The Long Stretch

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
-Romans 5:5

'I saw the Lord always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will live in hope,
because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the paths of
life; you will fill me with joy in your presence.
-Acts 2:25-28

I've been looking at the differences between longing (or desire) and hope and faith. I've come to think that longing is something that I will live with now in my new heart, that like an imprint it's there in my heart - like treated lumber as a frame for a house. It's just in there and I must learn to live with it. But it's not enough. Longing or desire is only that unless I do something with it. It's like hunger pains. It doesn't mean anything unless it leads me to Food. Hope is the expectation that you will find that Food and be filled. Faith is enduring in that hope, despite persecution and temptation to take the play off-broadway, in the face of a shortcut or a substitute to sedate the heart or slake the thirst.

I'm somewhere between the longing and the hope. I have plenty of longing, so much that it nearly takes me out. I think this was Jeremiah's condition of the word of the Lord being like a "fire in his bones." But longing by itself leads only to disappointment, then desperation, and then inevitably to despair. Only by allowing hope to grow within will that longing produce in us what Jesus wants: our hearts. That hope brings us deeper into Christ and further along on our journey.

I don't have enough hope that I will one day have what I long for, and that in this life it is my inheritance to have that very thing (deeper, richer, and more abundant life in God). This longing for life is the source of all of my heart's discontent, but the hope for it is the source of all my heart's joy. Hope is essential. "Hope is to the soul like breathing is to the body," says philosopher-theologian Gabriel Marcel. And so this is what I'm taking to Jesus, that I will be filled to the full with "all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13).

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, our labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
-1 Thessalonians 1:3

It Must Be Intimate

I came across today the following exerpt from John Eldredge's book Waking the Dead. It is what is what I need now, and must have, in a fellowship and community. I have come far with God, too far to turn around, and to continue on in any authentic way, it is fellowship with others "one in heart" that my wife and I must have...

Of course, small groups have become a part of the programming most churches offer their people. For the most part, they are disappointing and short-lived—by the very admission of those who try them. There are two reasons. One, you can’t just throw a random group of people together for a twelve-week study of some
kind and expect them to become intimate allies. The sort of devotion we want and need takes place within a shared life. Over the years our fellowship has gone camping together. We play together; help one another move; paint a room; find work. We throw great parties. We fight for each other, live in the Four Streams. This is how it was meant to be.

I love this description of the early church: “All the believers were one in heart” (Acts 4:32 ). A camaraderie was being expressed there, a bond, an esprit de corps. It means they all loved the same thing, they all wanted the same thing, and they were bonded together to find it, come hell or high water. And hell or high water will come, friends, and this will be the test of whether or not your band will make it: if you are one in heart. Judas betrayed the brothers because his heart was never really with them, just as Cipher betrays the company on the Nebuchadnezzar and as Boromir betrays the fellowship of the Ring. My goodness— churches split over the size of the parking lot or what instruments to use during worship. Most churches are not “one in heart.” (Waking the Dead , 193)

From The Ransomed Heart, by John Eldredge, reading 270
Ransomed Heart Ministries www.ransomedheart.com

For the First Time

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspiried and success achieved.

-Helen Keller

How telling it is that Helen Keller would speak of strength and vision. It’s reminds of Ginny Owens, the blind Christian singer/songwriter, whose favorite song is Be Thou My Vision. Helen grew up as a girl both blind and deaf.

I was really moved after watching a video of her life and the dramatic way in which she came to see all that she had been taught by her tutor as her way of trying to reach her, to communicate to her. According to the film, Helen Keller’s tutor had taught her to speak using the tactical sensation of someone’s hand shapes in her palm. Speech would not work, since she was deaf, and sign language would not work, since she was blind. This technique was like sign language for the blind – done in a way in which she could “feel” the words. But for so long, she didn’t get it. She learned and went through the motions, but it never reached her. She spent her days isolated, cut off from others, unable to communicate in the most basic way.

