Draw Near

One evening recently I was asking myself as the psalmist did, "Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God" (Psalm 42:5 ESV). Although I didn't have an answer for that question, I was reminded of Jesus' words in the Garden of Gethsemane: 

"My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with Me" (Matthew 26:38).

Through that I was reminded of a couple things:

1) Jesus knows every feeling we experience because He has been there too. He experienced sorrow, loss, deception, accusation, pain, torture, and death. So when it feels like no one could understand, He does. He understands what we can't even explain to ourselves. He not only watches with us, but He watches over us. 

2) Jesus asked His disciples to stay nearby and keep watch, but in their human weakness, they fell asleep on the job. Although the church today has the same calling to watch over one another, there will be many times when we fail one another. We won't hear the cry for help; we won't ask the hard questions because we don't want to intrude; we'll fall asleep when someone needs us to abide with them. 

The flip side is that sometimes we'll fail to ask for help, prayer, and encouragement when we need it. Whether we are ashamed of our neediness or we don't want to bother someone, we choose to keep silent and suffer alone. And I'll admit I'm guilty of that more often than not. 

Ed Underwood writes in When God Breaks Your Heart: "The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and those who are with Him will also be near" (73). If we say we want to draw near to God, then we should accept that it may mean a broken heart for ourselves or those who are close to us. Underwood writes about the death of Lazarus in John 11 and the fact that Jesus invites the disciples to go with Him, back to the place they were nearly killed just a short time before. They could have let Jesus go alone while they remained at a safe distance. 

Jesus invites us to go near to the brokenhearted as well. Jesus ministered to many thousands of broken people through healing, feeding, raising the dead, forgiving, asking questions, and sharing the Word. Sometimes He calls us to participate in His ministry, to watch what He is doing, or simply to be present with those in need. (Even Job's friends were doing good when they came to sit with him.)

Whether or not those in the church draw near, whether or not we choose to be honest about our own needs, remember, "Friend, Jesus isn’t ignoring your pain; He’s feeling it. He’s not ashamed of your tears; He’s weeping with you" (Underwood, 134).

"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" (Psalm 146:3).

"Draw near to God and He will draw near to you" (James 4:8a).

© Dawn Rutan 2016. Photo by Dawn Rutan. 

Working or Abiding?

I’ve written before both about abiding in Christ and the Fruit of the Spirit, but I had kind of an “Aha” moment recently as I started reading True Community by Jerry Bridges. Sometimes just a simple rephrasing makes an old truth more clear. He quotes Robert Haldane’s Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans:

“It is impossible that the streams can be dried up when the fountain continues to flow, and it is equally impossible for the members not to share in the same holiness which dwells so abundantly in the Head. As the branch, when united to the living vine, necessarily partakes of its life and fatness, so the sinner, when united to Christ, must receive an abundant supply of sanctifying grace out of His immeasurable fullness.”

Or as John recorded Jesus saying, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (15:5 ESV).

I don’t think I’d considered before the fact that the branches must bear fruit if they are attached to the Vine. It is now part of our new nature, the life blood flowing in us, to bear the fruit that the Vine creates. (However, it is possible for people to only look like they are attached to the Vine and not really be saved and thus not bear fruit.) Those who are attached will be compelled to bear fruit. That may not be their own priority to begin with, but the Vinedresser will keep pruning away all lesser desires.

I really have no choice in whether I will bear fruit or what that fruit will look like. All of that is determined by my Father. I also can’t make it happen any faster or through some easier process. (I’m not sure I can even slow it down if God has His way.) It will grow when and how He desires. It is rather a relief to know He’s got it all in hand. I am confident that I am indeed connected to the life of the Vine because of what He has already done in and through me in recent months and years. And that knowledge leads to further confidence that He will complete His fruit-bearing work in me and gives me greater faith and hope.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think I’ve always tried to make abiding too complicated, too much my own work. The fact is, I am in the Vine and nothing can now change that. Fruit is both the proof of what God has done to graft me in and the ongoing evidence of what He is doing. It has nothing to do with how good I am at being a branch. If it depended on me, I’d be lopping myself off the Vine every day. To quote Dr. Bob Mayer’s message in our office chapel service today, “Think how liberating that can be—God’s work does not depend on you… Nothing happens apart from the sovereign care of God.”

I hope and pray that this lesson won’t soon be forgotten in the busyness of perfectionism!

“You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide…” –John 15:16

I'm Here

As often happens to me, there has been a convergence of themes in books that I am reading. The first was a slightly modernized (in 1976) version of The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence. The second was Real Presence: The Christian Worldview of C.S. Lewis as Incarnational Reality, by Leanne Payne. As you might guess, the general subject of both books is an awareness of God’s presence with us and in us in daily life.

As the Apostle Paul put it: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20 ESV), and “…the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

God’s presence is one of those subjects that is hard to comprehend. We are taught that He is omnipresent, though Scripture doesn’t use that exact language, and we certainly believe He hears us when we pray. And yet most of the time we don’t consider the fact that God is indeed present with us in every minute of the day, whether we’re working, relaxing, eating, or sleeping. Brother Lawrence wrote:

“The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees before the Blessed Sacrament.”

