Category: SPIRITUAL FORMATION

WHITE KNUCKLE FEAR

We have lost the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.  Situations which we once were not formidable have now pushed us down.

In the past few years have you gone through periods of speculation regarding an upcoming situation (whether something scheduled in the next day’s events or an item that slithers into your heart as a vague possibility)?  It could be that upcoming meeting with the boss or maybe watching a doctor on TV tell you how many people have been diagnosed with RSV in the adjoining town.

FEAR THAT WAKES YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

This is not the minor stuff such as the kind of fear I encounter when I wonder whether people will notice that I’m wearing two different colors of shoes (one being navy and the other being black). No, this is white knuckle fear that wakes you up in the middle of the night. It robs you of being able to breathe deeply and threatens to suffocate. Joy has gone up in flames. The actual event you have been speculating about has yet to happen.

Just want you to know, you are not alone.

WE HAVE BEEN ROBBED OF RESILIENCE

The pandemic and the resulting changes in our world have robbed us of resilience, the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.  Situations which once were not formidable have now pinned us down. Speculation has gained a great deal of dangerous power. We are paying the price.

SPECULATION HAS RUN AMUCK

I have a friend who is going through turmoil at work.  Her boss keeps telling the employees that “big changes are going to happen imminently”. However, the “imminent” has drug into weeks.  At her job, usually “big changes” mean big sacrifices at the employees’ expense.  Fears at the workplace have amped up into hyper mode and speculation has run amuck. 

My friend is a believer and a few years back may have been able to just take a “wait and see” attitude.  The problem is that she has lost her reserve. She can’t put speculation on a back burner.  Life is draining out of her.

NOT IN JESUS’ “SUGGESTION BOX”

Jesus banned speculation. He said: So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:34) This “don’t worry” is not in Jesus’ polite little suggestion box for Christian wannabes.  It is a command. Jesus is saying, “Look, if you trust me enough to take care of you for eternity, will you trust me enough to take care of those events that have not even happened yet?”  Real faith can rebuild and grow resilience.

ROPING IN SPECULATION

People have little reserves to deal with a world gone mad.  The good things is, recovery is possible.  John Eldredge writes:  “You can start building mental resilience right here, by roping in speculation. Every time you find yourself speculating, tell yourself to stop it! Bring your thoughts back under control: I’m not indulging speculation. It’s godless. Turn your thoughts immediately to God: You are good, Father. You are with me. You are still in control.” (from “Resilient: Restoring Your Soul in These Turbulent Times”)

GETTING RID OF WHITE KNUCKLE FEAR

This is not a quick and easy fix. This discipline can only be learned by letting the Holy Spirit take charge of how we view life.  Jesus says, “Deal with the present, not with speculating over the future.” He wants to rid us of that white knuckle fear which wakes us up in the middle of the night and which robs us of being able to breathe deeply. Jesus wants to build our resilience. It can only be found in Him. 

LISTENING IN THE DARK

Friendly faces just weren’t popping up on our radar.  Life was hard. 

We had moved to Illinois for my husband to attend graduate school.  The Mid-West was in the midst of a drought and the landscape was a uniform brown as the summer sun scorched the earth.  It was a hard time of change. While Bill went to school, I supported our family by holding down two jobs.

THE LESSONS I LEARNED IN THE DARK

Bill was the one officially attending classes, but God enrolled me in His own school. I think my curriculum was harder than Bill’s. The lessons I learned weren’t from the church we attended – that congregation was going through internal struggles. Spiritual and emotional wounds bloodied the aisles of the sanctuary. The lessons weren’t from the school where I taught – they were going through a time of turmoil. The lessons I learned were in the dark, before dawn. I could not sleep, so I took long walks around town.

LIFE WAS HARD

I was desperately homesick, lonely, and longing for some continuity of life.  My heart was broken. Life was rough. The support system and affirmations I had previously known were in the dust. Friendly faces just weren’t popping up on our radar.  Life was hard. 

