Small Things

Who hath despised the day of small things? Zechariah 4:10

Today I post to my blog again in response to a small sermon I heard in a small church, in a small town this last Sunday. The pastor, Harold Gott, has faithfully served the Christian Church in Grangeville, Idaho, for many years. He spends time listening to God, then preaches the meat and potatoes of the Gospel to his parishioners. His messages are sprinkled with the salt of his down-home, apt illustrations and peppered with his own unique brand of humor. His people are heartened and encouraged and challenged to go out into their community and do good—to love people into God’s Kingdom.

Last Sunday his sermon was about Dorcas—a small town woman in a small country who did a small thing faithfully. She sewed clothing for the poor widows in Israel. She “was always doing good,” and two thousand years later people are still reading her story. Harold pointed out that only three of Jesus’ disciples are even mentioned in the book of Acts, yet the story of Dorcas receives 28 lines of text in the New Testament.

The terms “big” and “small” are meaningless in God’s realm. God isn’t bounded by space or time. What Dorcas did may seem small to us, but in God’s economy it’s not. No act done out of love and obedience to God is a small thing.

God takes one sermon in a small town in Idaho and uses it to bless individuals who will in turn go out to do their own small things in God’s Kingdom. One will take a pot of stew to a neighbour who is ill; one will speak a word of encouragement to a friend who worries over the waywardness of a son or daughter; one will take her grandchildren to Sunday School faithfully, week after week; one will pray for a small child in Uganda who lives in terror with a parent who is dying of aids. All these are small things that add up to a huge sum of goodness on God’s calculator.

Zechariah goes on to speak of God’s eyes, “which range throughout the earth.” God is watching the small things, the attempts of each of his children to make a small difference in the world, and in His history book they are all recorded. This blog post will probably only be read by three or four people, but each of those people will do their own small things that will make a difference in the Kingdom of God.

This post is my small thing. It is done with gratitude to the One who does not despise the day of small things—the One who takes small loaves and fishes and uses them to feed a multitude.

That's About the Size. . .Where You Put Your Eyes

I’ve caught myself moaning to God throughout the day lately: “God, I need you.”

I need Him to lift my spirits when I look at what’s happening in the world around me. I need Him for encouragement when people I’m praying for show no sign of responding to Him. I need Him for guidance as I make plans for my life.

The niggling anxiety that drives me to cry out to Him in this way is probably part of creation’s groaning as we all wait together for His promised, final redemption. It’s a temporary necessity. But I’m realizing I don’t have to stay in the groaning state. The groans lead me to Him for a reason. He supplies all my need. He is all I need. So why do the groans keep coming?

This morning I woke with a new revelation—a truth I “knew” all along but one that has not penetrated past the moan-center of my brain in a while. The truth is this: if I stay focused on the need, the plea is not answered. But if I shift my focus to His over-abundant grace and power, my heart finds rest. Every time. Instant peace comes when I look at His face, because I know He is more than able to supply all my need. He’s promised to do that and my experience has proven that He does, every time. The peace leaves when I look away from His face. It’s that simple.

Duh! When did I lose that perspective?

There’s an old Sesame Street song, sung by Kermit, I believe. I can only remember the first three lines, but they’ve stuck with me since my kids’ toddler years: “That’s about the size. . where you put your eyes. . .that’s about the size of it.”

That’s about the size of it. If I keep my eyes on Jesus, the grace that comes from His Holy Spirit will wash over every element of my day—every unsettling piece of news, every frustrated attempt to accomplish something lasting, every mundane chore I do that will need doing again tomorrow, every disappointment, sorrow, fear. All will be covered and conquered.

I want to remember this song until the habit of turning my eyes toward Him becomes ingrained in my spirit.

Praying Slowly

If prayer is talking with God, and God dwells in eternity, why do I feel I have to talk so fast? Why do I feel too rushed to listen for a while?

I’ll tell you why. It’s not because God is looking at his watch. It’s because I’m looking at mine.

How can I focus on what I’m saying, or, more importantly, on God, when I’m racing through my prayers to get past them to. . . . to what? What could be more important than spending time with my Creator?

I know the right answer to that question: Nothing is more important. Spending “time” with the “eternal” God puts my life in perspective, connects me with my purpose, grounds me in the security of eternal realities. It puts me in a position to live an abundant life, in triumph over all the petty interruptions and disturbances of a broken world that is ruled by a God-defying being who would love to see me hurry through my times with God.

