The Abundance of God

 O Lord, how can we approach you in order to know you? Even as your forgiven and redeemed children we don't have the hearts and minds to comprehend your greatness. We taste and see that you are good but don't have the senses or sense to truly know the fullness of your goodness. 

You bid us to come unto you and when we seek you we find you. What is it that we find? What part of you can we truly come to know?

Lord increase my capacity to experience you, to know you, to love you. Show me more of yourself, expanding my heart and mind to receive from you. Let my soul overflow with your grace, mercy, and love. 

To suggest an overflow is to acknowledge that I am not big enough to hold all of you. It says that you offer such extravagant abundance that you cannot be contained. Lord, let the unmeasurable bounty of your love flood my whole being, heart, soul, and mind.

Treasures in Heaven

What stirs your soul? What gives rise to feelings of contentment and satisfaction? What plunges you into shame or despair? What do you hide in your life and what causes you to hide yourself?

The answer, for all of us, is those things which we treasure most. Often it is the deprivation and loss of those things that reveals how much we did love them. Some of the things we hold dearly are good, others are idols which can only hurt and disappoint when put to the test. When we know that what we treasure is wrong or shameful we will hide it or ourselves.

When God created humans his intention was that he would be our greatest treasure. A secondary treasure that he gifted us was one another, being created in his image as we are. Taken together, these two treasures make up the greatest commandment to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and second that is like it of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Our soul, that mysterious unifying part of our inner being, is made for this kind of treasuring, for an intimacy in attachment. This knowing and being known drive much of human behavior as do their sinful opposites of hiding and covering up.

Above all else, we are to link our hearts and desires to God. Treasuring him first and foremost rightly prepares our hearts to treasure others in appropriate and God-honoring ways. The order and prioritization of those treasures is important. Treasure and attach to God first, then others. Without the God-treasuring impulse correctly applied to our Creator, any love for others is certain to be corrupted, falling short of what God truly desires.

How do we go about "treasuring" God? Or to go back to the original questions, how do we cultivate a heart and mind that are stirred up by the things of God? How do we lay aside sinful treasures and their attendant shame in order to find satisfaction and contentment in Him?

To be laid bare before God and others, soul to soul, knowing and being known, with unhindered perception into the true self of others can seem a frightful concept. Yet, such is God's desire in His relationship with us. Such is His desire for our relationships to one another.

Treasuring him in his goodness, mercy, and love seems easy. Treasuring others with all their sin and brokenness is much harder. At times, the hardest of all is viewing ourselves as truly treasured by God.

The starting place for rightly ordered treasures in our lives is pretty simple, yet so hard that it can only happen through the work of the Holy Spirit: believe. The Spirit-enabled act of trusting in Christ and hoping in the gospel is the first step in bringing about the God first, others second sort of treasuring we were created for.

God really is as good as he says and Jesus' work on the cross is really as complete as his "it is finished" declaration. The joy and hope the Father offers in the Son is unassailable by the troubles and sorrows of this world. The love with which we are loved and which we are empowered to love others is wholesome, pure, and relentless.

That first quickening of our spirits in the moment of faith reveals a heart that has come to treasure God above all else. In that instant, God becomes supremely glorious to us as we experience his redeeming love.

The ongoing work of obedience in faith then becomes a continual reassessment of our treasures. Jesus points this out when he says "where your treasure is, there your heart lies also."

Personally, I have had very little in my life in terms of "treasure" in the traditional sense. There are no buried treasures or secret chambers filled with gold or jewels lying underneath the Robertson household. That being said, I have treasured many things in my life and have often treasured them more dearly than I should have. Each of these things, when loved appropriately, can bring great joy and satisfaction to a life surrendered first to God.

The Lord knows that I have not always treasured these things in the right order or proportion. I have tended to the image of "loving husband and father" in ways that were unfair to my wife and kids. I have checked my bank account thinking it of the ways it was or wasn't giving me the sense of security or accomplishment that I desired. Even my work in ministry has at times been a source of ungodly pride as I have tied my identity up with fruitfulness, or the godliness that of assume of me because of my job.