SHAKEN TO THE CORE

After the first year, things turned especially brutal at the school where I taught.  The administrator had made some awful life choices and they surrounded him like a black cloud.  He took his troubles out on the staff. I remember one “coaching session” in which he berated me for 45 minutes straight.  The teaching skills I had previously had confidence in were ridiculed. I was shaken to the core.

WHAT I FOUND IN THE SILENCE

It was during that dark night of my soul when I learned to pray.  No more formula prayers for me.  No quick and easy fixes.  My prayer life took place during very long walks in which I would pour out my heart to God. Finally, finally I began to quiet down and listen to God.  The part of me which previously had life pretty much under control ceased to exist. There was only God in the silence. 

THE JEALOUS LOVE OF GOD

Ruth Haley Barton refers to “the jealous love of God.” She writes in Sacred Rhythms, “As long as we continue to reduce prayer to occasional piety we keep running away from the mystery of God’s jealous love.” When I didn’t feel like anyone else wanted me, God jealously loved me and desired my companionship. That was unfathomable.  I felt worthless, yet the God of the Universe wanted to talk to me in the dark at 5 AM? 

MY STUBBORN HEART

God had His work more than cut out.  My cold stubborn heart had to (as I personalize Barton’s writing) “let God’s creative love touch the most hidden places of my being and …to listen with attentive, undivided heart to the inner movement of the Spirit of Jesus, even when that Spirit was leading me to places I would rather not go.”  I was not in control of our finances, my work, our family, or my church.  I was locked out and didn’t know the way back in. 

GOD WANTED TO BUILD

I began to let God pry my fingers off those things I had previously treasured.  I begged God for what He alone wanted to transpire in my life, as hard and painful as it was. He had leveled all my previous comforts.  God wanted to build my life in a new and closer way. 

THE SIDEWALK PRAYER

It was in Illinois I learned what I call my “Sidewalk Prayer”: “Lord, I choose to trust You.” I repeated this over every crack in the sidewalk, every step in the dark.  I had no answers and couldn’t find words to express my distress. As Barton says, “We come to Him with empty hands and empty heart, having no agenda.  Half the time we don’t even know what we need; we just come with a sense of our own spiritual poverty.”  I dumped all of it, every awful shaming moment of it all, and came to the cross as an impoverished sinner.  “Lord, I choose to trust You.”  It was in the gloom of the hours before dawn when I learned to listen to the God Who sees in the dark.

THE POWER GRABBER

He ruled us with an iron fist and it was his way or the highway in all things

Having “Little Hitler” as a nickname is no compliment, yet that is what our immature hearts called our teacher behind his back.  He ruled us with an iron fist and it was his way or the highway in all things.  Though the guy was small in stature, he was rather scary.  In my time at that Christian school, I never evidenced a moment where he personally displayed to me the character of Christ illustrated in Philippians 2:5-8. 

WHAT I THOUGHT LEADERSHIP WAS

If I could have seen that, it would have been pivotal.  Instead, I mentally packed Little Hitler into my heart’s baggage which was already filled with encounters with off-kilter power figures.  Through his example, and the life stories of others, I thought that Christian leadership was all about one’s own agenda and how to could push one’s desires on to others.  How wrong I was!

NO SELFISH GRASPING OF CONTROL

In opposition is the example of Christ in Philippians 2.  There were no hidden agendas with Him, no power plays, no selfish grasping of control.  He had no desire for advancement or promotion.  All this was fully displayed in the life of One Who had 12 legions of angels at His disposal. A legion was pretty impressive because it was composed of between 4,000 and 6,000 soldiers. Christ could have obliterated the religious Pharisees and His Roman persecutors. 

WHAT HE CHOSE

Instead, He chose every day to invest His life into students who often did not get along with each other and misinterpreted or ignored His words.  He patiently put one foot in front of the other, carefully only listening to His Father’s voice for direction.  So many were curious about the One Who they thought would be their political savior and the answer to all their selfish desires. 

HUMBLING ONESELF

Jesus is the only One I know Who would choose to climb out of His own agony on the cross in order to reach out to save yet one more (Luke 23:32-43).  That’s what humbling oneself is all about.

