Something About The Joy

Finally, after a couple of little detour posts, we’re here, at the heart of renewal. For me, the heart of renewal is worship, and at the heart of worship is God, Himself. I’ve been eagerly waiting to get to this place, where the focus begins to shift from me and my stumbling efforts to the majesty of who He is. Renewal brings us into the conscious presence of God, and that’s where worship happens. Worship happens there naturally, because it’s the right and healthy response to being in the presence of our Good Creator. But here’s a hiccup in our journey: Is God really good? If He is good, why does he demand worship? Is he greedy for admiration and affirmation? Does He need us to inflate his ego? Sounds so selfish. Can God be selfish? Is it really all about Him? How can that be good? There are probably lots of good definitions of worship, but I like this one: The chief end of man is to love God and to enjoy Him forever. To love and enjoy. To take pleasure in God. It’s tr...

That does it. The Spider Solitaire has got to go. I went to bed last night secure in the belief that God was my screensaver. My default mode. My desktop background. I was sure that any time my conscious mind was at rest it would revert to thoughts of Him. Well, I was right. This morning I woke up praying. That's right. I was already praying when I woke up. The problem is, I was asking Him to help me decide which of the three eights I should move to the nine.

Don't follow me. I get lost in the bathtub. If you don't believe me, just ask my husband. It's so bad that if I think I should turn right I turn left, since well over 50%of my judgements about which is the right direction are wrong. Hmmm. This might not be adding to my credibility, which is not a good thing since I want you to keep reading my blog. Let's just say my bad sense of direction is only geographical. I'm always right about everything else. Does that help? So don't follow me, but I'd love for you to follow my blog. I've just added a "Followers" application. (See lower lefthand column.) If you're a regular reader and are willing to admit it, why not sign in? It would be fun for me to see you there. Oops. This sign just fell off the wall. Do you think it's a message from God?

Okay, so I’m a little embarrassed about last night’s entry. I should probably never post my midnight musings. They tend to be a little too intimate and it makes me feel vulnerable. So we’ll leave that little spurt of quandrying behind. (Yes, you English buffs out there, I know quandrying is not a word.) I’d like to say two more things about obedience before we move on to the heart of this whole renewal topic: First, obedience is not as difficult as it might seem. And second, it is more difficult. Obedience is not difficult if we’ve prepared our hearts for renewal. Hearts softened and open toward Jesus will tend to obey instinctively. It’s a natural outcome, almost like breathing. Someone has said that living the Christian life is simply being “restfully available, and instantly obedient.” Being restfully available is the same as abiding* in Him. Abiding is the breathing in. And, although instant obedience does require an act of our will, when we make ourselves available, th...

We are called to an everlasting preoccupation with God. A.W. Tozer Is this true? If it is, am I preoccupied with Him? Is his image my desktop background? My screensaver? Does my heart automatically rebound to His face when my busy life is still for a minute? I think so. But does that count as being preoccupied with Him? Lately I seem to be obsessed with God. Is that a good thing? Or is it a weakness—an imbalance? Where will it lead? Where do I go with it from here? I don’t know, But I have a peace about it.

Have you noticed that in our North American culture “obedience” has become a bad word? In a secular society, where God is no longer in charge, words like “authority,” “obedience” and “command” are evil. Without the rule of God, every person is his or her own authority. No one has a right to tell anyone else what to do. Even in elementary school, children are not taught to obey their parents. They are told, instead, to find their own way, create their own truth, and live their own lives. But when we, as Christians, dedicate our lives to God, we choose to come under His authority. We choose to obey His commands. We are not justified by our “good works,” but obedience is a natural outworking of our submission to Him. In the Jewish tradition, faith and action were the same thing. We tend to separate them out in our worldview, and because of that the desire of our heart to follow the Lord does not always lead to the actual following. Obedience puts feet to our decision to submit to...

From man’s standpoint the most tragic loss suffered in the Fall was the vacating of [his spirit] by the Spirit of God. There God planned to rest and glow with moral and spiritual fire. Man by his sin forfeited this indescribably wonderful privilege and must now dwell there alone. By the mysterious operation of the Spirit in the new birth, that which is called by Peter “the divine nature” enters the deep-in core of the believer’s heart and establishes residence there. Such a one is a true Christian, and only such. A.W. Tozer In today’s post, I’d like to pursue the idea of spiritual receptivity a bit more, since it seems so important in renewing and maintaining a right relationship with God. If you’ve read this far, there’s a good chance you are spiritually receptive. If you weren’t you’d have gotten bored and left the blog long ago. But if you want reassurance in this area, there’s an easy test. I love my old King James Bible. My mother gave it to me when I graduated from high ...

Okay, time for a lighter moment again. A friend sent me this poem a while back and I think it's fits (loosely) into the current renewal idea. One night I had a wondrous dream, One set of footprints there was seen, The footprints of my precious Lord, But mine were not along the shore. But then some strange prints appeared, And I asked the Lord, "What have we here?" Those prints are large and round and neat, "But Lord, they are too big for feet." "My child," He said in somber tones, "For miles I carried you along. I challenged you to walk in faith, But you refused and made me wait." "You disobeyed, you would not grow, The walk of faith, you would not know, So I got tired, I got fed up, And there I dropped you on your butt." "Because in life, there comes a time, When one must fight, and one must climb, When one must rise and take a stand, Or leave their butt prints in the sand." -- author unknown My apologies to Margaret Fis...

