music :: worship :: life
I’m worried. Yesterday morning I woke up in the middle of a dream. I was dreaming I was praying for a friend. So now I am praying for people in my dreams? I find this disturbing. I mean, I used to dream I was frolicking in the hot tub with Hollywood starlets. Now I dream about praying for my friends?!! C’mon! I can pray for my friends any time. Only in my dreams can I frolic in the hot tub with Hollywood starlets! Where did they go? Who moved the hot tub out of my dream world? And who replaced my dream girls with a prayer circle?
What does this mean?
The biggest enemy of God is not active evil, but complacency. Satisfaction, complacency, apathy, indifference, self-assuredness—this is passive evil. These are the lukewarm whom God despises:
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
—Revelation 3:15-16
Active evil has momentum. Active evil has energy. And like a martial arts master, God can flip active evil and use its own force to create good. My testimony is living proof of that. The active evil of all the antagonists in my life, the very passion with which they sought to ruin me, provided the energy and momentum God used to produce an explosion of blessings like I have never seen before. The very fire with which they hoped to send me down in flames, God tranformed into a rocket to shoot me into a new level of victory far beyond my expectations.
There is nothing to fear from those whose hearts are bent and whose minds plot evil and destruction.
But, God save us from the satisfied!
The comfortably numb, the placid, the complacent, the dispassionate, the lukewarm—the time to spit them out is now!
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Eliot
This is the time of year when I do a sort of reality check, looking back over the road just travelled. The theme this year has been immersion in scripture. 2005’s theme was developing my prayer-life. I think 2004’s theme was taking out the trash or finding all the loose ends and beginning to tie them off.
Looking back, it surprises me that 2 or 3 years ago I was struggling hard to develop some kind of devotional routine, and not having much success. Now it seems like my prayer and devotional time is the highlight of the day, and I can’t get enough of the scriptures. How did this happen? I think God must have done it. I remember praying desperately for it in the fall of 2004. I couldn’t seem to do it on my own, no matter how hard I tried. And nobody was able or willing to help. It could only be brought about by the action of the Holy Spirit transforming my mind and heart.
The other thing that really stands out is how my trust in God has been restored. I struggled for years with a sense that God had let me down and could not be trusted. But somehow, while I wasn’t looking, he has restored my trust.
I’m eager to find out what’s in store for 2007.
It was only a small miracle.
The day started badly. I was behind from the start. Spent all morning running errands all over the place—Kountze, Beaumont, Silsbee, Lumberton. Hours of driving in the rain. Loading and unloading stuff. Dripping wet. I blamed everybody I could think of for stealing my umbrella. (Later—much later—I discovered that I had put the umbrella in a “more convenient place”.)
Running out of people to be mad at over the umbrella, I pulled out my mental list of everybody who ever did anything rotten to me. Enough fuel there to keep the fire burning for hours.
Forgiveness? I guess I’m not too good at that stuff. Especially when it comes to people with excuses rather than apologies.
Got remorse? I got your forgiveness. No problem.
Got no remorse? Rot in hell!
I know! I know! But it’s the best I can do. I’m working on it.
It was after 1:00 before I got to sit down and read my morning devotional. The scripture was about the gripey, grumpy Israelites and how God provided water in the desert for them out of a rock. The devotional was about how as Christians we’re supposed to be experiencing “life in all its fullness” (John 10:10) and yet… What’s missing?
The response at the end said to list specifically what you feel is missing in your life, spiritually, physically, and emotionally, and offer that list in prayer to God, and to continue throughout the day to ask God to refresh your soul and satisfy the deep longings of your soul.
“You’ve got to be joking! I don’t have enough paper for a list that long!” Nevertheless, I offered a few things up to God in prayer. Actually, it it was more like shouting my complaints to him and begging for relief. I felt a little better, and throughout the day I continued to offer up things as they occurred to me.
It was almost quitting time when I opened my planner to make some notes for the weekend. At the top of the page was the quote:
Work like you don’t need the money.
Love like you’ve never been hurt.
Dance like nobody’s watching.
—Ronnie Wilkins
Suddenly, like a lightning bolt, I was filled with the Holy Spirit. I danced like David for joy in the Lord, and shouted my praise and thanksgiving. In a moment it was gone. But for a moment, God roared through me like a whirlwind.
It was only a small miracle, after all. Like the extra wine at the wedding feast, He provided just what was needed and no more. No fanfare. No parade floats. Just a light touch from the finger of God.
Ordinarily I don’t write down these kinds of things, but this was a God-thing too blatant to miss. Usually God does his work behind the scenes in ways that are subtle and often go unnoticed, or can easily be explained away. About a year-and-a-half ago, I made a purchase on one of those “no payments, no interest for 18 months� plans. I’ve done this before; you make payments as you go along and be sure you’re finished before the interest comes due. But this time, there was always some other need that took priority, and I kept putting the payments off.
Last Wednesday, as I was doing my finances, I noticed that my 128 months was over on March 25th. It had to be payed in full or I would have to pay the deferred interest (at 20.9%)! I didn’t have that much extra cash laying around so I transferred some money from savings and paid the bill in full. I’d rather lose the piddly bit of interest from the savings than pay the 20%.
Sunday, as I was going through the unopened mail from earlier in the week, I opened a letter from my mortgage company. I was expecting it to be next month’s bill. Instead, it was a review of my escrow account. It seems that in the past year, I had overpaid my taxes, and rather than lower my payment to let the account catch up, they sent me a check to refund the surplus.
Can anyone guess how much the check was for? If you said the exact amount of the bill I just paid, you would be wrong. It was for $0.42 more. I think that just covers the cost of a stamp, a check, and an envelope.
That check, by the way, had arrived on Tuesday, the day before I made the payment. Had I opened it right away, I would have known God was looking out for me all along.
[powered by WordPress.]
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Aug | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | ||
57 queries. 0.927 seconds