One afternoon, she was fetching water from a well and felt the water running through her hands. She dropped the bucket and stood up sharp, a kind of contorted unbelief crossing her face. She felt the water again, then ran for her tutor. She made the sign for “water” in her tutor’s hand, so hurried and excited she had to repeat it. The tutor, who had finally given up on Helen after so long not connecting, almost couldn’t believe it. She started making the sign for “dirt” and “bucket”, for “dress” and “hair”. She got it. It all came rushing to her like an avalanche, a waterfall of understanding. The entire world suddenly opened up to Helen.

I wrote some words to a song I called “Helen Keller” at a time when that for me was a picture of my entering into Grace. Deaf to His calling, blind to His wooing, He came to speak a language I would grasp. He came to write it in the sand and in my palm. For so long I had missed it. Like Helen, I remember feeling the Water rushing through my fingers, dodging my grasp, and my heart skipping a beat in the moment it all came.

I run my hands through the water of life,
amazed to be alive.
In one flash, in one instant moment of grace,
I catch a glimpse of Your face,
my heart’s home, where I strive to be
but could never reach –
And so your waters rush over me.

And like a waterfall of love
rises the sun
Like the roar of an ocean
is your ceaseless devotion
for your precious ones
for me, your son
And for the first time
my eyes perceive beauty,
though they’ve never seen before
And my ears hear an invitation
from this, my Lover Lord

The breeze it blows to take me back
Into your secret place again

Modus Operandi

I recently read a really great book on living in the love of God called “So You Don’t Want To Go To Church Anymore?” In it, a man named John approaches proselytizers on a street corner screaming at passers-by that they will be going to hell. He nears one of the accusers, and, full of sadness, says to him, "You really have no idea what motivates you, do you?"

It struck me as odd, this comment. Not because I’m not also put off by the accusers’ remarks, or by their apparent misunderstanding of the Scriptures or even the heart of God, but by the use of the word “motivation.” Reading through the story, you come to understand John as a man of God, a man who knows Him very intimately.

Thinking through it some, I think in that question John really cut to the heart of the matter, the same as Jesus often does in His approach to us. He is always interested more in what is in our hearts, the “why’s” and “what’s” and “what’s up’s” than he is in our actions, those “how’s” and “where’s” and “when’s.”

I recently had a conversation with a friend where I read a Fredrick Buechner quote to him. In the quote, Buechner essentially states that when we are thinking of a vocation for our lives, we should listen to the voice of our own gladness. My friend insisted that it is better to listen to the voice of Jesus and not our own gladness. I argued that I think this is what Buechner meant by his statement, that Jesus will often speak to us through the desires written long ago in our hearts, that the calling on our lives will be where we feel the most passion and energy. Going back and forth, my friend could still only see the actions that Jesus calls us to, and not the motivation behind them. Possibly the most important question of our time is “What is it, exactly that Jesus wants for us, not from us?”

If only the man known as the “expert of the law” had been able to see that question when he came to Jesus asking what was necessary to “inherit eternal life.” Jesus, probing his heart, asked him in return, “What’s written in the law? How do you read it?” (Jesus could very well have asked him, “You’re the “expert of the law,” right? Your identity is in knowing everything about God so that you can lord that knowledge over others, all the while stealing their God-given place of intimacy with me. So, you tell me. How do you read the law?”) The man replied as he was taught, with the Scripture to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.”

And then comes the most confusing verse in all of Scripture. Jesus says to the man, “Yeah, that’s right. Do that, and you’ll have life.”

What? Do that? Do that? How does a man just “do” that, as if it were a task you could check off at the end of the day? For any of us who understand love even a little bit, it is not something you do, it is something that flows. That statement to us who have tasted love is equivalent of saying, “Yes, water is necessary to sustain life in our bodies. Do water and you will live.” It is nonsensical. How do you “do water”?

In the same way, how do you “do love”?

And that was Jesus’ point. You can’t. You don’t “do love.” You live it. You live with it. You feed it. You abide in it. You enjoy it. You let it grow. And love is not the point. Our place with God restored is the point. He is the vine, and we are the branches of that vine.

Immersed in a society that is task-oriented and consumer-driven, most of our ears have been deafened to the call of the heart, much like the expert in the law. We hear “love the Lord your God” as a call to action, not a call to intimacy. We’ve all heard the famous Mountain Dew commercials that declare “Do the Dew,” when, in fact, all you can “do” with Mountain Dew is to drink it. It actually “does” its thing in you – either to hydrate you or to give you a rush of caffeine.

