives can become prayer itself.

Brother Lawrence, who is known for “Practicing the Presence of God,” said this: “It’s rude to ignore a friend who is in your company.”

His prayer life was a habit that he cultivated. It wasn’t easy for him at first. Nor is it easy for us. But if we can have that kind of intimacy with Him, we’d be truly blessed. After all, we are to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).

Prayer can be simply a natural expression of being attentive to God. When we learn to savor God, to enjoy his company, and appreciate the things he is doing, then we are truly alive.  It is to live in “holy ordinariness.”

At first glance, this seems like an oxymoron, but it really isn’t, not if “your life is hidden in Christ with God” (Col. 3:3).

First of all, God is holy and we are ordinary. Put the two together, we have holy-ordinariness. This explains the life of “unceasing prayer.” To grasp this concept we must think a bit creatively.

We must become everyday artists and look for the “blazing fire of God” in the common bushes of life. We must look openly for God in those who come across our path, for we will see the beauty of God’s face on sometimes the most unlikely ones. We will see him in unexpected places, revealing his love and grace to us. He hopes we will notice.

We must learn to see. In order to be aware of him, we must become more reflective. Otherwise, we will fly through our days and forget he’s with us. If we ignore him for too long, life will be wearisome and empty. Jesus called this being “lukewarm” because the heart has grown indifferent. He loathes us to be that way when he knows we could have incredible joy. If we become dull towards God and his doings in our life, we will fall into self-life and miss all the wonders we’ve been destined to experience.

Living for “self” isn’t always obvious. Immorality and greed, or base and hurtful behavior, this is. But not so easy to see, is the person who outwardly lives a Christian life. She might even be a missionary, or he could be a pastor of a church. But that person may not be experiencing the “… ‘blissful center’ which is our right and proper dwelling place . . . the loss of which is the cause of our unceasing restlessness.”[1]

That person’s center may be about what they “do” for God. It could be that that person is looking for “life,” including his sense of value or worth, from the wrong things.

The enjoyed presence of God is the inheritance of every believer and it is meant to be constant. We have been designed for pleasure—for God made each of us, specially, to know and enjoy him. We cannot flee from his presence, even if we wanted to. He is always with us.

We have his undivided attention at all times, but this is a wonder we find hard to grasp. He knows the number of the hairs of our head at any given moment. We cannot imagine a God so big, or a God so caring. We might know this about him in our minds. But do we experience this knowing?

If we are honest with ourselves we will recognize restlessness, a yearning for the presence of God. We need to pay attention to specific aching desires in our hearts—like, for example, perhaps you feel a strong desire to go to the library and are simply craving to read a good story, or a Christian book. This might be God drawing you because there is one there on the bookshelves that he wants you to read for whatever reason he might have; perhaps he has something he wants to teach you or show you.

Listen to your desires. If you love God, he will put desires into your heart. Sometimes, if we pay close enough attention, we can know that God is leading us through a sudden urge. But one must learn to pay attention, to notice your own inner stirrings.

So often, though, we are too busy, too driven to recognize our longings or desires, let alone quiet urges. Oh, the still small voice of God—if life is so noisy, so full, how will we hear? Often, we keep ourselves so occupied it is because we are empty and are trying to find meaning in everything else but what God wants to give us. Oh, that we would stop running from him in this way.

Then there is another problem. Sometimes, we do give God the time to speak to us, but it is more of a “task to accomplish” or a thing to cross of our “to-do list”—how dreadful to treat the amazing Lover of your soul as a task.

If your devotional times have become a should thing, rather than a want thing—you might be living up to your neck in the self–life. Where is that longing for God himself? Is it hidden in activity and possessions, or in accomplishing things for him?

We cannot obey the first commandment to love God with all of our heart, without holy fire—that is to say, passion. Pray God will blow on the coals if they’ve gone cold. Beg God to rekindle your first love. He wants it more than you. God makes us to love him. But he does not make us love him. And when Divine love is true, it is an unstoppable fire. Our love for him begins in his heart. Without God’s pursuit of us, we cannot know or love him. He takes the initiative. We can only respond. God wants us to dance with him.

Our Beloved is our constant companion, our closest friend and lover. He waits for us. He sends favors our way and then watches for our response. He touches us in personal blessings, only we can know, and then he studies our hearts and minds. He is inside of us and can do this. God is forever initiating something. He is tireless in his pursuits. He loves us without limit. It may seem too good to be true—but this is Truth: God is stunningly good.