That particular God-defying fallen angel is in a hurry, by the way. He knows his time is short. His reign is ending soon. He hurries to accomplish all the destruction he can before D-day. And, if I’m not careful, I can get swept along in his agenda, running at breakneck, devil-speed toward his goals, fulfilling his purposes, and missing out on God’s quiet, determined, creatively purposeful kingdom-plans.

I will not do that. I cannot do that. The cost is too dear. I will determine to approach my “times” with God reverently, with shoes removed, stepping quietly out of chronos time into God’s eternal kairos realm. I will allow time to stand still while I talk to time’s Creator.

Will someone hold me to this promise? I can forget so easily.

Preparing for Easter

I have great cousins. Another one put this youtube video on his Facebook site. When I viewed it, the Easter season was ushered in for me. Hope you enjoy it too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FQND5YFIqA

P.S. to Heights of Delight

Just after posting Heights of Delight I opened my e-mail and found a message from my cousin with the following website. I listened and experienced the conscious presence of God. It brought tears of true worship to my eyes.

http://pjcockrell.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/amazing-grace-just-the-black-note

Enjoy!

Heights of Delight

In Heights of Delight, Dick Eastman describes three levels of awareness of the presence of God. The first, which he calls “God’s intellectual presence,” is simply the logical recognition that God is omnipresent, and therefore He is here. Though this awareness depends on faith, the faith is in factual claims and the faith, itself, is simply an unemotional acknowledgement of the facts.

The second, “God’s conscious presence,” has the added impact of a sense, or a feeling of God’s presence. It may come out of a conscious intellectual recognition of the fact of God’s omnipresence, but it also involves the emotions and a spiritual, almost mystical discernment of some kind.

The third is “God’s manifest presence,” which Eastman says is “far more intense,” and often results in an obvious movement of God’s Spirit and observable transformations in the lives of many individuals. He cites the miraculous movement of God’s Holy Spirit over cities and nations at the beginning of spiritual awakenings as an example of the manifest presence of God.

The intellectual awareness of God’s presence produces worship through gritted teeth. “Lord, I don’t sense your presence but I choose to worship you because I know you are real and I know you are here, intellectually.” Job’s declaration of faith in God’s goodness is an example of this level of awareness.

The manifest presence of God happens in snippets in our daily lives, interrupting the more mundane intellectual awareness with hiccups and burps that are sometimes so brief we fail to appreciate them. I know I’ve seen the manifest presence of God in the classroom, when the door suddenly opens to a subject of discussion and I can almost see God walk in and sit down on the edge of the desk beside me. For a few moments I’m able to lead kids into that God-space, sometimes with no direct mention of Him, and I know He is doing things of eternal value on some level in their lives.

But the awareness level I long for the most is the conscious presence of God. I remember a time when it came regularly, in my quiet time or in worship on Sunday mornings. It often brought tears to my eyes and my heart soared with love for Him. I haven’t felt that lately. I’m not sure why, but I want it back. That hunger is what has driven me on this journey toward spiritual renewal.

Tozer regularly experienced worship at this conscious level of awareness of God. For Tozer, to worship was

. . . to be filled with moral excitement. To be captivated and charmed and entranced with who God is, and struck with astonished wonder at the inconceivable elevation and magnitude and splendour of Almighty God. . .To love God with fear and wonder and yearning and awe.

In fact, Tozer defines worship much more narrowly than I did in my previous post. According to Tozer, worship cannot happen at the intellectual level of awareness of God’s presence.

I want to define worship, and here is where I want to be dogmatic. Worship means “to feel in the heart.” A person that merely goes through the form and does not feel anything is not worshipping.

Hmm. Is he right? If so, then Job’s declarations of faith through gritted teeth would not be considered worship, even though they were highly appropriate recognitions of the greatness and sovereignty of God.

Dick Eastman says of Tozer that “worship was his life.” Tozer is an expert. I have to take his strong statements about worship seriously. So I am driven on in my sense that something is still missing in my experience of God.

This post completes my series on spiritual renewal. I haven’t arrived at the end of my journey but I feel I need to move ahead, away from the process of renewal and closer to the Object of worship. I end here with the following determinations:

1) I will focus, from here on out, on God, the true means and end of renewal;
2) I will wait patiently for worship to happen in my heart. I will not attempt to contort myself into a worshipful attitude or manufacture it synthetically, but will trust God to move me into this level of awareness of His presence and the true worship that must surely come as a result.
3) I will assume this hunger has been put into my heart by God, Himself, and therefore I will expect Him to satisfy it in His own time and way.

