The Steven Curtis Chapman family (from left): Will Franklin,
Maria, Steven, Shaohannah, Mary Beth, Stevey Joy, Caleb and Emily
Go to this website for news concerning the tragic death of the Chapman’s daughter, Maria. You will also find a link on the page where you can view a touching video of Steven and Maria from two months ago.
Keep them all in your prayers during this painful time.
This was in my inbox today.
Let the Body of Christ feel the chains.
Let us rise up as one and pray.
May our pleadings before the Throne bring to ruin the purposes of the enemy.
Precious friends,
It is with anticipation and with some sadness that I share this story with you today. I am full of anticipation because I know our Lord does great things and can deliver anyone from a death sentence. He already has for those of us who follow Him. However, it breaks my heart that Christians all over the world are not living in freedom like we do here in the States. My prayer today is that some of the sadness I feel over this situation with our brother in North Korea, will subside as millions of you get involved and come to the defense of this precious brother.
The Voice of the Martyrs has set up a special webpage that will give you all of the information you need to get involved and to tell others how to get involved with helping the persecuted. But first, let me brief you on the situation.
Yesterday there was a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., concerning the situation with Son Jong Hoon’s brother. Senator Sam Brownback and representatives from VOM attended the Press Conference. The following is part of the press release from yesterday:
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Son Jong Hoon, who is visiting the United States from his home in South Korea, today pleaded with the world to pressure North Korea to release his elder brother awaiting public execution for the crime of simply being a Christian. For more than a year, Son Jong Nam, former North Korean Army officer-turned-underground-evangelist, has been beaten, tortured and held in a bleak, North Korean death row basement jail in this capital city. He has been sentenced to public execution as an example to the North Korean people.
. . .
VOM was been joined in the initiative by Brownback, a noted supporter of human rights for North Korean refugees. Brownback sent letters last week, also signed by Senators Baucus (D-Mont.), Durbin (D-Ill.), Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Vitter (R-La.) asking U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to work to secure the release of the Christian prisoner
VOM is directing people go to its web site, www.prisoneralert.com, where they can compose a personal letter of support and encouragement to Son. The letter is to be mailed to the North Korean delegation to the United Nations, along with a cover letter asking the North Korean government to spare Son’s life, release him from prison immediately, report on his current status and deliver the personal letter to Son.
“We are asking for prayers for Mr. Son, but also that people around the world take action on his behalf,” said Todd Nettleton, director of media development for VOM. “Jesus said ministering to a prisoner was like ministering to Himself. Every letter and email can make a difference.”
To learn more about this situation please click here to visit the website set up specifically for this.
Please visit www.prisoneralert.com
Thanks Everyone and please pass it on,
Stacy L. Harp
Voice of the Martyrs
He was a man’s man. A tough guy.
He lived hard, fast and free, with no discernible moral restraint or conscience.
His colorful life ran the gamut from fighting bulls and running with them to being one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. His resume popped and sizzled with entries like lion hunter, globe-trotter, war hero, womanizer, Hollywood celebrity, expert fisherman and he could drink you under the table. For a time he was the most well-known figure of the last century and though his oeuvres are canonized in modern literature, his philanders were legendary.
If I told you the man I just described was a miserable wretch, would you believe me? Before you answer, consider these plaintive words, spoken autobiographically:
“I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead, and there is no current to plug into.”
Alcohol-related depression plagued him and he received shock therapy to reduce the depression and paranoia. Tragically, the therapy caused him to lose his memory and thusly, his writing skills. He left Mayo Clinic one day in the middle of treatments and returned to his home in Ketchum, Idaho. In the early hours of a July Sunday, Ernest Hemingway, the man who had lived such a storied life, decided living was too painful, so he rose from his bed, went to his basement and carefully picked out a shotgun among his collection. When he returned to the upstairs foyer, he found a place to sit down and placed the barrel of the shotgun between his teeth and blew the top of his head off. It was just a few weeks before his 62nd birthday.
What is rarely known about Mr. Hemingway is that he was born to parents who were devout in their relationship with Jesus Christ. He was raised in a home that could adequately be characterized as evangelical. His dad, a doctor who practiced in the suburbs of Chicago, was a personal friend of D.L. Moody, and young Ernest was himself a dedicated churchgoer into his youth.