Treasuring the Lord as the greatest thing in our life takes discipline. In particular it takes ongoing repentance and surrender to the grace and mercy of God. Even when we don't see idolatry in our hearts we can be sure that it isn't hiding too far away waiting for some inattention or change in circumstances to reassert itself in our hearts. 

God is so good and patient with us in this. He doesn't scold and deride but rather invites and uplifts and strengthens us through the word and His Spirit. Any turn of heart that we have is a joyous return of a prodigal son to Him. We don't need to beat ourselves up for our failings with this because God certainly isn't. 

A series of questions for self assessment can be helpful for uncovering what our hearts are holding on to. These are ones that I have used in my own journey to re-center myself, bringing idols into the light so that I can reorient my heart around God.

• What has brought you joy and delight this week? Is fellowship with God on the list?
• What has caused you fear, discomfort, and anxiety and what is it in your life that feels under threat in those situations? Have you taken those emotions to God or have you become buried under them by indulging them and ruminating on them? What have you turned to besides God for comfort?
• What treasures in your life (God, family, marriage, friendship, finances, possessions) have you cultivated, cleaned, checked in on, or otherwise paid attention to this week? Have you shown God the highest place of honor with your time or attention?
• Have you rested in God this week? Have you practiced sabbath in order to connect with Him and to be reminded of His goodness and faithfulness?

It can be hard work to dig into our inner life but God will always meet us there. He is worth treasuring above all else.

A lament turned to praise

There are days where darkness looms close over the soul, plunging me into the depths. The fog of anxiety clings to my every thought and feeling, my shrinking field of vision offering little hope. The lies of worthlessness take on a foreboding presence, nearly physical in their  abuse of my being. My heart quavers underneath the weight of doubt and despair. Speculative fears seep into every crack of my psyche. The tiniest foothold that Satan can find in the trembling spirit becomes a beachhead of oppression. A tyranny of unrest leads to an exhausting vigilance and hostility towards unspoken fears. A choking, suffocating sense of loneliness leaves me gasping to be seen, to be heard, to be known.

And yet...

Tiny pinpricks of light, cast from the love of my Savior reach into the depths to bring hope. A redemptive resurgence of grace springs up within a heart desperate for living water. The sweet coolness of that first drink offers promise of a flood of joy that will wash over a parched spiritual landscape. An embrace in the gentle and loving arms of my Messiah stills fears as I feel his power and experience his holy longing for protecting me. He is that first deep breath taken after being held under the waters of despair.

The callousness of the broken world remains but the soft caress of God's fresh mercies renews strength. The fresh breeze of new life in Christ brings with it the aroma of a land in full bloom, the sheer magnitude of the flowering goodness of God creates hopeful anticipation of our heavenly home's bounty. Spiritual taste buds and eyes, previously deadened by depression in their sensing, taste and see again the miracles of redemption. 

Oh my soul, He is really that good! The hope he offers is unassailable. The joy found in him shakes the dark foundations of the world, bringing the works of the enemy crumbling to the ground. 

And the love, oh the love! It's ecstasies' surpass the most exultant moments of human glory. The nearness, the tenderness, the overwhelming sense of being someone's beloved all move beyond that which you might experience anywhere else. His eyes, piercing into the deepest recesses of your soul, examining the marrow and most inwards parts, look on you with delight. His love is unfathomably deep, unceasingly pleasant, and altogether incomparable. When he considers you, he laughs with joy with a tear-filled twinkle in his eyes. 

Will you take his offer of hope? Will you cling to him, sheltering under his wings? Oh that you would never cease to breathe in the clear, sharp, pure air of the glorious gospel of grace.

