All good things come from God
And all good things go back to God

"If he shrinks back . . ."

From This Day We Fight by Francis Frangipane


Everything God tells us to do will, at some point, require us to stand against seemingly impossible odds and believe courageously what He has said. True faith takes courage. In the midst of human struggle, courage must walk as the companion and expression of our faith.

In order for faith to mature it needs situations where faith alone can sustain us. For this reason God will allow us to go through times when we must trust Him in spite of how things appear. In those times, against the glaring face of a negative reality, true faith arises, appropriates courage and locks into the integrity of God's promise. We must let faith arise in the context of resistance.


For in just a very little while, He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. (Heb 10:37-38)

To Live By Faith

From This Day We Fight by Francis Frangipane:


For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.
See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright— but the righteous will live by his faith. (Hab 2:3-4)


To "live by faith" is to believe God until the vision He gave comes to pass.

You see, this is not about the fulfillment of our lives but the fulfillment of God's Word. God's Word cannot return to Him void without fulfilling the purpose for which He spoke it.

Whom shall we believe? The report of the Lord or the words of those who refuse to see the light? Shall we take the counsel from the blind if they cannot see the potential we see? Let us take God at his word. Let me state this again: Jesus Himself assures us that "All things are possible to him who believes." Do you believe? Or are you just a nice believer who goes to church?

Beloved, if we fail, it is no great shame. We simply join the ranks of the spiritual heroes who went before us and "died in faith, without receiving the promises." In truth, it is better to die in faith than to live in doubt.

But consider: What if we succeed?

A Summer of Old Friends

JOE BOOT!

And his lovely/hilarious/wonderful wife, Jenny.
I met them in Colorado last November, so it was good to see them again last week. Currently my favorite people.



McGinness!
An old friend from '03. This was also last week.

The Lisabean!
Came to Maryland a couple weeks ago. Flew in for a visit after being apart for 5 years. They call us "Lisa Squared."



The Frost.
My little dog of 11 years.



And little Sarabeth...
We were housekeepers together in 2003. Came for a visit in May after 4 years. Like the chihuahua?




You can find the complete collection on FACEBOOK. Get thee thence. And add me if you haven't already, slacker.

Call me a biased RZIM intern, but...

I'm of the opinion that Joe Boot is pretty darned swell.

The Depth of Identity

Catherine Marshall, To Live Again:


. . . Our most sensitive awareness of ourselves as a person has come through our relationship with one man. Soon after we met him, we found that in his presence we were aware of our feminity as never before.

With a new awareness, we understood that men and women were meant to be different.

But life dealt us a blow . . . We who had known completeness only in our relationship with a man who loved us, were now asked to be complete within ourselves. In order to survive, we have had to do a hundred things we had never done before.

We managed all this by summoning up latent masculine qualities we did not know we possessed--the necessity of accepting responsibility, aggressiveness, competitiveness, drive, a partial submerging of feeling in favor of reason.

But a woman's need is to be loved for herself, not for any accomplishment. A true woman finds her reassurance, her reason for living, by looking into the eyes of a man who loves her. And when that is withdrawn from her--well--then what? She may achieve something that society recognizes as fine, only to find herself unable to accept society's new estimate of her.

I had performed a certain mission. The world said that it had helped many. But as a woman I was not impressed with any accomplishment of mine. As a woman I felt drained, empty.

I stood looking back over the way I had traveled since Peter's death and knew that my personal answer to whether or not a woman can replace marriage with a career and find it satisfying was--no, definitely not.

The career left the woman still wanting to be--only a woman.

The Danger of Safety

"Anxiety is a greater sin than making the wrong decision. We're indecisive because we want to be safe. It paralyzes us. And that paralysis is sin. God is sovereign. He is not surprised by the decisions we make. Everything that happens falls perfectly into his will. And there's no reason we should be worried about falling into his will." Nate Towers



From a previous post:

There's a great song lyric that says, "The lie is always cheaper than the truth." And it's true. But on the flip side, the greatest treasures will only be won "at immense cost and discipline." When the Lord asks you to walk in faith, a part of you dies. You pay dearly to follow the Lord - whether it be emotionally, physically, relationally. But you pay. You always pay. If it's free, you have to wonder if it's really God. Your friends, who only mean the best, will say, "Be careful. Don't do it. I don't want to see you get hurt." But when has following Christ not involved suffering? Obedience does not mean safety. I think one of our biggest problems as Christians is that we think we need to be safe, and we want our friends to be safe. Obviously, we shouldn't be stupid. But if we're truly following the Lord, there will be risk. And with risk there will be scars. With obedience there will be suffering.

To Revere the Covenant

Catherine Marshall, To Live Again

. . . But all my human efforts had failed to curb my husband's whirlwind pace. Nothing seemed left for me but a complete relinquishment of the man I loved to the Lord. It was indeed like trusting myself to the water. My feeling was like that of a child poised and teetering on the end of a high diving board.

At that time out of the depths of my fear I had made an act of giving Peter's future and mine to God for Him to do with as he pleased. The relinquishment had been as complete as I was able to make it. It had been made in my will, even as my every human emotion had cried out against it.

But now, months later, God was saying, "Apparently you did not really mean that relinquishment that day. . . ." The clear implication seemed to be that God had taken the transaction between us, made in my will, at face value, as a covenant, as He always does a promise made to Him by one of his children. I was now being challenged. My bluff was being called. Did I really believe in the existence of God enough to believe that when I spoke to him, he heard; when I made Him a promise, He accepted it and held me to it?