After leaving home to join the war, Hemingway abandoned his earlier professed faith. So much death and debauchery challenged his thinking about God and his rebellion showed in his writing. His earliest works so horror-struck his parents they returned the volumes to his publisher and all ties were severed.
It is interesting that one of Hemingway’s short stories The Capital of the World hints at the autobiographical. The story deals with the falling out between a father and his teenage son and the son’s resultant flight from home. Over time, the father was so distraught over the broken relationship he searched all over Spain for his boy but to no avail. Finally, he took out an ad in a local newspaper with the words: “Paco, Meet At Montana Hotel Noon Tuesday. All is Forgiven. Papa.”
On Tuesday at noon, as the story goes, over 800 Pacos showed up, looking to be restored to their father. Each had hoped the message was for them.
That story gets me on so many levels. Of course, it can address what Eldredge’s Wild At Heart calls the “father wound” that is found in so many men and boys in today’s society. It is true that men are tragically estranged from their fathers and consequently from the fullness of their own manhood. But in the context of this post, and my futile wish that the story of Ernest Hemingway could have played out differently, I wonder if “Papa” (his nickname) saw himself throughout life not as the main Paco of his story so much as the 800 Pacos who would not be given the satisfaction of forgiveness.
The demons he lived with were unpardonable tyrants. He saw no way out.
And so he reached for a shotgun.
And the blast could not drown the cacophony of 800 plaintive wails released from his dying soul with the single pull of a trigger.
I realize the whole of my limited readership are those who follow Christ but every once in a while someone stumbles across this page who has no idea why they did. Perhaps, just maybe (especially if you’ve read this far) you are not here by some random improbability. And so, before you click off, I want to say…
…Cry Out To Jesus.
Believe me, you are being lied to. That bottle sitting by your bedside. That strange woman you are bedding. Or want to. That next fix you are dying for. The invitation you received to that wild party. Even your vain philosophy. The code you live by: I’m the Captain of My Soul. The estrangement from your family. The penthouse, the pearls, the pools. The porn, the booze.
Lies. All lies.
Remember what this so-called modern man said of his own piteous life?
“I live in a vacuum that is as lonely as a radio tube when the batteries are dead, and there is no current to plug into.”
You feel like that, don’t you?
You will never find what you’re looking for until you give yourself completely over to the One who can silence the inner cries of your 800 Pacos and set them free. He will set you free and make you a son, a citizen of a new Kingdom. Until you allow the Son of God to reign over your life, you are subjecting yourself to the reign of another, and that is called bondage. Stop kidding yourself. You keep chasing the wind, you’ll reap the whirlwind.
Turn to Christ, not to religion.
Do it now.
800 Pacos are waiting.
I’ve been unable to walk since the Fall of 1981. My normal bodily functions from armpits down were greatly interrupted by an accident which resulted in paralysis those twenty-five long years ago. The injury is considered ‘complete’ in clinical terms as opposed to ‘incomplete’ where there might be some patches of sensation or movement below the point of injury. Complete, as you might surmise, means there is no sensation, no movement whatsoever.
And that’s all okay. Praise the Lord anyhow!
I have oftentimes run into folks who were injured just like me yet never lost sensation or ability to walk and I have rarely, if ever, felt even a tinge of jealousy. One thing that was settled with me epochs ago is the comfort of God’s supreme sovereignty, that His will is being performed in me and the glory is His. I’ve given my years of disability to establish the truth of a God who cares in a world that hurts. That He wastes nothing. That suffering is mostly redemptive and the glory and grace of God is more brilliantly, incandescently and accessibly revealed in our trials.
I could say all these things, and do, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to speak these matters into the church ANY better than what I’ve recently posted and read from others. Marisa’s story and her husband’s “letter to cancer” is catching fire all over cyberspace through various links such as found here, so whenever I’d go to my dashboard page and see who was clicking in, I noticed a plethora of hits from a site called ‘EspeciallyHeather’. Hmmmm. So I went there and found myself weeping, praying and marveling at this young 32-year old preacher’s kid, worship leader and mother of three kids, the youngest of whom lives with extreme autism. Like Marisa and Mendeldt, she and her husband Mark are true warriors of the faith and visual aids to the church of God’s superlative wisdom and ever-reaching faithfulness to His own.