THE CRUCIAL DECISION

So, the question arises:  how are your personal agendas working out?  Have you made it your life’s work to straighten others out?  To give them a piece of your mind?  To take your demands for justice into your own hands?  Or have you handed your personal desires over to God? Have you decided, no matter what, you will humble yourself before the One you love best, and quietly and obediently go about the Father’s business in all things?  This decision can drastically alter your life’s path and your perception of your journey here on earth. 

Are you continuing in the footsteps of the little dictators on earth?  Is that how you want to be known? If I could have seen a godly character transformation in the behavior of my teacher, it would have drastically impacted my life. I would have wanted to follow his example in my own life.  I ask you, are you the one that displays the character of Christ in all things, or are you the one who goosesteps, following the example of a power grabber?  It’s a choice.

KEEP KNOCKING

It is easy to presume that asking, seeking, or approaching that door to knock upon it is a waste of time. But God is not this way

It was a winter day when Bill made the trip to my parents’ home. His intention was to ask my dad for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I didn’t travel along for the ride. Bill was beyond nervous. A quick synopsis of the conversation is that interchange with my parents quickly went down the tubes. Dad (LaVerne) gave Bill a resounding “No!” LaVerne didn’t even want to discuss the possibility of marriage. He blocked that conversation with a barricade higher than the Berlin Wall.

What if instead, LaVerne had said to Bill: “Let me think this through and process this.  I love you both dearly and would love to see how we could work this out.” Bill would have left my house a great deal happier, seeing hope.  That’s what open doors do; they provide pathways to light.  Walls do not. Bill almost stopped knocking after his exchange with LaVerne.

In contrast to Bill’s experience, God has given to His children an incredible promise in Matthew 7:7-11 that has to do with coming before out Heavenly Father with requests. Notice the repeated words: “keep on.” Keep on asking, seeking and knocking. God, the Creator of the Universe, actually wants to hear from us over and over again. He doesn’t get bored with us, or consider it an inconvenience. However, “It is easy to presume that asking, seeking, or approaching that door to knock upon it is a waste of time. But God is not this way.” God has built a door and wants to open it for us.

This doesn’t mean that God is a spiritual genie. There are no magical words. Nowhere does it say, “Name it and claim it and the jackpot will appear”. God the Giver is good and not the author of some half-baked scheme of our own making. Because He is God, He is the One who gets to define what is good—not us! (Read the Book of Job or Hebrews 11:32-38 to give you a much clearer view on that.) God always has our best interests at heart. He is all-knowing and will only give us things that are good for us. His door is made for opening with goodness waiting for us.

This knocking is for the unskilled, just like us. If we are truthful, we all fit in with what Charles Spurgeon termed, “the ignorant and short witted”. Sometimes I’m not even sure regarding what I am praying for and how it fits into God’s plan, but I keep knocking. “The point seems to be that it doesn’t matter whether you find God immediately close at hand, almost touchable with his nearness, or hard to see. Even with barriers between, He will hear, and He will give good things to you because you looked to Him and not another.”

I praise God that my husband persisted and finally gained my father’s permission to marry.  But better yet, due to a lot of asking, seeking and knocking in prayer before our Heavenly Father, this marriage has lasted almost 50 years. Piper writes, “It is a great mercy to us and to the world that we do not get all we ask.” I asked for Prince Charming and got something much better, my Bill.  God knew what was best from the very beginning (regardless of what LaVerne thought).

WHEN I OPEN MY MOUTH

How do we offer answers to life?

Jesus spent 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. No, He wasn’t lost, and He wasn’t sightseeing. He was brought there by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the Devil. Now the Devil was very clever, because he knew Jesus hadn’t had anything to eat during this time. The Devil made his pitch: If you are the Son of God, make these stones become bread. Pretty simple, very straight forwarded regarding what Jesus needed during this time of food deprivation.  

All that Jesus had to do was to change the stones before him into bread. After all, Jesus was and is the Son of God. He is the One who made those stones; certainly, He could change then into a few loaves of bread. But Jesus knew the evil that he was dealing with; the ruthlessness that Devil would shower on God’s children if the Devil succeeded in this temptation.

