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If you’re reading along with us using the Resting at the River’s Edge Reading plans, you’re in the book of Ezekiel. I told Phil a few days ago that I was reading Ezekiel and his response was “Wheels within wheels? I’m sure some day we’ll see Zeke in heaven and say ‘Dude, you got the call and you did the best you could with it, but seeing it – this is something else!’”

In other words, if you can make sense of what Ezekiel saw, you’re doing better than everyone else who has ever tried! I can’t imagine the challenge Ezekiel had in describing what is clearly other-worldly. But one day we will see the unbelievable beings he saw and we will stand (or fall) amazed. What can we take away from a book with such mind-blowing “characters?”

I can’t begin to get my mind around the pictures described by Ezekiel, but I can still gain from reading the book. Here’s just two lessons I take from the first dozen chapters of Ezekiel.

God is…More Than
I struggled with a subtitle here and settled for this generic one – God is More Than. Let me tease it out a bit:

• God is more creative than I can possibly imagine. My mind can’t bring the beings Ezekiel is describing into a cohesive picture, yet God created them from nothing. Imagine the degree of creativity required to create such things! I like it that the God I serve isn’t limited in His creativity. (Note to self: Quit trying to suggest to God how to solve your problems when you’re praying – leave the solutions to His creativity – don’t put limits on His answers to your prayers by asking in a way that causes you to receive less than God’s creativity wants to give you!)
• God is more concerned with details than I sometimes remember. The amount of detail that Ezekiel includes about the beings is commendable – but beyond Ezekiel’s detailed writing is a God who included such detail in His creations. Eyes and wings and wheels and motors and hands and faces and much more. I am certain that no part of the beings occurred by happenstance –there is significance to each element. I don’t understand that significance yet, but I know the God who does. He is patient and kind and He is love. He is trustworthy. So I leave the details to Him for now. He’ll explain them to me when I need to know. For now I can be content to marvel at His ability to create such things.
• God is not from around here – and that’s a good thing. Reading about the whirling wheels and the cherubim who interacted with them (or perhaps were a part of them) makes it clear to me that God didn’t grow up in my neighborhood. There is no amount of influence that could make someone from earth imagine what God has created. The creations are clearly other-worldly, as is the God who created them. It can become easy to think of God as a super-human. He is not. He is from a realm that He can give us insight into but while in this body, we cannot truly know.
• God is the ultimate Commander in Chief. He commands the creatures that are beyond description. He speaks and they respond. There is no hesitation in them. (Another note to self: Learn from the creatures – obey without hesitation!) Imagine the power and authority required to command such creatures!
• God is…more than – More than I can imagine, more than I can understand, more than I can describe. And as such, he is more deserving of my praise than I am able to give. Lord, help me to give you more praise!

God Hates Sin
You don’t have to have read very far in Ezekiel (I’m actually a few days behind in my reading according to our reading plan), to understand how grievous sin is to God. As I read chapters six, seven, eight and beyond, my heart was pierced as I understood what an affront sin is to God. I was also struck by the perspective of the seventy elders who were burning incense to idols in the temple. They say:

“The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land.”
Ezekiel 8:12b

Wrong, my friends! The Lord sees, and He is grieved by our sin. Beyond that, however, He will judge sin. Period. Let’s not be like the seventy elders and delude ourselves into believing that God does not see and will not judge. As the Apostle Peter reminded the early Christians:

⁸But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:8-9

The Lord sees, but is being patient, giving us and everyone else time to repent before He must come and judge. Peter goes on, reminding the Christians (and us today) that the Lord will come. He follows with an exhortation of how we are to live. I’ll let him write the ending to this blog:

¹⁰But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.

¹¹Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives ¹²as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. ¹³But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.

¹⁴So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. ¹⁵Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. ¹⁶He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

¹⁷Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. ¹⁸But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
1 Peter 3:10-18

Amen!

Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit,
for anger resides in the lap of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:9

I had planned to spend all day with my mom last Friday. It had been on the schedule for two weeks, but I was having one of those mornings when it seems impossible to get out of the house. I had to go back upstairs several times because I kept forgetting things, then I had to go downstairs in the basement to gather supplies I needed. I was planning to eat my breakfast of toast and tea on the road, but couldn’t find my car tea cup. So after boiling the water for tea, I just threw it away and looked for an alternative beverage. Diet Coke was my second choice, but we didn’t have any cold. So I put ice in a plastic glass and took the can with me. I was also taking lots of other things for various projects we’d be working on – scrapbooking supplies for making some cards, my laptop so I could make some notes about mom’s life for a book we’re working on, a puzzle I bought to put together during some visit, and various other things I’d collected that needed to be taken to mom’s.

In retrospect, I recognize that this morning really wasn’t atypical. The problem was my attitude. It just seemed that each additional trip upstairs or downstairs or each thing that didn’t go exactly as I wanted it to go increased my frustration. Never during those 45 minutes of getting ready did I stop, take a breath and remind myself that life is good. I was letting little things that shouldn’t even rate being considered annoyances get to me.

Finally, after three trips to the car loading various supplies, I grabbed my purse, my glass of ice and my can of pop and headed to the car with my keys in my hand. I was ready to be off for the day (finally! – sigh). I put the glass of ice in the cup holder, then reached over it to put my purse on the passenger’s seat. That’s when my shirt caught on the straw and knocked the glass of ice onto the floor. One would think that I’d have celebrated that there was only ice in the glass, right? Wrong. My “celebration” more like a loud growl-groan – “Aarrrghhhhhhh!”

God’s Interruption
It was in the midst of that aarghh that God spoke to me. Not in an audible voice, but in a distinct thought in my mind that was inconsistent with the emotions I was experiencing. “Sandy, you’re making it harder,” was what I heard, “Sandy, you’re making it harder.” I knew instantly what He meant. My loud growl-groan didn’t do a thing to alleviate my frustration. In fact, it fed it and made it stronger. It was increasing my annoyance with the day in general and moving me closer to throwing in the towel – having my own personal hissy fit, slamming the car doors, throwing the keys in the key-basket and plopping in my chair and saying, “I quit. I can’t go to Mom’s today. I can’t deal with this!” Or maybe my reaction wouldn’t have been quite that bad – maybe I was just being set up for an hour-long drive during which I would rehearse all the miserable things about my life, arriving at Mom’s with a fake smile pasted on my face, and being frustrated at everything that didn’t go right for the next eight hours.

In His grace, God stopped what was happening by whispering into my mind, “Sandy, you’re making it worse.” I immediately realized the truth in the words. I could/should have been considering myself blessed that there was no pop in the glass. I could/should have been spending the morning in anticipation of the blessings of being with Mom all day. I could/should have been using each trip upstairs or downstairs to do any of a number of things other than complain about them. If I hadn’t been expending mental and emotional energy complaining, I probably would have remembered everything I needed on the first trip upstairs…or at least the second one.

There are blessings all around us and we miss them because we get too caught up in the minor things that go wrong (or in some cases, the things that might go wrong – but that’s a different blog).

Blogging about this experience has been on my list for the past week, but when I read the verse in Ecclesiastes this morning, it was moved to the top of the list. “Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit.” I was much too quickly provoked last Friday. And all along the way I had a choice to not be provoked. At any point I could have re-directed my thoughts to the good that God has put around me and in my life. Perhaps this sounds to you much like brainwashing or self-delusion. Not so. The truth is that we constantly have a voice inside us that speaks into our minds – either good or bad. That morning, I had chosen to listen to the bad.

My Freight Train of Thought
If I had taken the time to really listen to that bad voice, I know that I would have been hearing things like this: “You’re never going to get out of here on time. You’re always late when you go to your Mom’s. If you don’t get there by 9am you won’t really have time to do much of anything before lunch. Why is it that your Mom always gets the short end of the stick?” Another line of self-talk might have been more like this: “Why is it that you can’t remember three simple things in one trip? If you had laid this stuff out last night you’d be having a better morning today. If you forget something you won’t be able to finish making the cards you want to do with Mom.” And here’s the third track the voices would have taken: “You know it’s going to take you three trips to get all this stuff to the car. And then three more trips to get it all from the car into the nursing home. Not to mention three more trips to get it all back home. What are you going to do with your laptop while you’re working on cards in the lounge? You know you’ll have to leave it in your Mom’s room because you can’t carry your laptop and your scrapbook supplies all at once. Maybe you should leave your laptop in the car and just work on cards, then go out to the car and exchange the scrapbooking supplies for the laptop. Of course, that limits what you can do…”

I debated about including that last paragraph in this blog for many reasons. It’s very revealing of my personal thought life. Yes, I think these kinds of thoughts, more often than I’d like to admit. This is the kind of self-talk that creeps into my head, trying to suck the life out of me and get me to take the easier path of just giving up and doing nothing. Can you relate to that? It’s not just a “train of thought” – it’s more like a freight train of thought, because it hits you with such impact and it’s full of the baggage of life. But it’s baggage that we’re not called to carry. These thoughts reside just under the surface of my life waiting to pop up at the least provocation. Who can sustain a positive attitude with that flood of negative thoughts vying for attention?

God’s Better Plan
Part of the wonderful package of becoming a follower and disciple of Christ, though, is learning to replace those thoughts with His thoughts. What were God’s thoughts during this time? If I could have silenced the darts the enemy was throwing, I would have been able to recognize how blessed I am to be able to take a day off to spend with Mom. How wonderful it is to have a house with three floors, and the health to be able to climb all those stairs, and the finances to buy scrapbooking supplies and a puzzle and a laptop computer! Was I angsting over what to wear this morning? (Yes!) What a blessing to have such choices in clothing! Was I complaining about tromping upstairs so many times? (Yes!) What good exercise on a day when I would spend most of it sitting! Beyond those blessings that relate directly to what was frustrating me, I have the overriding blessings of a God who is just wild about me, a husband who loves me just about as much as God does, and other family and friends who help make life precious. I also have the physical and mental ability to work and play in the beautiful and abundantly varied world that God has created for me. And I have a warm, dry, and comfortable bed to sleep in each night as I thank God for His goodness.

Being easily provoked last week was all a matter of focusing on the wrong things, and dealing with them in a fleshly way. As God said, my reaction to each incident was just making it worse. The greatest blessing? That God mercifully spoke to me to remind me that I have a choice about letting these little things provoke me to frustration and anger. What a great God we serve!

Lord, as we face the coming week, will you help each reader hear Your voice and not be easily provoked by the darts the enemy throws their way.

Six Temptations of Failure, Day 6 of 6

Temptation # 6: Living in Fear of Failure
Sometimes we overreact to failure and build walls around ourselves and our activities so that eventually we wall ourselves in and no longer live in the freedom God has given us. Instead, we live in fear that we will fail again. So we essentially stop living. Sure, we’re still breathing and walking and talking, but the life has gone out of our life. Failure is a part of life, friends. We cannot build ourselves into such a safe place that we will not experience it, and to try to do so places limits around us that diminish our lives.

Fear ultimately leads to living a life characterized by legalism. We make rules and regulations to govern our lives and build a hedge of protection around ourselves to keep from ever being hurt again. Most of these new rules aren’t biblical. God never tells His people to stop stepping out in faith. These barriers you erect to prevent future failures all too often separates you from God and His best will for your life.

Fear is the antithesis of faith. Fear is believing that Satan will win instead of believing that the outcome will be what God has said it will be. Choose to believe God, friends. Engage your faith and live life to the fullest.

It occurs to me that perhaps I seem uncompassionate in this blog. Trust me, friends, I have compassion for those experiencing failure. Been there — done that. Refused to buy the T-shirt and don’t want to go back to have another opportunity to do so. But I also know that the temptations listed in these blogs are Satan’s way of binding us to the failure and blinding us to the plans God has for us.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11

God desires to give us freedom. God desires for us to be whole. God desires to make something great out of your failure and mine. Let’s resist Satan’s bait and trust God for the good stuff!

As for the saints who are in the land,
they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.
Psalm 16:3

I’ve read this Scripture many times before, but last night I noticed a very important small word in it – ALL – It says that God saves ALL His delight for “the saints.” If you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior, that means you! It means me, too. We’re talking about the God of the universe here, the God who created heaven and earth and all that is in it. That God – saves all his delight for His children.

There are more than 350,000 different kinds of beetles. God created each one. If it were me, I’d be happy with about four different types. But God wasn’t satisfied with four, he made 350,000, Having made all those beetles, I’d think God would delight in them. But Psalm 16 says that God saves ALL his delight for me.

I love to go to sea world and I’m delighted by the sea anemones. They have no structure, no body, but they float around in the water. It amazes and delights me. I love to stand next to Shamu’s tank and am delighted at this huge creature. How can anything so big be so graceful? But God doesn’t delight in the sea anemone or the killer whale or the 350,000 different types of beetles. God delights in me.

Wow!

If you are reading through the Bible following our Resting at the River’s Edge schedule, you will begin to read the book of Jeremiah today. The book of Jeremiah is many things, but one of the things I love about it is that it is such a primer on how prophecy “works” – how it happens – in other words, how God speaks to His people.

Now don’t think I’m saying that God always speaks to His people in a certain way. That’s not where I’m going. As you read through Jeremiah, though, watch how God gives Jeremiah prophetic words. Here’s an example from chapter 1:

¹³The word of the LORD came to me again: “What do you see?”
“I see a boiling pot, tilting away from the north,” I answered.
¹⁴The LORD said to me, “From the north disaster will be poured out on all who live in the land.
– Jeremiah 1:13-14

The Lord used the things around Jeremiah as illustrations to prophecy about things to come. Since learning this, when I am particularly distracted by or my attention is arrested by something, I often pray “Lord, are you trying to tell me something? Is there something in this? I see…..” I then begin to describe to the Lord what I see. Often while I describing the scene, I receive an interpretation of it.

For example, once I was at church worshiping. We met in a school auditorium, so the worship team was on the stage and there was a chair very near the edge of the stage. A little boy kept climbing on the chair, reaching forward to grasp something on the stage. As he did so, the chair would tip backwards and came dangerously close to tipping over, sending the child tumbling. Periodically his mother would see him, sit him in the chair with a short scolding. He would pout for a few minutes, then climb back up on the chair and begin to reach onto the stage again.

After a while I realized that I was thoroughly distracted from worship, but I remembered the “what do you see” lesson. So I began to ask God if he was saying something to me and I described what I saw. God didn’t waste any time in revealing to me that I was often like that little boy. Climbing to places I shouldn’t go yet, dangerously tipping my “chair” as I reached for things God hadn’t given me yet. (How thankful I became for God’s protection.) He didn’t stop there, though. He went on to say that I was also like that little boy in that when God did “sit me down” I would pout for a while, then turn around and begin to explore beyond my reach once again. Ouch! But how wonderful for God to speak to me about it!

Of course there are many other things in Jeremiah, but I’ll leave them to you to discover. Enjoy your reading this month! I pray that God speaks to you daily as you rest with Him at the river’s edge.

As I am reading through Ephesians two phrases seem to jump out at me because of their repetition: “In Him” and “In love.” I’m sure they are themes that will be a part of our Bible study. If you’d like to participate in our online, interactive Bible study of the book of Ephesians, e-mail me at Sandy@ApprehendingGrace.com, or leave a comment to this blog. I can’t wait. I am trying to read through the entire book before I go back and study individual words, verses and paragraphs, but it’s so hard because I am arrested by the theme in each paragraph it seems. I’m confident God has wonderful things in store for us!

 This last blog in the “Heart of a Worshipper” series (HWS) summarizes all the characteristics I’ve written about. You can find the articles about each characteristic here. Much of this series has been revolutionary to my walk with Christ. I hope it’s impacted you as well. Today’s blog hits the two things that have impacted me more than all the other things put together. Read on…

The Heart of a Worshipper

For almost three months we’ve studied the heart of a worshipper. We’ve seen a progression of the worshipper’s heart as he or she pursues God more diligently. Let’s review all 7 qualities:

• A hungry heart – one that desires to know God more intimately.
  • A pursuing heart – one that follows hard after Jesus. It is the action that results from having a hungry heart.
    •  A transparent or unveiled heart – one that allows the Light of Life (Jesus) to shine through it so that He can reveal to us what is hidden in it’s most private corners.
      • A vulnerable heart – the heart that suppresses our “fight or flight” response as we sit at Jesus’ feet and allow Him to change us. It is the logical extension of the transparent heart.
        • A willing heart – one that is predisposed to say “Yes, Lord.” It is also the obedient heart.
          • A free heart – the heart that is unencumbered by sin, condemnation and fear.
            • A secure heart – the heart that is confidently established in the knowledge of Christ’s love.

Where are you in this progression?

• Are you satisfying your hungry heart by pursuing God diligently?
• Are you remaining transparent and vulnerable before God and His people?
• Are you obedient and increasing in your victory over sin?
• Do you reject condemnation and fear?
• Has that lead you to a place of steadfastness in Christ, a place of calm and joy despite life’s circumstances?

I wish I could say that I’m always at that steadfast place, but I’m not. In this final article, I’d like to share two teachings that have helped me to become a greater worshipper of God.

Developing Childlikeness

He [Jesus] called a little child and had him stand among them. And he [Jesus] said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ”
          Matthew 18:2-4

While reading this a dozen or so years ago, I was struck by the word “change.” That means that being childlike doesn’t come naturally, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. From a very young age, children are trying to be older than they are. And while we try madly to reverse the process once we reach a certain age, we still don’t want to be considered childlike. Children are unsophisticated. They’re annoyingly spontaneous. They’re immature. I want to be sophisticated, in control and mature. Yet Scripture says I should change and become like a little child.

So I began to focus on children and the qualities they possess that I lack. And then I worked at changing to become more childlike. This was a step of obedience. Being willing to be childlike regardless of what others thought was a HUGE step for me. I’ve always had an overactive “what will people think” response. But I wanted to be more concerned about what God thinks, so I began to change. Here are some of the childlike behaviors that I saw and began to imitate.

Humility and trust – Verse 4 specifically says that God values humility. I see humility in children as trust without understanding. Children trust. Period. They don’t have to understand how it works or why it works, they simply trust what they’ve been told. I often require understanding before I give my trust. When I examine that attitude under a microscope, I find that at the root of it is pride. I am essentially saying, “Unless you explain it to me in such a way that I understand it and agree with it, I’m not going to trust you.” Or maybe I’m saying, “I don’t trust you to do what’s best for me. I only trust myself. Therefore, I must understand before I extend my trust to you.” Either way, there’s too much pride in the attitude. Scripture teaches by word and example that God is more loving than I can ever imagine, that He loves me more than I can imagine, and that He desires good things for me. I believe that. (Lord, help my unbelief!) The action that’s required on my part is that I place my trust in Him. Lack of trust shows up in adults in many ways: The need to control situations, the unwillingness to fully submit to God’s will in one or many areas, and the attitude of rebellion are just a few.

Spontaneity and joy – The two seem to go together in children. Children are discovering God’s world for the first time and they find great delight in it. (I’ve seen more spiders than I care to see, so I no longer take much delight in them.) By nature, I’m serious and reserved. When I look at my personal history, though, I can see that part of that nature developed as a defense against being hurt or judged negatively. So I’ve made a decision. I’ve decided that God wants me to take delight in His creation. I need to see it through the eyes of a child and be willing to respond to it like a child. That means being willing to be thought a fool for laughing aloud or skipping in the rain or showing awe when it’s appropriate. My adult response is to suppress the laughter, carry an umbrella, and act nonchalant toward new things. God wants me to be childlike. And I’ve found that life is more enjoyable this way. It continues to be a struggle for me, something I must repeatedly remind myself about, but when I’m successful at it I enjoy life more, and I’m confident that it pleases God.

I am the Bride of Christ
In addition to beginning to understand what it means to be childlike, I’ve begun to have a greater understanding of my position in Christ and before God: Scriptures teaches that I am the Bride of Christ. Not only does God love me, but Jesus is “in love” with me. The Bible says He “delights” in me. When I began to understand how totally, unconditionally and passionately Jesus is in love with me it changed my heart and increased my passion for Him. It also gave me the confidence to be transparent with Him and the courage to be childlike in His presence. It revolutionized my worship of Him and my desire to draw near to Him.

The Transformed Heart
While I have loved the Lord for thirty years, I have only been “in love” with Him for about fifteen. It was about fifteen years ago when I began to study childlikeness and Bride of Christ teachings. That led to studying the topic of worship and pursuing God through worship. The result is that my life has been transformed from the inside out.

In the first article of this series I included a definition of worship by William Temple, the archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944. It’s somewhat long but it explains how worship transforms the worshipper. I’d like to close the series with the same quote. If you find yourself fitting the description Temple gives in the first sentence, please ask God to help you make worship a priority. It will undoubtedly change your life.

“Both for perplexity and for dulled conscience the remedy is the same; sincere and spiritual worship. For worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is:
     the quickening of our conscience ………………………. by His holiness;
     the nourishment of mind ………………………………….. with His truth;
     the purifying of imagination ……………………………… by His beauty;
     the opening of the heart …………………………………… to His love;
     the surrender of will ………………………………………… to His purpose
– and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.

Yes – worship in spirit and truth is the way to the solution of perplexity and to the liberation from sin.”

Lord, help me to be one who worships you in spirit and truth.

Every so often my perspective gets out of whack. I begin to forget how blessed I am. Maybe a better way to put it is that I have a hard time remembering that I am blessed, or why or how I’m blessed. You know those times. Life pushes in hard, and you really want to stand firm and you want to continue in the joy of the Lord, but you just can’t seem to remember how you are blessed. You know that God’s Word says you’re blessed and you have set your mind to believe it, but there’s just too much junk in front of your eyes to see the blessings.

Let me take you to a simple verse: 

Blessed is the man
whose sin the Lord will never count against him.
          Romans 4:8

Hallelujah! No matter how bad your day is going, if you have asked God to forgive you and trust in Christ as your Savior, your sins are forgiven and the Lord will never count them against you. We deserve God’s wrath, but instead, He chooses to give us His love. What a phenomenal exchange!

I am blessed. And during those times when I can’t think of any other reason that I might say I’m blessed, this one is overwhelmingly enough.

Last week in this “Heart of a Worshipper” series (HWS). I wrote about how our willing heart leads to having a free heart. Freedom! What a concept worth rejoicing over. This article takes the concept one step further…A worshipping heart is a secure heart. Read on. If you missed any of the articles in this series, you can find them all listed here.

A Secure Heart

We’ve looked at many characteristics of the heart of a worshipper. We began by saying that the heart of a worshipper is a hungry heart – one that wants to know God more intimately. We’ve seen that being vulnerable to God and willing to follow Him leads to a heart that is free from condemnation and fear. I’d like to take that progression one step further: The heart of a worshipper is secure. It stands firm. It is established. As the worshipper comes face to face with the God who loves him beyond anything he can imagine, his heart becomes rooted and established in that love. Recognizing the depth of that love fills us with a certainty, a knowing, that God is on our side. Paul writes this to the Romans in one of the most significant chapters of the Bible:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 
          Romans 8:35, 37-39

Obviously, Paul is fully, completely and utterly convinced of his security in Christ. He knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he cannot be separated from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

In 1 John, the apostle John wrote:

God is love.
         1 John 4:8b

Notice that he didn’t write that God has love, but that God is love. His very essence is love. John continues to describe the heart that is established in and by God’s love.

     …God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins… And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
     God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
             1 John 4:8b-10, 16-18

David also had this certainty. In Psalm 62 he writes:

My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
          Psalm 62:1-2

Never is a very strong word!

Job’s heart was secure. In the midst of his terrible loss and pain, He cries out in one of my favorite passages in scripture:

I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes – I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!
          Job 19:25-27

As a very young Christian, I read this passage, and I was blown away. Job lost everything. His wife told him to curse God and die. His friends told him that his sin must be exceedingly great for God to be treating him so badly. And surely God seemed far away to Job because his situation wasn’t getting any better. Yet, his heart was ultimately secure. He knew He would see God.

A few weeks ago, we looked at the first quality of a worshipping heart – having a heart that is hungry for God. Job’s heart yearned within him to see God. And in the midst of his greatest trial, he was able to say “I know that my Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand upon the earth.” That is an established heart.

It makes me want to stand and shout praises to my God. Hallujah! If God could make a man in Job’s circumstances be such a worshipper and have such faith, there’s hope for me! My heart also yearns to see God with my own eyes.

Lord, establish my heart as you established Job’s that I might be able to say in times of distress and disappointment and confusion, “I know my Redeemer lives and that in the end He will stand upon the earth and I will see Him with my own eyes.”

It’s all about being transformed by the One who loves us and desires good things for us; the one who says He has plans for us – plans to prosper us and to give us a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). Part of that transformation is becoming so dependent on the One that is supremely dependable that your security is forever in the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Loving One. And when your trust is in the One who knows all things, is all powerful, and is love, where is there any potential for being insecure?

I’m not there yet! I still have fears. I still forget to depend on God and depend on my own efforts. But I’ve learned that when I am consistent in worshipping God, pursuing to know Him intimately, I develop a greater understanding of His surpassing love for me. Then my heart becomes firmly established regardless of the circumstances that surround me. As you get to know Jesus more intimately, you can develop that same sense of security.

¹⁸Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison.¹⁹When such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself and therefore thinks, “I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way.” This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry. ²⁰The LORD will never be willing to forgive him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written in this book will fall upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. ²¹The LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for disaster, according to all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.
          Deuteronomy 29:18-21

Whew! I read this passage and my first thought was “I need to write a blog about this.” My second thought was…”what in the world would I say?”

You see my first thought came from a place of understanding that many slide backwards in their faith from time to time and the condemnation they feel as they try to come back to the Lord can be great. Let me say here as at the begining, as strongly as I can: If you are on your way back to the Lord, any condemnation you feel is not from the Lord and is totally inappropriate. The Lord is not the author of condemnation, Satan is. The Lord is the author of conviction – that is, bringing about a heartfelt sorrow for our sins that is accompanied by a desire to turn away from those sins and by taking steps to do so. That’s from the Lord. Condemnation, on the other hand, tends to immobilize us in guilt and keep us from taking steps toward reconciliation with God and others. Conviction motivates us to change. Condemnation immobilizes us, keeping us from change.

Yet we read here in Deuteronomy 29 that God will bring disaster on those who have turned away from Him and go their own way to the extent that “the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven.” Where is there room for repentence and reconciliation with God? Where is there room for a renewal in our relationship with God if we have fallen away?

That was my dilemma as I considered blogging about this passage. My goal for ApprehendingGrace.com is to help each of us apprehend – grab hold of – what God has done for us and what He wants to do in us and for us. Where is that message in this chapter? To use King Solomon’s phrase from Ecclesiastes, is my whole purpose just “a chasing after the wind?”

It can’t be. I know that God accepts the prodigal. I know that He watches for the prodigal’s return. Yet somehow it’s not satisfying enough for me to simply explain away this Deuteronomy 29 passage with the often used phrase of “we’re under the New Covenant, the covenant of grace.” Yes, we are under the New Covenant, in which God promises salvation to all who would come to Him in humility and sincerity and ask for His forgiveness of their sins and Lordship in their lives. Still, God’s Word remains true and this passage sure doesn’t seem to provide much wiggle room for anyone who has backslidden.

So you understand my conundrum. My approach was to set all that aside and keep reading. (When in doubt, keep reading. Pause to pray, but keep reading.) Am I glad I did! You see, Deuteronomy 30 is a continuation of Deuteronomy 29. Our chapter divisions weren’t in the original writing and they don’t always seem to make sense. They make it possible to refer to specific portions of Scripture, but we shouldn’t allow verse or chapter divisions interrupt the train of thought of the original writers. Read with me portions of Deuteronomy 30:

¹When all these blessings and curses I have set before you come upon you and you take them to heart wherever the LORD your God disperses you among the nations, ²and when you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, ³then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. ⁴Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back… ⁶The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live….⁹…The LORD will again delight in you and make you prosperous, just as he delighted in your fathers, ¹⁰if you obey the LORD your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in this Book of the Law and turn to the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
          Deuteronomy 30:1-10

If we turn from God, as described in Deuteronomy 29, God will surely bring those disasters upon us. But when we return to the Lord, He will restore us. It really is as simple as that…and yet it’s not just that simple. It’s really much better than that!

I love so many verses in this passage: “Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.” No matter how far we have strayed from God, now matter how badly we have been conquered by our enemies, God will meet us in that place and will gather us in His arms and bring us back. Wow! He will bring us back. I play a role, of course – I have to determine in my heart to love God and obey Him. But having done that, He will bring me back. He will do the heavy lifting. He will conquer the foes who have conquered me during my time of disobedience. Hallelujah! What a gracious God we serve.

Not only will He bring me back, He will circumcise my heart so that I am able to love Him all the more. Further, He will take delight in me. The word translated “take delight” is literally “rejoice over” or “take great joy because of.” It totally blows me away that the Creator of all things we see (and don’t see) around us and of every distant galaxy and star, the King above all kings, the One who holds the universe together, will be delighted in me. He will take great joy because of my love for Him. If we could truly grab hold of just this last point, our lives would be revolutionized. Why should I care what opinions others hold of me? Why should I become discouraged because I can’t do all that I’d like to do? Why should I…? I shouldn’t. The King of Glory delights in me simply because I love Him.

Oh, Lord, may all who read this know that they know that they know how much you love them. And may You circumcise our hearts that we may love You more.