Heather’s story is this: some time ago, while suffering from an inner ear infection, she was checked out and to everyone’s shock, a tumor was found in the front of her brain. Heather is in Rochester, MN right now getting ready for the tumor’s removal on Thursday. The doctors have told her there is a strong possibility of partial paralysis on her right side, loss of voice and even death. If you peruse her posts, you’ll find a sister-believer who has a strong faith, refreshing transparency, and giddy gusto for life. The body of Christ is better, much, much better with people like Heather and Marisa in it. Thank you, Lord.
All her posts are quite touching and real but this excerpt got me. Me, a grown guy sitting at a table in a (where else?) Starbucks, crying like a baby with people all around me. Who cares? My God is good, eternally loving and wise beyond my understanding. Thanks, Heather, for being a “weak” vessel in whom we can clearly see the Treasure of treasures. God is with you…
“…There are things that you talk about with your spouse that you would never talk about with anyone else in times like this. Not because they are so personal and private, but because they are so amazingly honest. Mark and I were talking about the risks of the procedure- death being one of them; He looked me square in the eyes and said “If you die, I will be so angry”, he paused and then said “because you will get to see Christ before me”. Having a husband who truly gets it- truly understands what this is about is so wonderful. This isn’t about me- never was.
Last night while we were coming up the elevator, he asked how I was feeling- and I told him that I was nervous. And I am. But at this point I have no control over what Thursday holds for me. I can cry and flip out and waste these next 48 hours on what ifs and fear, or I can enjoy them knowing that whatever the outcome on Thursday- I lived my life to fullest. I laughed, I loved so very deeply, and more than anything I tried to share Christs love at every opportunity these last 3 weeks. Come Thursday, all I can do is lay my antibacterial washed head down on that table and find peace in the knowledge whatever happens at the end of the day-
He’s already there…”
UPDATE (5/4/07): Give praise for the marvelous news!
Marisa VanderVeen is a young mother of three small children and happily married to a husband who adores her. Marisa, who plays a mean piano, also has cancer which she and her husband, Mendelt, are taking head on by the faith they have in Christ. Reading their website, it is clear to see that while Marisa may have cancer, cancer certainly does not have her.
As evidence of this, on Easter Sunday of this year, Mendelt wrote a “letter to cancer”, which Marisa has graciously given permission to post here. Be blessed. And pray.
Dear cancer:
You probably thought of the nights and how they would trouble us. Because that makes sense.
You probably thought of the sadness we have wondering if we are going to be able to teach our 10 month old how to hit a three pointer. Because that makes sense.
You probably thought of the physical suffering we are going through. Because that makes sense.
You probably thought of our psychological and cognitive suffering. Because that makes sense.
You probably thought about our parents and how the idea of their child leaving before them must shake them to their core. Because that makes sense.
You probably thought about our four year old who asks “when is cancer finished?” Because that makes sense.
However………
You couldn’t have thought of a guy named Jesus who went through all of this and more and who goes through all of this and more with us. You couldn’t have thought of that. Because that doesn’t make sense.
You ain’t going to win, cancer. You ain’t going to win. Easter made sure of that.
MdH
Three days after the shooting on the Virginia Tech campus, Sandy and I passed through Blacksburg on I-81 en route to visit our son who is away at school in northeast Pennsylvania. The weather on last Thursday was indicative of the mood: overcast, chilly and heavy. Looking out the driver’s side window, I caught this in the viewfinder of my cell phone’s camera. The lone flag stands near the VT campus as a silent sentinel and is an ominous reminder of the horrific events that transpired there recently. Tragically, events that remind us all the world we live in is far different from the world viewed from the windshield of our Dad’s Oldsmobile.
This comes from the files of the “And you thought your trials were hard” department…
“Eliot was born with an undeveloped lung, a heart with a hole in it and DNA that placed faulty information into each and every cell of his body. However, that could not stop the liv
ing God from proclaiming Himself through this boy who never uttered a word.
In the midst of heartbreaking tragedy, the Mooney family found the presence of God strengthening, comforting, and guiding them. Their story reminds us to seek God and endure our struggles rather than blame Him for our hardships.”