The tragedy of that encounter in Scripture is that the man left thinking he could just add “love the Lord your God with everything you are” as another item on his checklist as something to do to inherit, or earn or get, real life.

Can you imagine if a twig laying on the ground was thinking to himself, “Hmmm. I wonder how I can get nutrients. How can I grow?” He lays there baking and drying out in the hot sun. The trunk of the tree says to him, “You are a branch of mine. What do you think you must do to have life?” “I think,” replies the twig, “that I’ll go down my checklist. First, I’ll try to bury myself in the dirt…” and on he goes. The tree knows, of course, that the only way this branch will live again is to be grafted back into the tree so that the life-giving sap of the tree flows into him.

There is much action in the Kingdom of God. In fact, living the life of God is the most active and adventurous thing we do, but only as an overflow of the life of the heart. He loved us first, and our love is a response to His.

And then, we have life. It begins there, in intimacy with God, and it grows and it extends from it.

Picture Elijah. This fella was a prophet of God, which means that he was friends with God and that God entrusted to him his heart and words to bring a nation back into fellowship and intimacy with Himself. And what kind of life did he get to live? Well, let’s just say he didn’t spend his life in La-Z-Boy flipping through channels. At one point, God called him to Mount Carmel, where he was about to have a showdown with one of Israel’s enemies. 1 Kings 18 describes that encounter.

But even Elijah drew his life and breath from the intimate time he spent with God. Just after the encounter with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, Elijah fled in fear and weariness toward a cave. God tenderly ministers to Elijah, twice bringing him food and water. He travels to Mt. Horeb to hide and rest in a cave. God comes to him and listens to his laments. Elijah is worn out from simply “doing” and needs restoration. God sends a great wind to the mountain, and then an earthquake, and then a fire. But God was in none of these. Then, Elijah hears a “gentle whisper,” and it is here in the whisper that he finds God. There, in that tender embrace from God, Elijah’s life is restored. He is not doing. He is, in fact, fainting into the embrace of his God.

In the ‘80s BMX movie Rad, Cru is trying to learn to perform a backflip on his bike. Bruised and worn out from slamming on his back again and again, Christian finally tells him, “You’re letting your body move your head. Let your head lead, and your body will follow naturally.” On the next attempt, Cru lands his flip perfectly.

We’ve all heard the phrases, “Use your head,” or “Get your head in the game.” That’s another way of saying, “Put your heart into this. Let this be your entire focus of energy and passion.” But what if you can’t? What if you cannot put your heart into the game? Can you still play well?

In the Kingdom, the answer is no. The heart is central. The heart is first.

That is why, I think, Hebrews tell us to keep our eyes focused on Jesus. We will follow with action and intention what motivates us in the heart. If our faces are set like flint on the life of Jesus and the love of God, and if we are experiencing them daily as we abide in Jesus, then the effects of love will shine through. Our motivation will be love. Love, and the life of God, will be our modus operandi.

It was the summer of 2003. I and a small band had traveled across the globe to a small village in southern Sudan where we would be shooting some footage for a film we were making on the life of persecuted Christians. Unable to sleep early one morning, I flipped through the Bible and landed on a verse that had before given me a lot of encouragement, Jeremiah 29:11, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Angry for reasons that I could not explain, I left the hot, cramped hut and walked outside. Due to the absence of electricity, I found myself enshrouded in a nighttime darkness I had never encountered before. There, under a billion brilliant stars in a sky that stretched wider than the continent, I lamented to God in despair, “I can’t! I can’t find you, then, because I can’t seek you with all my heart! I don’t do anything with all my heart!”

I didn’t expect a response, but I got one anyway. It was a single word, one that has ricocheted and reverberated in my soul ever since, and one that pierced me with its finality and invitation. It was simply the word, “Exactly.”

And possibly for the first time that night on the other side of the world, I got it. I understand what the cross had really done for me. I am grafted back in. My primary role now is to simply abide there with Christ, and to let His life and love flow into and through me. That will call for much action on my part, without doubt. Except now, that action can be a result of a newfound energy of the soul and desire of the heart. A new modus operandi.