And so, Jesus responded with, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.  He was referencing Deuteronomy 8:3 when the Israelites were being reminded that their food, or manna, was being supplied by God himself. Men do not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. The Devil had two other temptations for Jesus, which Jesus also answered by quoting the Old Testament.

POWERFUL WORDS

But why? Why would Jesus keep quoting Scripture? Because the Scriptures were not only the right answer for Him, but they are also the right answer for us.  The Scriptures are what we need to defeat the evil desires of the forces of evil. They are powerful and are the words from “the mouth of God.”

IT IS REFRESHING

It is these words that the Psalmist spoke about in Psalm 119: Oh, how I love your law. I meditate on it all day long. (v. 97) He also said, Your commands make me wiser (v.98) and then he said, I have more insight than all my teachers (v.99).  I believe you get the picture as to why the psalmist fell in love with God’s law. It is “sweet” to the taste. It’s like biting into a red delicious apple on a hot summer day. It is refreshing.

TASTE THE SWEETNESS

This law, these commands, or these precepts did for the psalmist what they can do for each of us today. Jesus made this point when he quoted the Old Testament and declared victory while standing in the presence of the evil one…the Devil. But believers today don’t always love the Word of God as they should. Many Christians today only pay lip service to the Word of God and never allow themselves to “taste” the sweetness that it offers.

HOW DO WE BEGIN?

So how do we do that? How do we offer scriptural answers to the many temptations that we face daily just like Jesus did? I believe it begins with a desire. A desire to want to get closer to God by knowing His heart, His mind, His plan for our lives. We fulfill that desire every day when we take time to read His word, and to study the deeper parts of the Bible. Some people say, “That’s for the preachers and Sunday School teachers.” Nonsense! Anybody can learn from the Bible. Remember what He taught us in Ephesians 4:11, It was He who gave some to be Apostles, some to be Prophets, some to be Evangelists, and some to be Pastors and teachers.

THE ULTIMATE TEACHER

God has given us help and above all, he gave us the Holy Spirit to teach us. The Holy Spirit will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. (John 14:26)  

WHAT IS NEEDED: DESIRE

Immerse yourself in the Word of God and begin to love it and to “taste” it. The only thing it takes is desire. Do you have the desire? My editor has a sign hanging in her office which reads: “Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out”.  Why not change that to: “Sometimes I open my mouth and the Words of God come out!”

AN ABUNDANCE OF LOVE

It’s hard for me to believe that I don’t have to consider God as lacking anything in His toolbox of love and care.

I was blessed to grow up with food, clothing, education and housing.  Both my parents were exceptionally hard workers (I learned my work ethic from them).  However, over the years I have tried to make sense of the emotional silence which permeated our home. Love was hard to come by in our emotional desert.

LOSING A MOTHER

Recently I read John Eldredge’s book: Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times.  A paragraph brought light on spot in my heart which I have always failed to understand: “Losing a mother, never having a mother, or living with a mother who in many ways could not offer the mothering we needed is simply devastating.” My mother fit that last category.  Emotionally damaged in many ways, it was not possible for her to offer the kind of love we children needed.  She didn’t purposely choose to be that way; it just was.

MOTHER DESOLATION

Thinking this through, I have begun to understand that as an adult very often my reactions to life has demonstrated I lacked the “assurance of abundance” as a child. Eldredge writes: “Are my actions and emotions proving that I received utter assurance that my needs matter, and that they will be met, and met joyfully? You could call this the category of “mother wounds,” but I think a far more accurate description is mother desolation. The soul is meant to receive profound nourishment from our mother—physically and emotionally, nourishment in absolute abundance. When it doesn’t, the soul experiences a famine of the most serious kind.”

THE FAMINE EXPERIENCE

That famine experience has carried over to my relationship with my heavenly Father. I ask Him: “Do my needs matter? Will You meet them joyfully?” I find that God’s love is far different than my famine experience. 

NEVER FORGOTTEN!