(from the Igniter Media Group website)
For the 6-minute video, click here—and be in awe of God’s sustaining grace through this couple’s bittersweet journey of hardship and discovering God’s all-sufficiency through it all.
Sorry to be the fly in the ointment as we all begin our work week and presumably increase our wealth, but…
Economists tell us that nearly half the world’s population (2.7 billion) lives on ten ounces of rice and two dollars per day. Many of these are our brothers and sisters in Christ.
My fellow Americans, we live as kings! Even if you live in a lower-scale neighborhood with bills spread out on your kitchen table, you are still the “big dog” on the block of humanity. And though we have our mitts on 90% of the world’s wealth, we still opine for more. But when is enough, enough? According to the World Bank, Americans are numero quatro in the world at per capita wealth, coming in at $513,000 per adult per year. How does it feel to be a half a millionaire? And if you rub your greenbacks with your spouse’s, you can call yourselves millionaires!
But before you crack open a bottle of Bordeaux, think about this: God’s vision for His people is “that there will be no poor among you since the Lord will surely bless you in the land…if only you listen obediently to the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all this commandment which I am commanding you today. If there’s a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land…you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother…” (Deuteronomy 15:4,5,7).
So today, let’s give thanks. Sure, of course.
Then, let’s give.
And with what’s left over, let’s give again.
Kings can afford to do that after all.
POST ALERT: today’s post is my 100th. (cue fireworks) This translates out to 98.9 who read each post, which is small potatoes to all you veteran bloggers out there, I’m well aware, but for me, it’s kind of cool. And quite unexpected.
So, I’d like to thank all the little people out there who made all this possible…
No, that’s not a Beatle. That’s Fanny Crosby, looking fly with the dark specs. Though blind from the time she was six weeks old, she wrote nearly 8000 hymns during her ninety-five years, asking the Lord that her songs be instrumental in saving a million men’s souls. In her later life she lived among the slums of New York, ministering to those poor souls whom life had spat upon. Once, a minister wondered why God would not give her sight when she had been showered with so many gifts. Fanny responded, “Do you know that if at birth I had been given one petition, I would have asked to be born blind?”
Amazed, the man of God asked, “Why in heaven would you have asked that?“
“Because when I get to heaven,” she stated simply, “the first Face that shall gladden my eyes will be the Face of my Savior!”
Kick back and give a listen today to this simple yet haunting melody that will stay with you through the day. The song is “Give Me Jesus” which she wrote (I’ve heard) for schoolchildren and probably best sums up the affections of her heart toward the One who was her lifelong Light and Vision.
Take a moment and read this entry in John Piper’s journal that narrates his father’s recent passing. It is quite moving…you might want to have a hankie handy…
Tuesday, March 6, 2007. 2 a.m.
The big hospital clock in room 4326 of Greenville Memorial Hospital said, with both hands straight up, midnight. Daddy had just taken his last breath. My watch said 12:01, March 6, 2007.
I had slept a little since his last morphine shot at ten. One ear sleeping, one on the breathing. At 11:45, I awoke. The breaths were coming more frequently and were very shallow. I will not sleep again, I thought. For ten minutes, I prayed aloud into his left ear with Bible texts and pleadings to Jesus to come and take him. I had made this case before, and this time felt an unusual sense of partnership with Daddy as I pressed on the Lord to relieve this warrior of his burden.
For the rest of John Piper’s journal entry, click here.
*photo courtesy of Josh Harris’ website
“A marked man.” Tonight at our weekly prayer fellowship, I heard these words take on life down deep. While others were offering up their petitions around me, these three little words were hatched in my spirit. I can’t say I heard them out loud but I can say with certainty that the “Still, Small Voice” found me yet again.
What could these tri-monosyllabic words mean? My mind did a google of its own and immediately snagged a couple of Scriptures burrowed in its vast storehouse of information. I believe the Spirit illuminated these texts and they hung there before my heart, flapping in the breezes of holy wind, awaiting my capitulation.
RORSCHACH AND ABEDNEGO?
First up was the reference that describes a holy man dressed in linen holding an inkhorn at his side. To this man, the Lord commanded he “go through the City and find those who cry and weep over the abominations of the land, and who seek Me, and put a mark on their foreheads.” The inkblot would stay the hand of judgment and let the wearer go free.
