Along the River

“Something on the other side is worth pushing through… Leave the comfort zone and ‘control’ of just standing on the shore.”—Andy Guyette

When you desire to walk each day with the King of the universe, there are no coincidences, only intersections of Divine purpose that keep showing up in the middle of wherever you happen to be. I thought I was just walking through a town park early yesterday morning and decided it would be a good time to listen to a sermon I'd been meaning to get to during the busy week. I thought I was just standing on the river’s shore, gazing at the peacefulness of the open water, and peering over to the shore on the other side where sunlight seemed to be hosting a private party of golden goodness.

But it just so happened that Andy's sermon was about Jesus urging His disciples to get into the boat together and “let us go over to the other side.” And it just so happened that while I was standing along the river’s edge, beginning to feel those familiar cravings of not just pausing to catch my breath but actually settling into a comfort zone of living, that Andy’s (he’s a member of my great team of pastors) words under the photo zapped my heart with a Heaven-sent defibrillator.

And on this Palm Sunday, when I can once more picture myself either watching the triumphant procession from the sidewalk or choosing instead to keep moving forward "to the other side" with Jesus, even without knowing what exactly is ahead, Andy’s message, combined with words previously written for a similar season, are reviving much-needed shouts of “Hosanna!”

And to all who come this way today while on the Journey, Selah….

Some passages of Scripture, no matter how many times you read them, seem to have a trumpet fanfare accompaniment. One is: 

"Wake up, O sleeper!..", to which the apostle Paul adds: "Be careful [mindful, aware] of how you live...making the most of every opportunity because [indeed] the days are evil.”—Ephesians 5:14, NIV

And in these days, for every person who has said "Yes!" to the One who has loved them and called them by name, and who has embarked on the fantastic journey to eternity, the blaring wake-up call may have little to do with falling asleep at the switch and a whole lot more to do with wanting to cave in to the relentless temptation to go on cruise control, to settle for what is safe and comfortable.

On our best days, we swear we could never go there, but truth is, with all of life's daily stresses and pressures, it is only natural to want to go into survival mode at times. (Sometimes, it's a great day when you can just tread water.) But when the storm passes, it can become way too easy to unknowingly agree with the suggestion of the Adversary and camp out in the land of comfortable, routine living. And while it is true that there is God-glorifying ministry in even the simplest things and during the most routine of times, it is also true that like that first ragtag, entirely imperfect band of brothers, we were created and destined for something much greater, and feel the tug for something mysteriously exciting, perhaps even world-changing in our own little corner of the world or in places we've never heard about.

It's a tug-of-war that will rage within until we get Home, but God is cheering us on: "No matter what it looks or feels like, don't let go of the rope!" And it doesn't stop there. God also manifests His cheering through the encouragement from a fellow runner or two or three: that rare person or small posse that bursts into our circle of acquaintances with the usual bantering about the weather, food, family and sports, but then takes it to the next level with words and example that stir us onward and Upward. These God-sent sons and daughters of encouragement regularly purpose to help fill our heart and mind with thoughts and Truths that are much, much higher than what our flesh wants to settle for.

And in these days, especially these turbulent days, there could be few more important questions to ask yourself than: "Who are you running with?" And then, an equally important prayer: that one or more Kingdom-living encouragers would burst into our circle, and that we could be that one for someone else; someone who carries the kind of encouragement that can help silence "Wake up, O sleeper!" with a resolute in-this-together declaration:

"The religious motivation of the pending wrath of God, and the ideals of a small life, are no longer options for us.We are sons and daughters of the Most High.We are in training for reigning as never before…living an abundant life in Christ until the kingdoms of this earth become the Kingdom of our God."  — Danny Silk

[ADAPTED FROM JANUARY 10, 2016]

Hearing Footsteps

"We often miss hearing God's voice simply because we aren't paying attention."—Rick Warren

It would have been easier to complain about the snow after being teased with a bit of an open winter. Instead, resolve kicked in, snowshoes were kicked on, and it was on to Mission Possible: If You Can’t Beat It, Enjoy It. The decision, as is almost always the case, did not disappoint. Hiking through the woods, no matter what the season, has a way of arousing and awakening nearly ever sense within you:

Seeing beauty in the details of a beautiful big picture.

Feeling leg muscles begin to burn with a beautiful kind of hurt.

Tasting gallons of fresh air rush into your lungs with beautiful cleansing.

Smelling evergreens warmed by the sun and beautiful stubborn earth emerging by brooks.

And on this particular day, acutely aware of the sound of every creaking pine, every distant bird call, every twig breaking under foot, every beautiful note being sung by a stream that refuses to let winter win.

"Ears to hear and eyes to see—

    both are gifts from the Lord."—Proverbs 20:12, NLT

It wasn’t that way earlier in the week when I awoke “on the wrong side of the bed” to an ear that was plugged up…and wouldn’t unplug, no matter how I tried. Hoping it would just take care of itself and go away, a few hours became the next 24 hours, and though I could hear perfectly well out of the other ear, everything was half out of order. What I wanted to hear, muffled. What I thought I was hearing, wrong. Impossible to hear a whisper. Suddenly, a sense of feeling adrift without a compass while everyone around me seemed to know exactly what to say and where to go next.

In the walk-in clinic, after what seemed like a half-hour power wash of my ear canal, out came what the nurse said was impacted blockage about the size of an almond. (I may never eat almonds again.) How was that possible?

“Pretty evident that it built up over time until there was no place for it to go. Happens to a lot of people.”