If you’re like me, you’ll find there’s a great gulf fixed between number one on our list of ways to prepare for renewal—relinquishment and recommitment—and number two—spending time with God. I always seem to get stuck on the far side of this chasm. It’s a puzzle. I really do believe I want God to be number one in my life, but I have a hard time actually making it happen. Making it happen is where the rubber hits the road, and I have to be careful at this point or I may find myself just adding pavement to the road to hell. Tozer discusses this issue: Why do some persons “find” God in a way that others do not? He has no favourites within His household. The difference lies not with God but with us. I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which the great saints had in common was spiritual receptivity. They differed from the average person in that when they felt the inward longing they did something about it. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. Recepti...

The last two posts (not counting yesterday’s coffee break) have been heavy. I think that’s partly why I needed a break. All that business about dying to yourself—it’s kind of depressing, at least until you get past it to the peace part. So today I thought I’d climb up on a hill and look over all the humps in the road ahead and try to get a glimpse of the end of renewal. Yes, I know renewal won’t end in this life, but I need to know that things will get better, or at least that trudging along after renewal has its perks along the way. I am a selfish person. I never do anything unless there’s SOMETHING in it for me. Even praying for the salvation of other people has a selfish motive. I love the rush I get when someone comes to know Jesus. It feels so good. I’ve tried to fix this problem of selfishness, but so far I haven’t been able to. I’m sixty-two years old and I figure if it were fixable I’d have found the solution by now, so I’m about ready to give up. But this morning I woke up wit...

Whew! This blogging business has plunked me down onto a steep learning curve. The first thing I’ve discovered is that it takes much time, sweat and prayer to post every day. Too much. I already feel pressured to “produce” by my own self-imposed schedule of daily posting, and the pressure is going to tempt me to splash thoughtless (and prayer-less) drivel all over the place if I try to keep up with that rigorous a schedule. I don’t want to do that. I’m humbled to think that anyone is reading this. I know how busy you are. I’m determined to make it worth your while. So, here’s the plan: I will only post when I’m ready to pass on something I think will be valuable to you. I sent some of you an e-mail with instructions on how to know (without looking) when there’s a new post. I told you to go to the orange “feed” icon at the top of the blog and sign up for it—that it would e-mail you when there’s something new. That bit of information was thoughtless drivel. It doesn’t work. I didn’t know ...

Every journey begins with one step. The first step in preparing our hearts for renewal seems simple. “You must Choose. Make a decision to rededicate your life to God.” Easy, right? Not necessarily. When you really think about what it means to “dedicate your life to God,” it becomes harder to take that first step. There is a cost involved and the cost is high. Jesus says choosing to give our hearts to God (he calls it becoming a disciple) will cost us everything we are and have. He says it means losing your life--dying to yourself. Dedicating our lives to God involves relinquishing things, and even if we’ve made the initial decision before, every time we renew it there will be new things in our lives to relinquish. Jesus urges us to count the cost of discipleship before we decide to follow him (Luke 14:26-33), and A.W. Tozer challenges us to do that by asking a number of sobering questions. He speaks of being filled with the Spirit, which is another aspect, or way of talking about surre...

Ten Ways to Prepare your Heart for Renewal began a series of regular postings on this topic I plan to publish over the next few weeks. In a blind leap of faith, I’m going to suggest that some of the words I write will not be FROM me. They will be THROUGH me—and TO me, as well. I’m determined to be painfully honest as I share my own faltering, hesitant steps on this journey toward personal spiritual renewal. It’s so easy to become stale and stagnant. I’m a beginner, again, after all my years of walking with Jesus. It’s a new year, and I’m making a new start at personal renewal. I trust you will be able to discern the difference between my words and His as you visit this site. Expressions of my faltering walk are my own. Any words that ring with a greater Truth are from God, to all of us. So let’s travel together on this path toward a deeper relationship with Him. I’d love to have you comment on posts, adding your own insights and encouragements—your own words from the Lord—for the edif...

The beginning of a new year is a natural time for thinking about renewal. We say good-bye to an old, tired year and look with hope and expectation to a new one. A clean page. A fresh chance. A time to think about how to make our future better--more productive, more significant, more successful, more joy-filled. For Christians, thoughts of renewal usually revolve around God. We belong to Him forever, but we are vacillating human beings, and our relationship with Him can easily stagnate. We need times of refreshing. We need to come again to the fountain of living water. We need to long for Him so deeply that it drives us back into His presence. Thankfully, God prompts that longing. He never forces Himself back into our lives, but the restlessness we feel without Him invariably draws us. So what to do when we feel the restlessness? When we become aware that something's not right in our spirits? God is the One who must rescue us from the doldrums of spiritual lethargy, but there are st...