It is significant that the word “mark” in Hebrew is tav, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The man was told to “put a tav” on their foreheads. Literally, put a cross there (written as an ‘x’ or ‘t’). It is also telling that in the midst of judgment (the six men) is this interlude of grace. The foreheads of these faithful ones were God’s canvas on which to paint His mark of redemption. When judgment came near, it was asked, “What do you see in this inkspot?” and if it saw the mark of a crucified life, it would pass on. Continue reading ‘A Marked Man’
Christians jailed for walking near Olympic hotel
Persecution ramping up as 2008 Games in Beijing approach
Posted: February 22, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
A Christian house church leader in China and his mother are facing a criminal prosecution that appears to be part of that government’s campaign to eliminate messages that are contrary to the official publicity releases as the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing approach.
According to reports from Voice of the Martyrs, a Christian organization that works in support of persecuted Christians around the world, house church leader Hua Huiqi has been formally arrested and his 76-year-old mother arrested a second time for the offense of walking near a
construction site for a hotel being built in preparation for the Olympics.
VOM said Hua was arrested by the Beijing Public Security Bureau Chaoyang Branch and his mother arrested by Beijing Security Bureau Chongwen Branch. They had been injured in January when seven police officers attacked them while they were walking near the hotel construction site in Beijing.
“We are deeply concerned about Brother Hua and his elderly, ill mother. They are faithful Christians seeking only to serve the Lord in accordance with their conscience,” said Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for Voice of the Martyrs. Continue reading ‘Persecution Alert’
[God] is not proud…He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him.
CS Lewis-The Problem of Pain
He will have us. Isn’t that marvelous?
At dinner tonight, my wife and I bumped into and chatted with a young lady who attends our fellowship each week. She told us about a Bible study she and her husband are looking forward to participating in, called (if memory serves) “The Furious Pursuit.” I don’t know much about the study but I know I like the title; I think I like it even more knowing, as she explained, it is not about our pursuit of God, but rather His pursuit of us. Evidently it’s about the Lord’s stubborn love for the objects of His affection.
A song I’ve been known to hum in my quiet time with God (because I don’t always recall all the lyrics) is “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.” It was penned by George Matheson, and while there are differing stories as to the occasion and backstory of its writing, most at least agree that the hymn was, as he put it, the “fruit of pain.”
Mr. Matheson was born with failing sight and by the time he was 17, had nearly succumbed to blindness. He was engaged to a fair young lady at the time but because of the doctor’s grim prognosis of the irreversibility of his blindness, decided she could not marry a man with such a permanent defect. She broke off the engagement and thus broke George’s heart.
He did go on to earn his bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees and pastored a church of 1500 members in Scotland. His sister stayed with him and cared for him throughout the years but when she fell in love with a suitor and married, the knife of pain cut two ways in George’s heart. It brought back the memory of love lost twenty years afore and added to it was the realization that his personal caregiver was leaving him and with her all his security and comfort.
As the story goes, George sat down and penned the words to this emotive hymn in a scant five minutes! From its lyrics we can safely deduce that Mr. Matheson did learn in time of the Lord’s relentless love for him and was securely fastened in that Love until his death in 1899. While the third stanza is a personal favorite, I feel I must comment on the last. Just today I reconnected with a brother who was born with an eye disease that has slowly eaten away his eyes. The disease is so rare, he and he alone has been the subject of a study written in the Journal of Medicine. This was a source of great pain and humiliation in his younger years and, as he tells it, caused him to go through life with his head down. Today he calls his Lord quite literally the “lifter of his head” because He has won my friend through His relentless, furious pursuit. Now my brother looks you square in the eye even though his right eye is gone and his left is clouded over. How could you not hold your head high when you have looked full into the Face of such Love?
O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.
“Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I shall rescue you and you will honor Me.”
(Psalm 50:15)
“For in the day of trouble, He will conceal me in His tabernacle; in the secret place of His tent He will hide me; He will lift me up on a rock.”
(Psalm 27:5)
“Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call; This I know, that God is for me.”
(Psalm 56:9)
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
(Psalm 46:1)
“I will never, never leave you; I will never, never, never forsake you.”