“But what can I do so that it doesn’t happen again?”

“It’s something you’ll probably have to fight off the rest of your life. The important thing is to clean it out at the first sign of trouble. Don’t let it go and hope for the best.”

When we wake up "on the wrong side of the bed," our natural I-can-handle-this tendency can be to let it go and hope for the best. That works sometimes. But mostly, we walk every day through a world filled with dirt and dust and junk that is determined to distract us from the straight and narrow Good Path. And neglect becomes deafening.

That visit to the clinic, and that hike in the beautiful woods, were reminders to purpose to make every day count, to take no day and nothing for granted. 

To live in such a way, as the psalmist put it:  “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12, NIV).

To live in such a way, even in March, that hearing—especially hearing God’s footsteps along each leg of the journey—may become the greatest, most precious sense awareness of them all….

“Resolve to be aware of what God is doing…tune our ear heavenward, and determine that this season will not slip away, that we might have our eyes wide open to see that the LORD is present and active.”—From “40 Days of Revival,” Hillsong

With Reckless Abandon

"There's a wideness in God's mercy

I cannot find in my own

And He keeps His fire burning

To melt this heart of stone

Keeps me aching with a yearning

Keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless raging fury

That they call the love of God.”

—the late Rich Mullins, “The Love of God”

I make my living with words, and when they don’t seem to fit, my first instinct is to reach for my red editing pen. It's not just business writing. Sometimes, a song that describes some aspect of God will come along that contains a shocking word. One that doesn't seem to fit at all. And my oh-so-sensible flesh desperately wants to red-pen it into something, well, safer and more comfortable...for me. 

But inevitably, war breaks out within. My heart-after-God self surprises by rising up with a louder voice, and with no red pen in hand, is drawn to these songs in wonder if not like a magnet. Because, like countless poets and artists have done throughout history, the writers of these songs are in First Love mode as they tell their story and pour out their hearts. They are trying to help me see beyond a Captain Obvious kind of faith by describing something about God’s nature and character that is so incredible, so Eternal, that only seemingly outrageous words come close to describing the indescribable—the feeling and knowing that comes with experiencing God at work in your life.

About such things, the late Brennan Manning wrote:

“Employing adjectives such as furious, passionate, vehement and aching to describe the longing of God are my mumbling and fumbling way to express the Inexpressible. Yet, I plod on. Both theology, which is faith seeking understanding, and spirituality, which is the faith-experience of what we understand intellectually, offer a glimpse into the mystery. Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles (1 Corinthians 13:12). But someday, the adjectives will give way to the reality.”—from “The Furious Longing of God”

That 1989 Rich Mullins song, though. And one more recently that bursts: 

“Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God

Oh, it chases me down, fights 'til I'm found, leaves the ninety-nine

I couldn't earn it, and I don't deserve it, still, You give Yourself away

Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God.”

It can be hard to get around what the dictionary says about "reckless": “without caring about the consequences of an action.” That just seems so, well, un-God-like.

But wait…

Jesus did risk everything—ministry, reputation, influence, friends—by ignoring social and religious standards by publicly talking to, loving, and touching lepers and other to-be-ignored outcasts of the day. He knew it could all unravel, but He knew that before the beginning of time. But He still came from Heaven to earth. Jesus never flinched, never hesitated, never cared about the possible negative response to His actions, because He knew his Father’s mission—and that recklessly, outrageously trumped all common sense and other people's opinions, even if they rejected him.

The leper speaks: "I am alone and no one loves me." I have been that leper at one time. But Jesus!

Jesus risked being stoned to death or at the very least being kicked out of the Temple, and the good chance that many of the very people He came to live and die for would walk the other way because, without caring about the consequences, He recklessly (to our sensibilities, anyway) chose to dine with tax collectors and sinners, and to hang out with and show compassion on those of ill repute, and liars, and cheaters. These were ones everyone was taught to stay away from: "They made their mess, let them live in it."

Throughout history, these all speak: “I’m too sinful to be saved and Loved.” And I was once one of them. But Jesus!

Even the most oft-quoted verse of them all is, in its own way, furiously reckless: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”…For God so loved, knowing full well that many of those whosoevers would reject the greatest Love gift of them all, or wander back in to messes or solitude like that 99th of the 100 sheep in the flock.

And I was surely one of them at one time or another on this journey. But Jesus!

This morning, I will seek to sing “Reckless Love” beyond the chord notations and scrolling lyrics, and perhaps pray in agreement with the composer that the shocking choice of poetry trying to describe the Indescribable goodness of my God will jolt me once more out of a safe, cozy, almost sentimental slumber of merely admiring the old, old story from a distance. It's too easy to drift there during the week, to become complacent, to go through the motions without realizing it. It's where that red pen is really needed—to keep editing out "lukewarm" so that I can once more...

“...see what an incredible quality of love the Father has shown to us, that we would be permitted to be named and called and counted the children of God! And so we are! For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, we are even here and now children of God, and it is not yet made clear what we will be after His coming. We know that when He comes and is revealed, we will as His children be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is in all His glory. And everyone who has this hope confidently placed in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure—holy, undefiled, guiltless.”—1 John 3:1-3, Amplified

And in seeing and doing so, to purpose somehow to return the favor to Him and my neighbor in reckless abandon:

“Nothing on earth matters more than this single thing: That we might see Jesus as He truly is, hear His call to follow, come what may, and love Him back dangerously, obsessively, and undeniably.”

—Pete Greig, "The Vision and the Vow"