What does His love look like? God is unable to forget us. “Even if mothers were to forget, I could never forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15) Burn these words into your heart: “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close” (Psalm 27:10). Contrary to all those childhood experiences, God is NEVER going to forget me.  God will never push me away. 

GOD’S TOOLBOX

“Mother desolation” is part of my bio.  My mother died years ago and it took years for me to forgive her for lacking the qualities that were never in her toolbox as a parent.  It’s hard for me to believe that I don’t have to consider God as lacking anything in His toolbox of love and care. God WANTS to carry me in His arms, to hold me, to converse with me, to attach with me. 

A NEW ATTACHMENT

I don’t understand such attachment and have trouble trusting it.  God is working on that. He offers to mother us — to come and heal our souls here, in this essential place. Eldredge writes, “God yearns to bring us the assurance of abundance.” God wants to deeply attach to us. “Salvation is a new attachment, the soul’s loving bond to our loving God.”

ALWAYS ROOM FOR YOU

Maybe as you walk through 2024, you may want to rethink the quality of your attachment to God. Try attaching to God in 2024. He always has room for you. There is an abundance of love.

GROWING UP IN CHURCH

I was reading about a church in Florida which is for “Exvangelicals.”

I, like a lot of you, grew up in church. It was the same church that my dad went to, my aunts, my grandmother, and about half of Wrightsville attended. Most of the weddings, church suppers, Christmas eve services, funerals, family activities, and even the Boys Scouts met there. We even had an evangelist come once a year to stir up the spiritual fire. That fire always seemed to burn out a few weeks after the evangelist left town.

CATECHISM CLASS

Not being a Christian then (I didn’t get saved until I was 16 years old), I saw everything through a set of eyes that reflected the world’s standards.  I didn’t have spiritual eyes that could see everything through the lens of Christ. The one thing I remember from those years of growing up in church was catechism class. Pastor Wilson met with a dozen of us 6th graders every Saturday morning for about 6 weeks. Now, I don’t remember the particulars, but I do remember Pastor Wilson emphasized: “None of these facts matter if you can’t back them up with Scripture, because Scripture is God’s Word given to man.” For a dumb 6th grader who knew little about the Bible, those words would have a great impact on me later in life.

THE REASON FOR THE HOPE YOU HAVE

I do not believe that the Apostle Peter ever had to go to catechism class, but he learned the same truth which I learned on those Saturday mornings. Peter wrote in I Peter 3:15, But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. As Pastor Wilson would say, everything we believe, we need to be able to back up with Scripture.

THEY NEVER ASKED THE QUESTION

Growing up in the church, I had a lot of friends who learned the same songs that I did, who heard the same Sunday School lessons and attended the same youth group as I did. However, they never asked the questions: “Why did Jesus die on the cross for their sins? Is Jesus God? Are the Scriptures the only source of truth that can provide hope for Christians everywhere?”

EXVANGELICALS

I frequently remember Pastor Wilson’ words. Just this week I was reading about a church in Florida which is for “Exvangelicals.” This is a church with all of the trappings of an evangelical church, without the presence of someone “telling” you what to believe. If you have a problem with hell, fine, this is the church for you! Tired of people telling you what the Bible says about sexuality? Then settle in, because you have come to the right place.

OUR SOURCE OF TRUTH

Sadly, this movement is spreading throughout the country. It reminds me of those friends that I had growing up in church. They believed that if you want to be a Christian, just act like a Christian; you don’t have to believe like a Christian. Acts 17:11 says: Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Remember, it is essential that the Scriptures always be our source of Truth. It provides an awful lot of answers. Gee, I wish we would have had some Bereans in the church that I grew up in!

GOD’S GOOD PLANS

The patients were wheeled into a room where they waited and waited. No teacher arrived.  Someone said, “I guess we have to cancel; we don’t have a preacher.” 

Did you ever question God’s timing? My friend, Margie, recently passed out and was rushed by ambulance to the hospital. After a week in the hospital, she was transported to a rehab facility.  When she was finally released, Margie shared with me her best moment in her recovery.