(Hebrews 13:5, literal Greek)
Timing is everything. And God, who knows no days and who is not bound by time, plots His entrance into our lives perfectly, revealing Himself precisely according to script. The verses above tell us that not only does He invest Himself “around” the time of our need but He is already positioned in the moment. He doesn’t “ballpark” it.
The Hebrew of “a very present help” in Psalm 46 tells us He is already on the scene. God is not Clark Kent with supersonic hearing who picks up on a Metropolis victim’s cry from his desk at the Daily Planet then dons a cape as Superman en route to the scene of the crime. He is there.
It’s not so much that He “shows up” as it is, He reveals His already fixed Presence in the bitter moment, the time of need. A marginal note in my Bible reads, He is “abundantly available for help in tight places.” This does not encourage some fellow believers in their times of travail. They demand a God who will head trouble off at the pass and cause it to miss them altogether. Theirs is a faith that needs the storm to be stilled in order to believe. Actually, theirs is a faith who wants clear skies and sunshine (I am not always immune to this either). But great faith, pleasing faith[1], is a faith that trusts in both the Father’s desire and ability to come through, no matter what. Continue reading ‘God Is Not Superman’
Let us go out to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach.”
(Hebrews 13:13)
I hate having my picture taken. Maybe its the pounds (the camera adds ten, you know). Maybe the wheelchair is too, well…too. Perhaps it’s the contrast between me and just about anybody else in the photo. Pull out a camera
at a party and I’m either looking for a place to hide or pretending its not there. I’ll bet if I don’t look at it, it won’t look at me. All kidding aside (was I?), there is one photograph I’m angling for. I’m living in such a way as to be captured in God’s lens and placed in His portfolio under the heading of “Kingdom Man.”
The fellowship of saints I have been called to pastor is considering together what we would look like as Kingdom People, as those living “outside the camp.” Think of it: an entire modern-day western church, going outside the camp. Together. At the risk of over dramatization, this Word has been akin to thunder on the summit of Sinai for us and the blow from a shofar, rallying us to mobilize and ready ourselves for something quite unlike anything we have ever known.
In the message of this past Sunday (click here), I said whatever is out there, outside the camp, it involves dying. It involves laying down our lives. It looks like humility, not false piety. It means putting aside and walking away from. It involves separation. Hardship. Loneliness. Mourning and grieving. It can mean martyrdom. Then I paused and looked over the flock and said, “Who wants to go?” Despite the truthfulness of truth and intentional lack of “sweet by and by,” many hands went skyward.
Having considered this “outside the camp” metaphor for a few weeks now, we are getting a clearer picture of what it entails. But let me stop here for a moment. The picture we see coming into focus is just that. A picture. It is like we are looking in someone else’s photo album and we are not actually in any of the photographs. It’s our desire to not just look at glossies and wonder but to one day see ourselves in them as a people fully vested in the “Sermon on the Mount” lifestyle.
Perhaps we might look a lot like these guys…
“As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so pantheth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God…”
Psalm 42:1,2 (KJV)
“I will not let You go unless You bless me!”
Jacob, Genesis 32:26
“I pray You, show me Your glory!”
Moses, Exodus 33:18
It has rightly been assessed that the life of a true follower of Christ is a journey of subtraction. The
mission statement of John the Baptizer was, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) Paul declared that he was “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:10) and were it not a real story, the narrative of Yaweh’s whittling down of Gideon’s army would almost seem humorous.
And what can we make of that which transpired in the Valley of Elah during Israel’s first monarchy? Saul, head and shoulders above all the fighting men of Judah was too giant of a man to face Goliath. So we take the stepladder down man by man through Eliab, Abinadab and Shammah. Nope, nope and nope. Joab? Nah. Abner? Guess again. What about brave Jonathan? Close, but no cigar. Israel’s greatest enemy was felled not by a Samsonian brute but a diminutive shepherd boy not yet out of his teens.
Show me a reduced man and I will show you a glorious result.