As I was thinking about it the other night, it occurred to me that sometimes I don’t want to acknowledge God’s presence. I tend to write out my prayers as a way of keeping my mind focused. There is an underlying feeling that if I write something down or say it out loud, it is more real than if I just think it. So if there is something I don’t particularly want God’s opinion on, I imagine I can keep it to myself, as if God doesn’t know my thoughts better than I do. At times I’ve wished for someone to talk to, yet I’m reluctant to talk to the One with all the answers. I’m afraid He might tell me something I don’t want to hear.

How different would our lives and our prayers be if we acknowledged that God is always there? I’ve only skimmed a few pages of Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young, but that seems to be a common theme for her as well. (I realize that book has been criticized by some for putting words in Jesus’ mouth.) Although there might be times that God’s presence is uncomfortable, when we don’t particularly want to obey, I suspect that most of the time it would result in greater peace and tranquility, joy, and love, and less concern with what others might think about us.

Leanne Payne writes:

“The unfallen Adam and Eve could hear God—and they could listen to Him. They had union and communion with the Life-Giver. They were, in other words, God-conscious and not self-conscious… They were channels of love to all creation. There is no doubt they blessed all they touched. Experiencing always the Real Presence of God, love flowed out from them; they were Sons of God who did not know separation from God” (60-61).

In this fallen world, our perception of God is veiled, as is our perception of ourselves and one another. Practicing the presence of God is developing the habit of remembering Who God is, abiding with Him, and watching for those moments when He pulls back the veil to reveal a little bit of His glory.

“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.” –Brother Lawrence

Abide in Me

Once again circumstances have converged to make me think about a particular topic, in this case, what is abiding in Christ? One trigger was an email from Pastor Matt and the other was the book Growing in Grace, by Bob George. What they said was that abiding in Christ (John 15:4), abiding in the Vine (John 15:5), abiding in the Word (John 8:31), abiding in love (1 John 4), and abiding in the truth (2 John) are all essentially the same thing. But only one of those things really tells us something we can do to abide, and that is to abide in the Words of Scripture. As Pastor Matt said, “Reading them, meditating on them, reminding ourselves and each other of them is abiding in Jesus and allowing His words to abide in us.” And that is certainly something we ought to pursue.

Bob George gives the illustration of a baby in the womb. It is abiding there, with all its needs provided, and there’s nothing it can do or needs to do to maintain the connection with its mother. If you’re like me, it’s hard to believe that abiding in the Vine doesn’t take some real effort to hold on. But as I thought about it, I realized that several of those verses that talk about abiding in Him also say that He abides in us (John 6:56, John 15, 1 John 2, 1 John 3:24, 1 John 4). Even if we could somehow fail to abide in Christ, we can’t force Him to stop abiding in us. John 10:27-29 says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (ESV). Other good images are found in Deuteronomy 33:27, “The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms,” and Psalm 37:23-24, “The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when He delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand.”

Now I’m not advocating a laissez faire, do-nothing attitude. I think Scripture is pretty clear that we should endeavor to resist sin (Romans 6:1-2), draw near to God (James 4:7-8), study the Word (2 Timothy 3:16-17), and assemble together to encourage one another (Hebrew 10:25). But we can tend to make things harder than they need to be. Sometimes we fall back into the trap of thinking we need to earn our way or we believe the lie that “God helps those who help themselves.” Then too we can start second guessing God and take matters into our own hands if He doesn’t seem to be working fast enough or doing what we think needs done. So it’s hard to abide and rest when we’re waiting for something to happen.

In a recent Christianity Today blog, Mark Galli says this about the pursuit of holiness:

“Then, in one of [Paul’s] last letters, he says he is the ‘worst’ of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15). I don’t know that we can chalk that up to false humility. I think Paul, the older he got, the more he saw all those layers of sin and wickedness in himself and realized that for all the progress he might have made, in the end, he knew he felt like the greatest of sinners. This is not a picture of the ‘victorious Christian life.’ Yet so much preaching and teaching in American churches seem to suggest that if we just do this or that more fervently—always depending on the grace and power of the Holy Spirit!—we can make significant progress in the life of holiness. We Americans are a very optimistic bunch with a can-do spirit. But I’m wondering if we’re overpromising, with the result that we’ll eventually underdeliver. This can only lead us into despair… Our real hope—and the real reason for our lack of despair and our continuing joy—is the promise of future transformation in Christ. ” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/may-web-only/real-transformation-happens-when.html)

I struggle to discover some balance between “trying” and “abiding.” Scripture indicates that God has done all that is necessary for our salvation and eventual sanctification, but as Galli points out in this article, the vast majority of our sanctification will take place after the Second Coming of Christ, not during this earthly life. That’s both reassuring and frustrating. It’s wonderful to know that we are saved by grace and not by our attempts to be good enough. But it’s also humbling to realize that we may have to face the same temptations and struggles for a lifetime. We’re forced to cling to our hope for that soon-coming day when God’s grace will be fulfilled and we’ll abide with Him forever in perfect holiness.

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God” (Revelation 21:3).