We must pay attention and notice what he is doing for us. We need to be still. Turn off the noise, turn off the computer or TV, and the inner brain activity. Sit down and open up to him, with no agenda. Get a tablet of paper and listen to his thoughts that may come. Read the Bible and listen for the Rhema (the “now”) Word in the Logos (the “written”) Word. Waste time on your Beloved. Reflect often and pay earnest attention to life and what God is doing in it. Let God love you. This is the highest calling you have in life.

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[1] A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, Christian Publications, @1982, page 35.

Practice, Practice, and Practice – for Lovers of God

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, AND PRACTICE

Righteousness is something I don’t normally think about. I try to live the good Christian life. I know that Yeshua has earned my righteousness. That has been the extent of my ideas about it. However, in James, I read something and, because I have been “practicing” Christ’s presence, some new things occurred to me.

Here’s the sentence in James: “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results. (James 5:16b)”

Do my prayers produce wonderful results? Hmm… I think they do sometimes. I tend to leave that mystery where it belongs: in God’s hands. However, on further thought … if I can do something about producing better results, as James must think possible, how does one go about it? He admonishes believers to “confess our sins to each other, and to pray for each other so that we might be healed.” Is being “healed” to become righteous? Yes. But God has urged me to go further.

This Scripture text from James is in context of a letter he wrote likely to those in the Jerusalem fellowship. It was meant to give them the courage to be righteous and to pray and see powerful results of their “earnest” prayer. I don’t think he meant that the prayer would be long, frequent, or full of emotion—which could define “earnest.” I think earnest in this sense also could mean a “fervent work”—perhaps another way to say it is to “keep practicing”… work at it … be earnest about it. Does that mean to repeat the prayer? It could. But I think it means something more. First, though, the other piece of this is to be “righteous” and if we add “earnest” what do we get? How do we combine these qualities?How do we gain a righteous character and lifestyle? How do we facilitate the Lord’s righteousness to live through us?

I think the answers to these question lies simply in this: Put God and His Kingdom first, others before ourselves, and trust God with patience. Actually, it is to act upon the two great commandments and keep the faith. However, don’t we all know, it is one thing to know what we should do and another thing to actually accomplish it. Also, we have troubles, worries, and enemies that test our desire and ability to be righteous. This is all part of living in the world (in it but not of it); and we know we were not destined to be here that long and God will bring us FULLY into His kingdom, in due time (this is the patience part).

If we put God before us and make choices based on what we think He’d like us to do, I think that would naturally make us righteous, and like HIM. But this needs to happen on a moment by moment basis, from little thoughts to big decisions. The Lover and Maker of our souls is as close to us as is our own breath. Can we be more conscious of this? Can we, knowing of His Presence in us, bring captive every thought, every desire, every action? This would make us righteous and we’d become the Lovers we were meant to be.

I have often tried to “practice God’s presence” but fail at it—my mind is a wild donkey going its own way during my waking and sleeping hours. This is based on the habit of decades of years. Most of us would like to continually focus on God, but we have to fill our thoughts with other matters we deal with all day long. What if we tried to control our wandering mind, that habit of the decades, and started to practice focusing on God?

Perhaps through practice, practice, practice—we could keep our minds stayed on HIM. Here are some things I think we could do without too much trouble: We can glance in His direction often throughout the day, maybe just an inward smile, or even a groan meant as a prayer might do; we can look to Him regarding any matter at hand, moment by moment. Might we talk to him about the smallest of things? We can stay on our tiptoes, noticing whatever He may be bringing our way or showing us. We must take time to reflect when we have quiet, alone times. We must create space to do this for it is essential to our relationship with Him—and our Presence to Him will become habit.

If we fervently did whatever we could to be AWARE OF GOD’S PRESENCE we would be praying earnestly and we would certainly become more righteous, in a natural and true way. Nothing about our prayer or righteousness would be, for us, something to muster up. We would shine quite naturally through the constant and ongoing union with the Lord in us. Our prayers would bring powerful results. In fact, they’d be full of His Presence. All we need to do is to earnestly practice, practice, and practice the presence of our Lord dwelling within us. Don’t you think God longs for us to live with Him in this way?