Skit Guys on Grace
So I wonder, God, in what ways I am being like the Skit Guys' Peter? Take me to visit those places where I am failing to be one with Your disciples and am instead just moving alongside them. I pray with George Appleton, Lord:
Give me a candle of the Spirit, O God, as I go down into the deeps of my being. Show me the hidden things, the creatures of my dreams, the storehouse of forgotten memories and hurts. Take me down to the spring of my life and tell me my nature and my name. Give me freedom to grow, so that I may become that self, the seed of which you planted in me at my making. Out of the deeps I cry to you, O God.July 1, 2004 Studies in Faith
Using my concordance, I'm running a faith study. Here is what I'm finding:
Faith is single-minded. "You cannot serve two masters: for either you will hate one and love the other or else you will be loyal to one and despise the other." Therefore..."do not worry about your life...for your heavenly father knows you need (these) things. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Worry divides and distracts. To that faith-flower I mentioned before, worry is just damaging as the weed of bitterness. Worry is like the cloud that keeps the flower from being kissed by the sun. Here the wind of the Spirit blows in to push away the clouds and make room for the sunbeams to drop down. Our step here is to see those trials as evidence of a blowing Spirit and not as sources for worry.
James 1 helps here. We are to count it for joy when we fall into these patience-testing trials that prompt us to ask God for wisdom. Circumstances make us circle back for wisdom, leading us to make God-pleasing choices when alternatives must be weighed and God's purposes are lost behind the clouds. James says God gives wisdom liberally and without reproach. Without reproach? Why would there be reproach, unless we made a bad wisdom choice beforehand, before we even knew to ask for wisdom. In that case, wisdom might be coming along after shame has already beset us. When the Spirit uncovers us all the way down to our motivation level, there wisdom might feel like it comes bearing reproach, but divine wisdom does not come in such company. It comes with that singularity of purpose: go and sin no more; leaving the past behind to run the good race.
It is interesting to think the Father of Lights demonstrates this single-mindedness. In Him there is "no variation or shadow of turning." Do I walk life like I believe this of His nature? Or do I try to pull Him down from there to a more familiar likeness of my own nature?
July 2
Today in my devotional, faith and its single-mindedness finds a new descriptor: loyalty. Loyalty to God becomes more difficult the more our circumstances seem to indicate He ordered "bad" things for us. Or rather, believing He feels loyalty to usis more challenging. The test always comes there. I have had issues with trust for years. Broken promises when I was young taught me things about trust that I should put away. Loyalty to God must take a different tack. His authority over conditions that affect me must always be received as beneficial for me, whether I "see" how it so or not. This is the hardest love of all...the love that remains loyal, believes loyalty no matter what!
July 3
The story of the Shunammite woman is a good illustration of single-minded faith. (2 Kings 4:8) She did not ask for the child, but received the blessing of the child anyway. But when death took the child, her faith--in anguish, but not bitterness--prompted her to action and the child was restored. Later, God, ever faithful, warned her through the same prophet, Elisha, to leave the land during a time of famine. She had an active faith and a spirit of hospitality and alertness to the activity of God in her world, and these led to first, blessings; then confounding hardship; and finally, even larger blessings. This is the way of faith in the context of measuring loyalty.
July 5
Next in the faith study: Mark 4, the story of Jesus rebuking the storm.
Point to ponder: Jesus was the "author" of this trip. "Let us pass over to the other side," he said. Then he went to sleep in the stern of the boat as a great storm arose-such that the boat was filling with water. The disciples woke him, he calmed the sea, they were amazed. Their approach to Him was "Teacher, carest thou not that we are perishing?" Such phrasing...does it imply they had faith in His ability to deal with the situation, but not in His concern for them? Haven't I faced days when I believed God "could" do something about my storm, but I doubted whether He cared enough to wake up and "fix" things? His response to them: "And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?" (Mark 4:40)
As I look back on this entry...I'm not so sure these disciples believed Jesus could stop the storm, but that doesn't change the truth of the observations on their attitudes. Their failure to believe He even wanted to protect them from harm was real, and maybe their amazement that He was so unconcerned about His own safety that He could sleep through a storm so raging it threw wave after wave of water into their boat.
But more than anything, I find I want to grin at His words before they even began the journey: "Let us pass over to the other side." Such loaded words--saying so much more than what they seemed to say: let's sail across the lake. They did indeed pass over to another side.
May I pass over, too, Lord!
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