Category Archives: Following

Desert (4/28)

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I’m reading a memoir right now by an author who decided to live for forty days out in the Judean desert.

He did it because he felt led there.

He did it because he knew the silence and solitude would offer him cleansing and healing.

He did it because Jesus did it.

He did it because authors do stuff like this to earn their livings.

Much of the book is mundane–it’s about simply surviving in the wilderness by yourself.  It’s about weather and bugs and passing thoughts.

But bits are profound.  There’s a lot of us that might feel like those last three sentences are themselves accurate describers of prayer and other such spiritual pursuits.

My favourite parts though have been his reflections on the desert:

I carried some of the wood back to camp and began making a fire.  After I threw the wood on a pile of branches I had collected, I heard a short, shrill animal scream.  Then it was quiet.  I imagined that a predator had just sneaked up on some unsuspecting prey, and just like that!  Only time enough for one last scream.

In the desert, God can sneak up on you.  In the cities and towns, people are so armoured, so fearful of one another–even those they love–that God doesn’t have a chance.  Our guard is up.  We’re so skeptical.  When we see God coming, we turn away as we might when we see a vacuum-cleaner or encyclopedia salesman coming and say, “Sorry, I’m not buying any today.”

Or we stand waiting for God to do something different, something new.

“Show me your stuff,” we say.  “Show me something I haven’t seen before.”

God doesn’t have anything new to show us.  He’s shown us everything.  It’s staring us in the face.  That’s what “we were made in God’s image” means.  We were shown the whole kit and caboodle, shown it in the very way we’re made!

“But I don’t see nuthin’!” you say.  Well, I’ve got news for you.  It isn’t about what you see–it’s about who is doing the seeing.”

In another place, he notes that the desert has taught him that the desert does not change.  It is timeless and eternal (in a sense), and if you wish to be at home with it, it is YOU who must change.

Sounds like a certain Being I know, eager to lead me to places where I am humbled and quieted, intent on “jumping me” and tuning my eyes so that my stubborn soul also sees that when it comes to dealing with Him, there is one of us who must learn to adapt.

The desert makes the identity of that one abundantly clear.

Intention

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Intention is a big deal.

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”  That another translation of the same sentence.

The Jedi version was, “Do, or do not.  There is no try.”  So said Master Yoda.

So also said William Law.  He wrote a book called “A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life”–quickly seen to be a book about intention.  His version of Yoda’s thought goes like this…

“It was this… intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors.  And it you will here stop and ask yourself why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it.”

I won’t bother debating how today’s “average believer” compares with that of another time and place.  I simply want to highlight that whatever we become… it will be because we intended to become just that.

That’s the power of intention.

Informed isn’t Formed

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I’ve been blessed recently by Eugene Peterson’s words.

In reflecting on how Scripture works to shape our lives, he puts this out there…

“It is possible to conceive of ourselves too narrowly, for there is far more to us than our genes and hormones, our emotions and aspirations, our jobs and ideals.  There is God.  Most, if not all, of what and who were are has to do with God.  If we try to understand and form ourselves by ourselves we leave most out most of ourselves.”

“And so the Christian community has always insisted that Holy Scripture that reveals God’s ways to us is necessary and basic to our formation as human beings.  In our reading of this book we come to realize that what we need is not primarily informational, telling us things about God and ourselves, but formational, shaping us into our true being.

It is the very nature of language to form rather than to inform.  When language is personal, with it is at its best, it reveals; and revelation is always formative—we don’t know more, we become more.

I hope this finds you experiencing revelation–the Divine speaking into your life through His Word–and being shaped into the you dreamed of long ago.  If you feel you could use more of that, let me suggest the obvious: You could use less of something else.  Free up time and space and attention, and devote it to positioning yourself before the Revealer.

You’ll be formed in the process.

Entering Ephesians (2:1-10)

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Continuing to move through Ephesians in J.B. Phillips’ “translation”, here’s the first half of chapter 2…

2:1-3 – To you, who were spiritually dead all the time that you drifted along on the stream of this world’s ideas of living, and obeyed its unseen ruler (who is still operating in those who do not respond to the truth of God), to you Christ has given life! We all lived like that in the past, and followed the impulses and imaginations of our evil nature, being in fact under the wrath of God by nature, like everyone else.

2:4-10 – But even though we were dead in our sins God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, gave us life together with Christ – it is, remember, by grace and not by achievement that you are saved – and has lifted us right out of the old life to take our place with him in Christ in the Heavens. Thus he shows for all time the tremendous generosity of the grace and kindness he has expressed towards us in Christ Jesus. It was nothing you could or did achieve – it was God’s gift to you. No one can pride himself upon earning the love of God. The fact is that what we are we owe to the hand of God upon us. We are born afresh in Christ, and born to do those good deeds which God planned for us to do.

Spiritual deadness occurs naturally when we drift along with the world’s stream of ideas. Fed by that flow, we birth a life that’s no life at all–and we find ourselves faithfully serving an unseen ruler, who we never signed up to serve. But we did.

To us, to all of us whose weakness pushes us to live on the road of least resistance, and to all of us too foolish to learn this lesson the first time or the second time or the millionth time… Christ has given life!

And this life is imparted into those who are naturally bent towards following the impulses and imaginations of our evil natures. But Christ enters, takes over, and births in us new possibilities, which are built upon new affections and desires which he brings along and plants into our hearts.

Come, Lord. Move and dwell here, for my life is needy of what you alone bring.

Entering Ephesians (1:15-23)

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What follows is an unholy union, I’m sure. It’s mostly the Phillips translation of Ephesians 1:15-23. But not exactly. What follows is the text as J.B. Phillips meets J.B. Me.

(There was some I-thought-helpful formatting below, but WordPress doesn’t seem to be having any of it. Time’s passing me by, so I’m pushing “publish”.)

Since I heard of
this faith of yours
in the Lord Jesus
and the practical way in which you are expressing it
towards fellow-Christians,

I thank God continually for you and
I never give up praying for you;
and this is my prayer.

That God,
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ and
the all-glorious Father,
will give you

spiritual wisdom and insight
to know more of him:

that you may receive that
inner illumination of the spirit
which will make you realise

the greatness of the hope
to which he is calling you –
the magnificence and splendour of the inheritance
promised to Christians –
the tremendous-ness of the power
available to us who believe in God.

That power
is the same divine power which was demonstrated in Christ
when he raised him from the dead
and gave him the place of supreme honour in Heaven –

a place that is infinitely superior
to any conceivable command,
authority,
power or
control,
and which carries with it
a name
far beyond any name that could ever be used
in this world or
the world to come.

God
has placed everything under the power of Christ and
has set him up as head of everything for the Church.

For the Church is his body,
and in that body
lives fully the one who fills the whole wide universe.

—

—

So the “Jay’s Notes” version…

Pray for wisdom and insight to see what you’re apt to miss.
Pray that what you cannot afford to miss will be illuminated to your sight…
The undefeatable hope that is found in God,
The magnificent sharing of all that is His with all who are His,
The vastness of the power available to all who believe in Him.
Pray this prayer for those you love. Pray it for those you do not know.
Pray it for yourself.

For Christ is over all things, for the sake of the church.
That’s not the institution or non-profit organization that you think you know.
That’s the people of Jesus,
who have worn his name through the ages, and
in whom the universe-filling God does His darnedest to dwell.

So keep praying that prayer.
Pray it for those you love. Pray it for those you do not know.
Pray it for yourself.