"See!" Joshua said to the people. "This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the LORD has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God." (Joshua 24:27)

Eastern Shadows

I hang in suspended decent
Over the bottomless chasm of uncertainty
In my heart, the sentence of death
Sysiphus, my destiny

Twisted knots of fear-induced paralysis
Consumes the inner yearnings of starving desolation
Yet with fierce composure presses
The force of breathless resignation
Anticipation drained to dregs
Of bitter suffocation

Death engulfs, with hell to swarm
With face as flint and blood blade-worn
A fastened jaw, a thorn embraced
The beating heart of hope enraged
A cry of justice silenced, torn
From life itself, cut, scalped and shorn
The blood of hope poured over coal
With murdered oaths and vows untold

A screech, a cry, from sky above
A shadowed form to shield the sun
With wings outstretched to hide the day
My dying sight - a Bird of Prey

"If God promised it, then yes."

I don't remember what the question was, but it was a really good answer. So simple, so true. And from someone who isn't even a Christian. . .

I went on to ask him, "But how do you know?"

His response was, "I don't know. But you know God, and you know what he said, and I trust your judgment."




Humbling, really.

The Risk of Releasing

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote two years ago. For the rest of it, go here.


". . . It took me until the following afternoon before I had the courage to move beyond my demand for his contrition and forgive this man who had so hurt me. Courage, I say, because forgiveness is a risk. It means so much more than merely canceling a debt. True forgiveness involves surrender. True surrender involves releasing everything—demands, expectations, bitterness, and, ultimately, the offender’s guilt. I could not make the situation into what I wanted it to be; I could not pretend that I had the power and strength to manipulate the circumstance. Surrender would make me weak and vulnerable—or rather, it would expose this as my true condition. I had to relinquish control to God. In choosing to trust God, I was forced to lose hope in everything else. In clinging to Christ, I had to release the offender, only to risk him never understanding, never caring. By walking away, I was risking him letting me go."



It's a risk that burns you. But it's a burn that erodes the flesh and brings forth new life. "Who of us can dwell with everlasting burning? He who walks righteously..." Righteousness involves belief. Belief involves obedience.

One thing I have learned: Obedience involves risk. It's a leap into the bottomless chasm of uncertainty. If the leap should bring "death," then I believe in the God who raises the dead. But if he should give us wings, then may it be that we rise to the heavens.

Raise us up, Lord Jesus.

Sisyphus

I don't just want to be forgiven.
I want to be changed.

What Has Gone Before

All good things come from God
and all good things go back to God
For God is good
and in his goodness I rest

The Cost of Obedience

In response to my last post, Christina asked, "How can we have God's favor in our relationships? Or anything else, for that matter?" My answer comes in the form of a quote, and part of an email I recently wrote to a friend.


THE QUOTE:

"Often God does things in our life that may not fit our grid of 'normal.' But 'normal' to God isn't a set formula, it's obedience no matter what the cost, absolute trust in His leading, and total dependence upon Him for the outcome." (Eric Ludy)


THE EMAIL:

. . . If I know nothing else, and if I have been deceived beyond all deception and have believed a lie, I know the Lord has commanded me to obey. If I lose everything, and I am again left alone, then I will have gained one thing: the favor of the Lord. The favor of the Lord outweighs the delights of the heart.

For though I desire fulfillment, those desires must be offered unreservedly to the God who is close to the contrite. And though I desire the favor of men, I must seek the favor of the Lord. I must obey, regardless of the cost, knowing that there is a joy set before me that is worth the pain, the suffering, the nights of empty longing. To set my face like flint, to endure the cross and scorn its shame, is to follow in the path of Christ, a path laden with heartache and loss. But there is beauty beyond the suffering, and for that beauty I strive.

Looking back over my life, there has been nothing more beautiful than one lonely night sophomore year. After two difficult years of learning the cost of obedience, the Lord closed that chapter with his own hand. But even in the closing of a chapter, there is loss. There is always loss. But in the darkness of my loss, the Lord met me. And in my dark and lonely hour, I received words of favor from the Lord, words that made those two hard years make sense. They were words that showed me the value of obedience and brokenness. It is those words of favor I remember when I want to abandon this living hope. I think of the beauty I might miss if I don't stay the course. I think of the beauty I might gain should I press on. I think of the Lord's favor, and how it is more desirable than fulfillment. For I can live without earthly fulfillment, but I cannot live without my God.

This I know. Indeed, I have paid dearly the cost for which I never bargained. I have lost the treasures of my very self, and yet I have survived. I have learned there is life after loss, and the God for which I labor is worth those empty nights. I have yet to see the restoration of all I have lost, and yet I hope, I wait, I believe. One day his salvation will come, and I will wait for that day. If all for which I have hoped comes to naught, I will still believe that my God will come. I will still wait for his deliverance. I know that one day he will restore the years the locusts have eaten. One day, he will atone for the sufferings that I have endured. I will wait for him. He came through for me once, and it is that memory I will not release. He came for me. And though he linger, I will wait. He will surely come and will not delay. If I lose all for which I have labored, then may it be that I gain the favor of the Lord, which no man can rob from me.

The Favor of the Lord

"Many young couples struggle with problems in their marriage that they cannot trace to their source. They are committed to the Lord and to one another. There is a genuine love between them. Yet their is an indefinable something missing, which is God's favor."

"There is one thing you must do above all others: You must diligently cultivate the Lord's favor. His satisfaction must be your highest ambition. Make God's favor the supreme object of living." (Derek Prince)


"Remember me for this, O my God, and do not blot out what I have so faithfully done. . . . Remember me with favor, O my God." (Nehemiah 13:14, 31)

"This is what the LORD says: 'In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you.'" (Isaiah 49:8)