Jacob, the trickster and usurper, met God on a wrestling mat. A man of exhausted resources and no way out cried aloud for Divine intervention and got more than he bargained for. All night long he wrestled with Yaweh saying “I will not let you go!” This is a desperate man. He was at the end of his rope and knew he would not live to see another sunrise if all he had were old tricks and sleight of hand. He wasn’t using legwhips and sleeper holds on the Lord of Creation but was hanging on to Him for dear life lest the Lord leave him to himself. Don’t think Jacob made a good go of things for the scripture says that the Lord simply “touched” him and disabled him for life. The picture is of the Holy One pinning Jacob and grinding him into the dust from whence came man and recreating him into a new, serving, holy and set apart man. When Yaweh focused on the pillar of man’s strength—his thighbone—and it fell free from the socket, the Lord of Hosts demonstrated that the weakness of man is the glory of God. Jacob could only be said to ‘prevail’ or ‘overcome’ after he was weakened and conquered by the Lord Christ.
The hollow of his thigh socket brings to mind another ‘hollow’. Moses, moved by desperation to move in the presence and power of Jehovah, cried aloud, “Show me Thy glory!” and the Lord put Moses inside a hollow in the mountainside and let ALL His goodness and virtue pass by him while shielded in the cleft of the rock. Moses, once the prince of Egypt and tutored in the courts of Pharaoh, was next reduced and numbered among the Hebrew slaves, and now becomes the permanent bondslave of the Almighty. And when he came down from the mountain, the mark of ownership upon Moses was a face glowing with the glory of the Presence who is a Jealous God (Exodus 34:14,30).
See a pattern here?
We will not cry out for God in desperation until we come to the end of ourselves and leave done with all that hinders and seduces us on our journey. The glory will not come to those who want Jesus AND their trinkets, Jesus AND their comforts, Jesus AND their treasure-laden hands. No, it is with empty hands, hanging on to the last thread of the rope, that we will enter into His fullness.
God needed Hannah to be barren before He could fill her womb with the one who would rest near Yaweh at Shiloh and hear His Voice then subsequently anoint the shepherd boy who would slay the Giant, become the model king and bring forth from his line the Messiah. Lest we forget, God bypassed all the well-pedigreed women of Jerusalem save one poor virgin girl from the country to be the holy habitation of the long awaited and Expected One. And to shore up His eternal mission, the Lord made it so that lowly, dirty, blue-collar watchers of the paschal lambs would announce His arrival to earth.
It is for us to remember: God wants us to come thirsty, depleted of self-strength and desperate for the Living Waters before He will fill us. He wants us barren, limping, blinded by Light, stinking of sheep and not perfumed with unguents of Egypt. He wants the odds stacked against us. He wants us to become earthen vessels—common peanut butter jars—so the treasure of Heaven may abide within.
I say again: show me a reduced man or woman and I will show you a glorious result.
Blessed be Your name, on the road marked with suffering.
Though there’s pain in the offering, blessed be Your name.
“Blessed Be Your Name”
lyrics by Matt and Beth Redman
“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
C.S. Lewis
“I doubt whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply.”
A.W. Tozer
While this Monday may dawn in its typical way, interloping on those who find it hard to get motivated for another long week, it will carry some special significance for me. It was on a second of October in 1981 that my life was forever changed. One moment I was walking, running and standing. In a fateful next moment, I no longer laid claim to these simple luxuries. Before October 2nd, I could stand in front of a urinal just like any other guy. Showering? No problem. Just run into a shower stall, do the job, get out. I could pull my pants legs on and be none the wiser. Twenty minutes. From the time my feet hit the floor, through the morning routine and out the door, twenty measly minutes.That all changed on the evening of October 2, 1981.
Twenty-five years ago, this Monday, the strongest bone in my body snapped like a twig and a crazy little string that runs inside it, called a spinal cord, was mangled, smashed, bruised and nearly severed. Turns out, you really need an intact cord in order to stand, walk, run, shower upright, dress upright and, uh, how to say, expel upright (sorry…oversharing?). How did I break my back, you ask? Gravity. More specifically, gravity and a rock at the end of it. You see, I was out in the mountainous woodlands of Tennessee with some college friends and during our outing together, I took a spill off a cliff, fell twenty feet, and landed squarely on my back on top of a triangle-shaped rock. C-c-rack-k!
Paralysis is what Dr. Herndon Murray called it. From the middle of my chest to the very tip of my toes there is no feeling. None. A complete injury, he said.