God's Loving Pursuit

 In seminary I had to write a paper on the third chapter of Genesis. You know... the chapter where Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit and all hell breaks loose... the chapter that has been diagnosed and dissected for millennia... the chapter that far greater minds than mine have tried to make sense of.

Needless to say, I was a bit intimidated to dive into "the fall" of humanity. Who wouldn't feel a underqualified delving into such deep waters?

With the passage of time and perhaps a small accumulation of wisdom I have come to have a deep appreciation for this account in Genesis. In fact, it is a place my heart frequently wanders to as I consider the Good News of a Savior who pursues lost sheep. 

"And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden,  and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself."

After the fall, we as humans wear our guilt and shame as badges of dishonor, driving ourselves into hiding because of the reprehensible brokenness they reveal in our being. The cover of darkness seems the only place to cover our dark misdeeds. We push the ugliness inward, the better to hide it and the easier to justify it. It becomes us, or we become it, taking on its lies as truth to be lived by.

The One who can deal with our guilt and shame becomes the one we run from. His presence is fearful for the light it shines on our tarnished souls, for the terror his holiness inspires in us as ones marked by sin. Our self-imposed hiddenness does little to ease the foreboding sense of wrongness in our souls. It does nothing to actually keep it from being known by God.

This hiding, isolation and withdrawal is a devastating reversal of what God desires with us. 

Thanks be to God that his great love for us isn't put off by our retreat into the shadows. He comes after us asking "where are you?" not because he doesn't know but because he wants to draw us back into fellowship with him. Like a parent coaxing a frightened child out from under the bed covers during a thunderstorm, God comes to us urging us into his light.

What joy, what freedom comes from giving ourselves over to his loving embrace! As we cast ourselves from the rocky shores of our sinful solitude into the vast seas of his grace and mercy we find ourselves swallowed up in his glory. We lose our lives of hiddenness and gain a life of being known, seen, and loved.

Genesis 3 is a story of guilt and shame. That can never be overlooked or forgotten. At the same time, and more importantly, it is a story of love, tenderness, and restraint on the part of God. Seeking out Adam and Eve, just the same as he seeks us out, God reveals a mercy and compassion towards his image bearers. 

The God of scriptures and the Savior we see in its pages reveal a love that is not thwarted by the ways we hide from him. Our weaknesses and failures draw him out, put him in pursuit of our love. The hidden places of our souls and of the world become targets for his great redeeming work in Christ.

We've all got stuff in our lives that we'd rather others not see and that we'd rather not have to deal with. Some of that garbage we inherit, some of it we accumulate through our own sinfulness. Other parts of our painful brokenness are unjustly handed to us by those who harm us in various ways. All of it is known by God and all of it can be brought into the light before him.

Refiner's Fire

the Refiner's fire burns hot and things once held dear are painfully taken from my grasp..

blistered hands...

searing loss...

scorched lungs gasping for breath...

There is no stop, drop, and roll in these flames

all things working together for the good of those who love Him

a soul in anguish kept afloat by God's tender mercies

bitter gall, resentment and anger rooted out by one acquainted with grief

a bruised reed and smoldering wick sheltered, nursed, and nurtured in the Savior's gentle hands

broken cisterns revealed for what they truly are, replaced with a sure foundation

spiritual disillusionment wrought from broken dreams replaced with flickers of radiant, redeeming love

how to make sense of a season of sorrows

joy is all the more beautiful when found in the shadows of sorrow

hope never rings so true as when proven true in the midst of tears

faith untested and unchallenged is as nothing to that which endures

love received while in the grips of suffering is all the more valuable

kisses from the Refiner's flames reveal the glorious splendor of what Christ died for me to become

being called "precious and beloved" by the heavenly Father when I am broken leaves me radically undone, giving room the the indwelling Spirit to do a fresh work

what seem to be painful losses experienced in His refining fire change shape and hue over time, becoming uglier as they fade in the glorious light of what is becoming, what yet may be

He will be our God and we will be His people, with unveiled faces contemplating His glory and being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory