For all the Benjamins

“The beloved of the Lord shall rest securely & safely in Him, for He shields & shelters him all day long & the one the Lord loves shall dwell between His shoulders.” Deuteronomy 32: 12

This is a prophecy for Benjamin, you can read his story in Genesis 35:16-19. 

All this has inspired the following post:

June 28, 2011

From the beginning, Benjamin had life hard.  His birth gave way to his mother’s death. But, the way things started is not how things ended for good ol’ Benja.  You see, his dad changed his name. Instead of being “a son of sorrow,” he became “a son of my right hand.” Instead of pain, his Father brought him close to a place of intimacy, favor, grace.

Isn’t that what we all want? We don’t want to be failures, disappointments.  Because of Jesus, we have, all of us, become Benjamins.

Favored.

Brought close.

Invited inside; into the heart of our Father.  Daddy promises us we are beloved, we will be safe, we will be close to Him. 

We are resting between His shoulders. We beg, “Daddy pick me up! I wanna see!” And just like that, He comes in & swoops us off our feet placing us between His shoulders.  With our arms around His neck, we can feel the rumble of His laughter as He shows us things we have never seen, heard or anticipated.  Things so much better than our finest dreams.  What we’ve been hoping for all our lives has come true. 

But it’s not in the things He shows us that we are satisfied. No, it’s not where we are or what we are doing, but rather who we’re with. It’s our position with our Dad. It’s being with Him that we have our blessed longing fulfilled.  We are content here with our Dad & it is enough.

Wayward Lamb

As I read "The Prophet" by Francine Rivers about Amos, the shepherd-prophet, something stood out to me that I learned just a couple of months ago & God has providentially reminded me of this very important concept.  When we think God is against us, it is just then that He is lovingly caring & tending to us personally, like a shepherd with his wayward lamb.  

"He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms & carries them close to His heart.." Isaiah 40: 11

"Prone to wander Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.  Here's my heart Lord take & seal it. Seal it for thine courts above." -Hymn

"God's grace orders our suffering & in the midst of pain is there to sustain us." -JS

 Here's the excerpt:

Coming to a rise, Amos spotted the lamb standing near some bushes.  As he approached, he saw its wool had snagged in a  thorn bush.  One hard tug, and the lamb could have freed itself, but it was not in his nature to do so.  Instead, the animal would stand still until rescue came-or a predator, eager to make a meal of him.

Amos stood grimly, considering what to do.  Less than a week ago, he had been forced to kill the lamb's mother.  He had known for months he might have to dispatch her, but held off doing so because she was perfectly proportioned with well-set, alert eyes & was one of the strongest sheep in his flock.  But her stubborn habits had endangered the entire flock.  Half a dozen times he had rescued her & her offspring.  He had hoped to give the lambs more time to be fully weaned & on their own.  Now, it seemed he had waited too long, for the lamb had learned his mother's bad habits.

"It's this or death, little one." Amos took a stone from his pouch, weighing it in his hand.  To heavy and it would kill the lamb; too light & it would not serve to discipline him.  Amos swung his sling & released the stone, striking the lamb in a front leg, just above the knee.  With a startled bleat of pain, the lamb went down.

Tears burning, Amos went to the wounded lamb & knelt. "I am here, little one.  I would rather wound you myself than see you come to greater harm."  He knew after a gentle examination that the leg was broken, but not shattered.  It would heal.  "You belong with the flock, not out here on your own where death will find you." He worked quickly, binding the leg & tugging the lamb free of the brambles.  "I know I hurt you, but better you suffer an injury that will heal than become dinner for a prowling lion." He ran his hand gently over the lamb's head. "You will learn to stay close to me where you're safe." He cupped the lamb's head & breathed into its face. "No struggling or you will cause yourself more pain." He gently lifted the lamb onto his shoulders & carried him back to the flock.

The goats grazed in the hot sun, but the sheep still rested in the shade, ruminating.  Amos sat on a flat rock that gave him a full view of the pasture. Lifting the lamb from his shoulders, he held it close.  "You will learn to trust me & not to think you can find better forage on your own.  I will lead you to green pastures & still waters." He took a few grains of wheat from the scrip he wore at his waist & shared his food with the lamb. "Sometimes I must wound in order to protect." He smiled as the lamb ate from his hand. "You will get used to my voice & come when I call." He rubbed the notch in the lamb's ear. "You bear my mark, little one. You are mine. Let me take care of you."

Why God always leaves you limping

                                                                                                                                    July 12, 2011

A friend asked me to write on the Peniel blog. I said, "It won't be about fluffy-just-love-God stuff. Following God isn't always going to be Peniel. You won't always see His face, sometimes He hides, sometimes He's distant, sometimes He breaks your heart. What then? "

But Going back to the Genesis 32 story, I realize that following God will always in fact be Peniel. It is when God ruins all our plans, when everything is taken away from us, when relationships are torn, when life sucks, that God is most present. My favorite quote says "God is with us most when things just can't get worse." You see, Peniel happens right in the middle of our mess.

But we don't like messes. We like to clean everything up, put on our Sunday best & act like everything is ok. When we do that, we miss God. We miss his greatness because we are so focused on putting on a show for everyone, we miss His comfort because we pretend like we don't need it.  It is when we are the weakest & admit to it & confess it that God comes to our rescue.

Jac did not go to camp for a weekend to get away from it all. He did not have some grand epiphany moment & walk on roses after his meeting with God. No, he was actually going to meet his dome, his brother who wanted to kill him. This was messy. The moment of Jac's greatest fear is the moment that God shows up & meets him face-to-face. So many times we come from high places at camp or missions, experiencing something truly amazing & we think that is the face of God, but the more I walk with God the more I am convinced that it is in the dryness, the low times, the times when we are desperate that God meets us. He is wrestling with us.

Of all the things God could of chose to do, He wrestles? Hmm..weird. What is God's purpose in having us wrestle Him? Maybe God wants to show us who He is. We see His strength & His power. If Jac never wrestled with God, he wouldn't have experienced His grip, his tight hold. Losing with God makes us strong, Jac left broken, limping, he left humbled yet joyful, God could of crushed him.  Although it was never God's intent to destroy him, maybe God was showing Jac who He was & who Jac was.

It's been said that men bond by wrestling, maybe in some weird way God & Jac were getting closer by working it out. That God would want to struggle with us, what grace!

Philip Yancey writes:

"God does not give in easily. He seems to welcome the persistence that keeps on fighting long after the match has been decided. We are all children of God, all of us God-wrestlers who cling to God in the dark, who declare "I will not let you go." To us belong the blessing, the birthright, the Kingdom. As the touch on Jacob's socket proved, God could have ended the match any point during that long night in the desert. Instead the elusive figure lingered, as eager to be held as Jacob was to hold." 

Now that is intimacy. After Jac's rendezvous, his fear vanishes & he's left with a sense of gratitude for God's mercy & goodness because He has a deeper sense of who God is.  The God who meets us when it all goes wrong, when we have nothing left. The God that is so strong to destroy us in one instant, is the gracious God who instead has us experience Him & walk away limping.

Broken Hearts

June 5, 2008

My meditation on Psalm 51& Hosea 6: 

God breaks us that we may come back to Him, by this breaking & humbling we are shown who we really are & who God really is.

Who God is: lovingly kind, full of tender mercies, just & blameless, generous

Who we are: transgressor, treacherous, sinner, evildoer, evil, robber, harlot, full of iniquity, dirty, guilty, murderer 

What God wants is a heart fully dependant on Him.  A heart that knows Him & seeks Him. 

God wants the deepest part of us, our broken heart. But why? Why does my heart matter to God? Why does He make it so that my heart is broken? Why is a person with their heart broken running to God pleasing to Him? 

Because: when you see who you really are, you're disgusted. No more lies, no more masks, this is vulnerability at its fullest.  The stark contrast between you & God is so huge it makes you desperate. 

God breaks us in order that we may be made in His image & clean us up. We need to be remade. When we've done all we could & we find ourselves still broken, still a mess, then we go to God & He'll take it.  He can work with us now that we are mold-able & willing because now we have no choice, we have no where else to go. 

A desire to be made clean not by ourselves but by God will restore us back-back to communion-back to intimacy with Him-back to where true joy is found in His presence. And there broken, frail, contrite, torn, we'll know the feeling of wholeness-completeness, newness, healing. In the place of contriteness, we serve God most.

Offer your brokenness

October 31, 2010 

All we have to offer to God is a broken church, broken people, with issues, and tainted views of God & each other.  When we come & give that to You God, You come & give us something more in exchange, something better than what we could of dreamed up. 

God promises to meet up in our brokenness & restore to us the joy of His salvation (Isaiah 61 & Psalm 51).

The beautiful exchange-what God gives us when we offer our sin to Him. What God has to give us for our brokenness is better than what we can make in our pride. 

The Broken

Brokenness is a good thing.  A very good thing.  Without realizing it, I've been learning this for years.  I'm gonna share some quotes from songs, books, & devotionals.  

I want to say to all: surrender to the breaking

"God breaks us, then heals us, then uses us." -me

"Delayed answers often set the heart searching itself & so lead to contrition & spiritual reformation: Deadly blows are then struck at our corruption, & the sinful images are cleansed. The great danger is that men should faint and miss the blessing." devotional 

"When we behold His holiness, we see in that instant our unholiness.  His glory reveals our ruin, His purity, our vanity, His light our shadows. God bursts forth in radiance, & we cry out for the rocks to fall on us. So before joy comes sorrow.  Before cleanness comes shame. Before we can ever rest in the holiness of God, first we must become undone by it." -MB

"God's plan for our lives will never be fulfilled until we are broken." -ZP 

"Only You can see the good in broken things You took my heart of stone & made it home" -BD 

"He tears me down..He breaks me.." Job 19:10 

"Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but He will heal us: He has injured us be He will bind up our wounds. God has wounded, & God will heal." Deut. 32:39 

God says.. "in your misery you will earnestly seek me" Hosea 5:15

"It was when Jesus took the five loaves and broke them, that the bread was multiplied in the very act of breaking, sufficient to feed five thousand. It was when Mary broke her beautiful alabaster box, rendering it henceforth useless, that the pent-up perfume filled the house. It was when Jesus allowed His precious body to be broken to pieces by thorns and nails and spear, that His inner life was poured out, like a crystal ocean, for thirsty sinners to drink and live.  It is when a beautiful grain of corn is broken up in the earth by DEATH, that its inner heart sprouts forth and bears hundreds of other grains. And thus, on and on, through all history, and all biography, and all vegetation, and all spiritual life, God must have broken things." devotional

Brokenness

 I love this.. from The Ambassador.  This track is called "Theology of Brokenness (interlude)"  Click here to listen to it...


..A lot people blame a lot of things on Satan.
It's easy to deal with the reality of the fact that Satan is against you and all that stuff, and he's your problem. But there's a whole other category and issue to let sink into you, when it's not Satan who's your problem, but God who's your problem.

Listen, if you're going to walk in the implications of the gospel then you're going to have to be marrried to the principle of brokenness.

Brokenness is the mark of a person that is qualified to be used by God.
At the end of the day people that are actually being used by God in a crazy way- in an off the meter way, are people that have been cracked up, who have been lunged at by God, and God has done something to them. Broken can mean:

Shattered,
Crushed,
Maimed,
Devoid of arrogance,
Wounded,
Contrite,
Injured,
Smashed,
Grieved,
Anxious,
Distressed,
Crippled,
Wrecked,
Demolished,
Fractured,
Handicapped,
Disabled.

Brokenness, based on the scriptures: The spiritual state by which one is disarmed of one's self-dependence and pride, therefore leaving one disabled and in desperate need of help, thereby making one a viable conduit for the glory of Christ.

We're not massochists, but we do kinda have a theology of brokenness.

Guest Post #3

When Will It Be Too Late? by: Amy Sanchez

The distant echo of the thunder and the rain,
All this pressure just creates an immortal stain,
Penetrating deep into the fabric of our time,
Creating a tear in this selfish world I once called mine,
Never fully releasing the warrior He buried within,
Regretfully giving up this great battle we are supposed to win.
We fight with rubber gloves and tin hats so shiny we fashion,Giving up, giving in, and sacrificing precious souls without ration,
Who’s world is this? Does it belong to man and flesh?
Within the deep rot and stench of sin, many would look and exclaim yes,
Where is our sword, our shield, our precious saintly strength?
Where is the trust in the power we cry for and preach about at great length?
So lonely is our world filled with people left and right,
Just closed in this cold place never knowing day from night,
But here we are, the warriors, sitting and twiddling our thumbs,
Ignoring the blood thirsty battle and the cry of the wars carnal drums,
Step out! Finally, reach out and stop worrying about your clean hands,
They wont be clean for long when their souls lay slain as you stand.
Hear the warning- The enemy is near and bringing his best attempts,
He will try to steal their hearts away- push them farther away from redemption,
They are all asleep, dead alike with their eyes so tightly closed,
Never knowing the sweet touch of grace from the God who divinely rose,
For his names sake, we clamor to help them to awake.
Run fast, make haste, because in this battle Our God is calling your name.
Oh when, Lord when will it be too late?