Will I ever walk again, Dr. Murray?
No, he said.
That was twenty-five years ago this Monday. (What do you buy for that anniversary???)
Now life is shower chairs, hoyer lifts, special beds, catheters, wound dressings, BPs (don’t ask), hand controls, checking for cloudy urine, checking skin for redness, getting dressed flat on a bed (try that sometime!), and, oh yes, wheelchairs. And van lifts and callused hands. Leg bags. Sitting higher at a table than anyone else. Getting stared at by foreigners in whose culture those with disabilities are shut away in institutions. Not sitting with friends at stadiums because you have to sit in a special area while they sit with the “normal” people. Wanting to be independent and push yourself yet struggling up hills knowing you cannot be.
“In all these things…” That’s what Paul said. He had a different list, yes, but my list and your list work just as well. Just as true. “In all these things, we overwhelmingly conquer…” (Romans 8:37) You have to know what was in my spirit as I was jotting down those “inconveniences” of disability. I was not even close to despair nor was I whining and martyring. No! A thousand-million times no! There is rejoicing in me and it’s been in me for the past quarter-century. I’m often asked, Scott, are you bitter? and I can answer with untainted integrity that I have never been bitter over it. Frustrated? Bothered? Mad, at times? Put off? Isolated and self-conscious? Humiliated? Yes, most assuredly. I confess I’ve been bothered by it from time to time but never bitter.
Why? How can this be? First off, let me tell you it’s not because of anything in me. Well, that’s not entirely true. Christ is in me. It is HIS Life and victory that upholds me. Through the suffering, through the rugged miles, through the pain and loss, it’s Him, always Him. This is gonna sound strange but if given the choice to relive my life, I would still choose His way over mine even if my way offered a delectable smorgasbord of riches, fame and ease, minus Him, and His way was, well, what I’ve gone through these twenty-five years.
I’m not saying I’d enjoy reliving the summer of ‘97 when a skin sore nearly took my life and the wound was so deep one’s fist could disappear down into its nefarious cave. I could do without New Jersey in 1990. And Fall of 2003. And early winter of ‘05. I’m not saying that I would prefer to have a humiliating “accident” and wet my pants in front of my friends or fall on a floor of our vacation villa and have to wait for a couple hours until someone can hear me calling and come to my rescue (long story). I can live without the memory of what happened after my wedding on the way to our honeymoon. Right out of the gate, Sandy was becoming “one with me” whether she was ready for it or not. Ah, Sandy…could I write volumes in honor of his woman? Through every wound, accident, gaining weight and strangers’ stare she never, ever made me feel small, in the way, embarrassing or troublesome. Saint Sandy…
No, these things can be so upsetting and humiliating. Who wants to cry themselves to sleep? Yet, in all these things, God is there, looming larger and more defined than even in the sweet by-and-by times. He comes as Warrior, Friend, Succorer, Comforter, Healer…think of it! When would you ever know Him as Healer unless you were broken? When would you ever know His infinite power unless the enemy was picking on you? When could His comfort lay you down to rest unless you were crying yourself to sleep?
I choose His way. The road marked with suffering is the road less traveled because of its thorns and thistles, gloomy places and dangers. But I still choose His way because it is where He bids me and meets me. It is where I learn to lean harder into Him and trust Him with my life. It’s where He brings heaven’s nectar out of stony places and sweet bread from the sky. Funny thing, my sandals never wear out on this road. I joke with people that I never have to buy shoes because I don’t walk on them. I still wear shoes from years ago. They may get scratched on top but they never wear out on the soles. They may fall victim to the fashion police, but they are still road-tested and road-worthy.
When Monday dawns, some will yawn, hit the snooze button and groan to face another week. I’ll get lifted into my shower chair, strap on my leg bag, dress while supine, get hoyered into my wheelchair, struggle up more hills and get more callouses. Just like any other Monday. But I’ll do it gladly because my Friend will be there smiling and telling me “Chop-chop, Scott. We got a few more weary miles to go, but soon we’ll be home. Wait’ll you see what I’ve got up My sleeve for you then! C’mon, some pretty cool adventures lay ahead…”
And then I’ll smile back at Him and say, “Right behind You, Lord, right behind You…”
RAMs (Readers And Messages)