WE DON’T HAVE A PREACHER

At the nursing home/rehab facility there was supposed to be an afternoon Bible Study.  The patients were wheeled into a room where they waited and waited some more. No teacher arrived.  Finally, someone said, “I guess we have to cancel; we don’t have a preacher.”  Prompted by the Holy Spirit, Margie piped up and said, “I can do it.” She proceeded to not only share how she came to Christ (which had been during the Advent season many years ago) but also shared with them the real message of hope in Jesus Christ. Many of her fellow patients were living the holidays warehoused and forgotten.

GOD HAD OTHER PLANS

God maneuvered the dynamics in that meeting room so Margie could tell them about eternal hope possible through Jesus Christ. Margie’s gameplan for December had not been to have her life disrupted by the hospital stay and then the rehab facility, but God had other plans and they were good.

PLAYING THE LONG GAME

I have not always appreciated the fact that God “takes actions in the present with the aim of yielding desired results in the future”. That’s what it means when people reference God “playing the long game”. God played the long game with Margie. God’s brilliant half-time show was to get Margie in to share with the patients in the rehab unit.

HE WAS BATTLING GOD

Matthew 21-18 introduces us to a mass murderer, King Herod. He was responsible for the deaths of his wife, 3 sons, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, and uncle. The emperor Augustus popularized the saying, “Better to be Herod’s pig than his son.” The birth of the promised Messiah threatened everything that Herod ever loved = himself.  The arrival of the Magi must have seemed to him a stroke of luck – Herod would be able to discover the location of this new threat to his power and eliminate the competition. He didn’t realize He was battling the God who plays the long game.

IN THE PRESENCE OF EVIL

God’s hands are all over the Advent story.  He guided “foreigners to Christ to worship him. God exerted global—probably even universal—influence and power to get it done. Matthew records God moving the stars in the sky to get foreign magi to Bethlehem so that they could worship the Christ. This is God’s design. His aim is that the nations—all the nations (Matthew 24:14)—worship his Son.” (From Good News of Great Joy) That was and is God’s long game. God has always had good plans, regardless of Herod’s execution of the infants in Matthew 2. God worked, even in the presence of evil.

GOD’S LONG GAME OF REDEMPTION

Margie’s stay at the rehab facility isn’t anything she has ever longed for.  However, God gave her the privilege of inviting forgotten people to know the Savior. While Satan plays a short game of destruction, God plays the long game of redemption. That’s Who God is, even when we can’t see it. God has good plans. It’s your choice in who you place or do not place your trust.

SKATING ON A POND WITH THE PLYMOUTH

He landed on the frozen surface of the pond.  How could the ice support the weight of a 3,019 pound station wagon?

How long does it take a 1953 grey Plymouth station wagon to break through the ice and sink to the murky bottom of a pond?  That fearful question engulfed our hearts as we filled the car with screams.  The wailing voices belonged to my two sisters, mother and myself.  The one not shrieking in fear was the madman at the wheel, my smirking father.

THE STATION WAGON ON THE POND

It was a cold winter afternoon and we were out on a family drive. We made a side trip to the family farm.  I am clueless how my dad persuaded Mother that he needed to drive down the lane behind barn. Daddy then proceeded to drive off the path, continued up and over the bank and landed on the frozen surface of the pond.  How could the ice support the weight of a 3,019 pound station wagon?

LAVERNE, GET OFF THE ICE!

My mother yelled at my father, “LaVerne, get off the ice!!!”  My sisters and I pictured the ice cracking and our car sinking into the frigid depths.  I was a little girl bundled into a bulky cumbersome snowsuit and not dressed for swimming through icy waters!  He must have braked the car at that point because I remember Mother, my sisters and I shoving open the car doors and running for our lives to the safety of the pond’s bank.

EASY TO DRIVE DOWN BUT NOT BACK UP

My father would normally have been celebrating his feat of reckless courage, however at that point he realized while it was easy to drive down the bank onto the ice, it was another matter to drive the car off the ice and up and over the bank of the pond.  The wheels of the heavy car struggled to gain traction.  After repeated tries, somehow Daddy managed to find enough momentum to drive off the pond. 