Thank you for being with me on this journey. It’s strange, but I’ve been comforted to feel that some of you are listening and that my yearnings have been resonating with you. It has made the journey feel less lonely, and it has also given me a kind of sounding board for my thoughts that I wouldn’t have had if this had been only a personal journal. So you, whoever you are, wherever you are, have been a blessing to me. May God bless you in return.

I promised you a list of the sources of the Tozer quotes I’ve been using. You’ll find them in the side bar to the left. Many of them are probably out of print but might be researchable if you want to explore them further.

I will be posting again if you’d like to stick around. I’m just not too sure which fork of the road ahead I’ll follow. I don’t think I’m entirely through with Tozer. I’ve run into some hard sayings of his that I want to wrestle with a bit. I’d also like to express some thoughts on the Bible, the ultimate source of our knowledge of God.

I might go down both forks, since the journey is probably at least as important as arriving at the destination in good time. At any rate, your company will always be welcome, wherever I go.

Worship Through Gritted Teeth

I’ve said that worship comes naturally if we’re in the conscious presence of God. But what if it doesn’t? What if we go through all the steps, from submission to obedience, and we still don’t “feel” worship? Is something wrong? Is worship a feeling? Or is it, like love, sometimes simply a choice or an act?

Could the process of drawing near to God, itself, be worship? Maybe we’ve already been doing it? I want the feelings. I want joy alongside the worship. But maybe it doesn’t always have to be there. Some of the most moving expressions of worship in the Bible are spoken out of great trial. In the midst of his suffering, Job says of God: Though he slay me, yet will I hope in Him.* He had to have been saying that through gritted teeth. He was in pain.

The pain that might have robbed his worship of joy came from three sources, and we experience the same in our lives.

First, Job suffered physical pain. When our bodies are afflicted, pain demands our attention. God knows what that’s like. When Christ was on the cross, bewilderment overcame Him and He cried out to God. The cry wasn’t worship. If we are physically or emotionally ailing, we won’t necessarily feel joy, and acute pain can rob us of the ability to worship for a time. That’s okay. We’re allowed to be human. The good thing about acute pain is that it won’t last. Both joy and worship will.

Job’s pain also came from the Enemy. Satan afflicted Him. We often underestimate Satan’s involvement in our lives. He is the great joy-robber. If our hearts are right with God and yet we feel oppressed with a heaviness that keeps us from delighting in God’s goodness, we need to suspect Satan’s involvement. He uses oppression to immobilize us. But Satan’s affliction is also always temporary. The cross was Satan’s plan to defeat the Creator, but God turned the plan around and used it to destroy the Enemy. He will do the same in our lives if we trust Him.

Perhaps the hardest source of pain to understand is God, Himself. Job’s pain was allowed by God, and God did nothing to make it easier on him. Is God good? Yes. All the time. Pain is like fire. It can do good things to us. God can use it, as He did with Job, to stretch our faith, to develop our longing, and to lead us into a deeper understanding of Himself. God brings great good out of our pain when we submit to Him in it.

So what do we do when pain robs us of joy in worship?

It’s fine to seek relief from physical pain, if we can get it. Pain relievers are God’s buffers to keep the pain from being more than we can bear. But sometimes we just need to let it happen and wait for it to pass.

If the pain is demonically inspired, we need to speak out against it in Jesus’ Name and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Exercising authority over Satan by faith in Jesus’ Name sometimes dispels the darkness immediately, and joy rushes in to fill the void it has left.

If God has brought the pain, the only answer is to wait for His deliverance. It will come. He does not leave us in pain longer than we can bear, and the pain He allows always refines us.

But no matter how we deal with the pain, we need to determine, like Job, to remain committed to worship. Through gritted teeth if necessary. The joy will come, in the end—joy much larger than the size of the grief. God always rewards abundantly when we suffer in submission to Him.

The Psalmist says: Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.** Knowing this should help me worship with an open mouth instead of through gritted teeth.

We can afford to suffer now; we'll have a long eternity to enjoy ourselves.
A.W.Tozer

* Job 13:15
** Psalm 30:5