Guest Post #2

by: Jessica while in Wisconsin
"Because You are my help; I will rejoice in the shadow of Your wings" Palms 63:7

This verse popped out at me while reading a Beth Moore book and it got me thinking, this verse reminds me of a giant Oak tree, full of branches and life and under this tree there is a lot of space to lounge and rest. God is like that Oak tree, a giant shadow to take relief under when the rain and storm comes. And the beauty of it all, is that under this Tree, I can sing! A song brings joy and a light heart, singing, especially under a tree!, produces a sense of peace, a belief that no matter what storms comes my way, this Tree, this Shadow is my hope and my refuge.

Guest Post #1

"The House Exposed" 4/30/11 by: Gaby Giurgiu & Lizzy Husu

"We are all like houses. Each and everyone of us has their own house, and in each house there is a massive hole, a fracture in the foundation of its existence. This hole is dark, scary, and almost terrifyingly unbearable. So what does everyone do with this unexplainable hole deep in the foundation? We try to find anything we can that looks pretty, comfortable, and acceptable to cover that hole. We put layers of fine colored rugs, exotic lampshades, colorful art pieces, comfortable sofas, secure door knobs... that no one... no one could ever, ever discover the fracture. We go on with life thinking everything is good, secure, and comfortable. Sometimes we even will read a book or two that gives us a step or two to improve that fracture. To clean it up. Sometimes we may even listen to a show or two on our televisions that have it figured out. We invite guests over once in awhile, but we only like to fluff things up and cover any exposure to that hole. We want them to believe everything is alright, just as it needs to be-- in our control. We don't want anyone to discover our holes. We don't want anyone to expose it. We don't want anyone to question it. We simply want to hide and bury it under our pretty little things. The true question is who and what are we afraid of? What are we clinging to? What is holding up our masked up houses?...

Until one day there came a man known to be the only one that could mend the fracture.. fill the hole from it's darkness. As He began to knock on the wooden door, no one would answer, no one would come. But He did not stop knocking for He came with purpose and was diligent. He didn't just knock but He spoke softly and gently to the house, stirring it up to open. As the house began to see and hear the voice of the man, it decided to respond and open the door. He came in gently and uncovered the deep and dark hole underneath the thickened layers of rug. He exposed its terror with the light coming in from the door. He looked to the owner and said," I have already covered this, I am covering this, and I will cover this... Is that what you want?" So He began his task by exposing the fracture and filling it with Himself. It was sealed, secure, and completed. Now the owner looked at the man and said, "What am I to do next?" He looked gently in her eyes and said, " Cling to me always, always remembering what I have done for you today. No longer do you need to pretend, to cover up this hole, it has been covered up for you." 

We are more alike than different, we are a people with the same problem offered the same solution. 

Freedom

What is freedom in Christ? 
While reading "The Reason for God" by Tim Keller a couple of quotes stood out to me that brought this post to life. 

"There is a great deal of freedom in how absolutes are expressed & take form in a particular culture.  For example, the Bible directs Christians to unite in acts of praise, but it doesn't prescribe the meter, rhythm, level of emotional expressiveness, or  instrumentation-all this is left to be culturally expressed in a variety of ways. Christian diversity was built into the Christian faith in Acts 15. No one owns the Christian faith. Christianity has taken more culturally diverse forms than other faiths."


What does freedom in Christ mean?  I think part of what this freedom means is cultural diversity, this freedom to know & communicate with God in your own style, to worship in your own unique way, to be creative, in short to be yourself.

It's not about a certain type or specific way of doing things.  The principles are foundational, the way those principles are expressed are subject to take on different forms.   Over & over in the new testament we see the focus is on the type of person you are, on how you treat your neighbor. We see that being emphasized in Colossians 3, Ephesians 4, Romans 12, Galatians 5. The Bible is all about how to relate to God & to each other. We don't relate to God by observing specific days, festivals, or traditions made by man.  Stuff we have to do as Galatians 4:8-11 & Colossians 2:16-23 says. These things do not make us holier or better in front of God. The longer I live the more I am convinced it is not what we do, but why we do things that matters to God. And we humans cannot judge why someone does something, we can't judge the internal motivations.

God seems to be very concerned with why people do things, not with what they do, the heart of the matter, as Amos 5:21-24, Joel 2:12-13, Ezekiel 33:30-33, Ezekiel 14, & Jeremiah 2:32 says. God seems very ticked at people who only do things at face value, "who honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" Isaiah 29:13. When I defend this position & say "God looks at the heart", many legalistic people respond & say "ya but what's on the inside shows on the outside." By the outside they mean a particular way they dress or style their hair or decorate their body. This just not the case, according to the Bible what's on the inside shows on the outside through your attitude, words, character not in the physical way you look.