NOT SPOKEN OF AGAIN

Alongside his now traumatized family, my dad celebrated his bravery by building a fire on the pond’s bank.  We roasted hot dogs and drank hot chocolate and didn’t speak of it again.

I grew up in a household in which we were religious, but not trusting. Cared for physically, but not necessarily, emotionally.  There were a great many things never spoken of, never shared, and never given.  In other words, I never quite knew where I stood as a child, a daughter. 

I wish I had known where to find the kind of love my heart longed for. I needed Isaiah 26:3 You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

Or better yet: Psalm 121: 1 I look up to the mountains—does my help come from there? 2 My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth! 3 He will not let you stumble; the one who watches over you will not slumber. 4 Indeed, he who watches over Israel never slumbers or sleeps. 5 The Lord himself watches over you! The Lord stands beside you as your protective shade. 6 The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon at night. 7 The Lord keeps you from all harm and watches over your life. 8 The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.

These are promises needed when the waters run cold and deep and the shore seems so very far away.

GOD IS IN THE HOUSE!

This new inhabitant would send shock waves across the world that would exist for centuries.

At the end of our block is a sign which says, “Apartment for Rent”, advertising the unit below us.  The tenant moved away Thanksgiving weekend. In the entire year she lived under us, we never heard a peep.  She moved in a complete stranger and stayed a stranger.  One day I asked her name but she only told me her first name.  Our lives were not rocked by her entrance or exit.

What if instead she had been a co-tenant with us? Lived in our apartment, shared our furniture, our utilities, our conversations, our life.  Her arrival and departure would have affected our lives.  We may have either wept or rejoiced, but our lives would have shifted. 

THE NEW NEIGHBOR

John 1:1-14 describes someone whose entrance into the world rocked the existence of mankind. This new neighbor is referred to as The Word. If The Word had to fill out an application to live with us, John would write “The Word’s previous address was the universe, from eternity.” As for previous housemates, John would write, “The Word was with God.” He might also have written in parenthesis: (by the way, The Word was God).  This new neighbor, announced by John, was not going to be someone unseen, who would silently go about his business. This new inhabitant would send shock waves across the world that would exist for centuries. In other words, The Word is Immanuel, “God with us”.

HE’S NOT A LONG WAY OFF

The Old Testament tells us about another situation where God lived in the midst of people. The Tabernacle and Solomon’s temple both contained the “Holy of Holies” – the Glory of God. This was called by Jewish rabbis the “Shekhinah Glory”; “the visible presence of God among men”. God decided to room among a people who rarely loved Him or fully devoted themselves to Him.  In the Book of John, God is announced as again pitching His tent, but this time the Tent was in human form, “Immanuel”; God with us. Spurgeon warns us about our attitude about the new neighbor, Immanuel, “Do not let us live as if God were a long way off.” 

LIVED WITH US IN ORDER TO DIE

Immanuel did not come as judge and executioner. All of us already were guilty before Him and were doomed to everlasting punishment. John Piper writes: “The Word, the Son, who is God, became flesh to reveal a divine glory that is “full of grace and truth.” The Word of God became flesh to be gracious to us.” “Grace” is “God’s favor toward the unworthy”. In His grace, God is willing to forgive us and bless us abundantly, in spite of the fact that we don’t deserve to be treated so well or dealt with so generously. Piper continues, “The Word became flesh so that this graciousness to us would come in accord with God’s truthfulness. This is a righteous, God-exalting, costly grace. It led straight to Jesus’ death on the cross. In fact, this is why he became flesh. He had to have flesh in order to die.”

HE WILL LIVE WITH YOU

God has come close to you in Jesus Christ. He is Immanuel. You don’t have to struggle to make a connection with this new Neighbor, just invite Him in. He will come to you. God is in the House! This Neighbor has rocked my world.  I will never be the same.  He lives in my apartment, my heart, my soul.  He has promised to never leave me or forsake me.  I don’t have to go searching for someone else. That sign announcing room for rent has gone down, because God has made His Home with me for eternity.   

In case you want to read further about this New Neighbor, click Revelation 19:11-16